Is "Seinfeld" Offensive Now?

I've mentioned once how my huge love of the Andy Serkis Planet of the Apes movies has managed to never come up in my blog entries before. Something else that I've never mentioned being a huge fan of is the 1990's sitcom Seinfeld. I don't know why, given my taste in movies, but somehow Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David's magnum opus about the silly, meaningless details of everyday life is my absolute favorite TV show.

Well, a friend of mine recently sent me a link to a YouTube show called "Does It Hold Up?", in which modern-day young viewers are shown episodes of older TV shows and asked if they think the shows are still relevant today. The episode my friend sent me had these viewers watching episodes of Seinfeld, and the majority of them found it too offensive to hold up today.

Here's a link to the video if you want to watch it yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5BxjUmzPPA


And for the record, here's a list of the Seinfeld episodes it discusses:

"The Merv Griffin Show": Jerry, George, and Elaine repeatedly give Jerry's girlfriend medication that makes her drowsy so they can play with her antique toy collection while she's sleeping.

"The Contest": Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer have a bet to see who can go the longest without masturbating. The three men make Elaine bet more money than them because "it's easier for a woman not to do it."

"The Soup Nazi": Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer frequent a dining establishment run by a short-tempered, ethnically questionable foreign chef.

"The Cigar Store Indian": Jerry keeps accidentally offending his Native American girlfriend and other people of different ethnicities.

"The Hamptons": Jerry's girlfriend accidentally sees George naked after he went swimming and he and Jerry ask Elaine if women know about "shrinkage."

"The Outing": A muckraking reporter believes that Jerry and George are a gay couple and they vehemently deny it while always disclaiming, "Not that there's anything wrong with that."

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As you can imagine, my knee-jerk reaction while watching the above video was to yell "Serenity Now!" every time someone complained about Seinfeld. My friend even questioned if the group of viewers chosen were a fair representation of modern audiences or if they were just picked because they had the most dramatic reactions. Now that I've had some time to think it over, I want to discuss this more in depth.

For starters, I don't really think you can gauge how well something "holds up" by how offensive it is. Watch any episode of Seinfeld back-to-back with any episode of the currently running sitcom Family Guy. I don't think anyone's going to find Seinfeld more offensive just because it's the older of the two shows. You can argue of course that Family Guy has more leeway because it's a cartoon and that the offensive jokes on that show are more exaggerated and deliberate, whereas Seinfeld's offensive jokes are more grounded and reflective of then-current cultural views. That's not to say that one show is funnier than the other, since humor is subjective and always offensive to some degree. It's just that not every show is made for the same audience.

What does make Seinfeld feel dated at times is the technology depicted onscreen, since things like cell phones, online streaming services, and self-adhesive postage stamps weren't commonplace when the series was made. Jerry not being able to find his friends in a movie theater because they can't text each other isn't offensive, though. What's more, I don't think that featuring outdated technology really lessens a movie or show's entertainment value. Heck, Marvel Studios just released a superhero movie that's a period piece set in the 1990's, and while I have heard complaints about the film, none of them have been about that aspect of it.

Second, I think a lot of people who do find Seinfeld offensive are just missing the point of the show. That point is that you're supposed to laugh at the main characters, not with them. Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer are selfish, ignorant, immature people, and the humor comes from how much those flaws hinder them when solving trivial, everyday problems. The show usually calls them out for their bad behavior one way or another, even when they don't get a proper comeuppance; other characters tell them how ridiculous they're being, their significant others dump them when the bad behavior comes to light, and sometimes their bad deeds from older episodes come back to haunt them.

It's like that scene from the movie Borat where the title character spends the night at a B&B run by a Jewish couple, and his antisemitism causes him to frantically throw dollar bills at two insects in his room because he thinks they're the couple who've shape-shifted to sneak in and kill him. It's making fun of ignorant racists like Borat, not the people they're prejudiced against. By the same logic, Seinfeld is making fun of people like Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer who are too morally inept to function in society, not the people they wrong in each episode. That's why the series ends with all four of them in prison.

The only episode I can think of that is unapologetically offensive is The Bubble Boy from Season 4. Jerry, Elaine, and George are asked to visit a young man with immune deficiency who has to live in a germ-free plastic enclosure, and because of George's childish stupidity, problems ensue. Not only does the show never address that the three are wrong to be uncomfortable about the "Bubble Boy's" condition (it even mocks the characters who do show him support and sympathy) it also depicts the "Bubble Boy" himself as a nasty, entitled brat who deserves what happens to him. I know that his condition is extremely rare, so not many people would take offense to this episode personally. I also know that Seinfeld wasn't trying to promote ableism with this episode, but the fact that it never really works a disclaimer into the script like most other episodes do is a bit irresponsible for them. Still, one mishandled message doesn't ruin an entire series -- and really, that episode is still funny.

And at the end of the day, I think that's the most important thing to take away from this: the tone of the series overall. You can't get an accurate view of a nine-season sitcom by just watching a handful of cherry-picked episodes. I'll admit that the producers of "Does It Hold Up?" could have shown their subjects far more triggering episodes than the ones they did, but there are plenty of less triggering episodes that they could have shown too. We need to view things in as full of a scope as possible before properly judging them, and TV sitcoms, while mainly a source of entertainment, are no exception. Fortunately, it's easy to view as much of Seinfeld as possible because it still aires daily on practically every TV channel known to man.

And if a show is still doing that more than two decades after it ended, it probably isn't offending too many people.

"The Nice List" - Coming Soon!

Coming soon to Amazon Prime this holiday season is our new Christmas film The Nice List.

Cole Davidson isn't just naughty. His constant selfish, dishonest, and hurtful behavior towards others has landed him on a list even worse than Santa's Naughty List. When he and his best friend Ralph discover this on Christmas Eve, they hurry out in search of good deeds for Cole to do so he can redeem himself before midnight. The only problem is that Cole is painfully bad at being good. Can he earn enough points to get himself onto the Nice List in time, or will Cole get a lump of coal this Christmas?

5 Tips for NaNoWriMo

Well, tomorrow marks the start of the 2018 NaNoWriMo challenge. For anyone unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo (short for National Novel Writing Month), it's an annual online competition where participants are given the entire month of November to write a novel from beginning to end. The goal is to either finish the book or write 50,000 words, whichever you do first.

It's an exciting challenge for writers of all experience levels, but it can also seem daunting to people who haven't tried it before. I felt the same way about it for years, since I tend to be a slow writer, but when I did it for the first time last year, I actually managed to finish my novel The Last Good Man before the end of November. That hardly makes me an expert, but since more and more people are taking an interest in NaNoWriMo every year, I figured I ought to offer the advice I have to any first-timers out there.


1. Use The Website

Maybe it goes without saying, but it helps your writing pace tremendously if you register on the official NaNoWriMo website and log your progress every day. Check your word count for the day on whatever word processing program you use, enter it into the site, and NaNoWriMo will give you a full breakdown of your daily average. It also compares your overall word count to what it should be by that point in the month, then it uses that information to calculate the date when you'll reach 50,000 words.

If that isn't motivation enough, you can also find other writers on the NaNoWriMo site and add them to your "Writing Buddies" list to compare each other's progress. Lastly, the site offers prizes, usually subscriptions for writing or formatting software, to the first few people who upload a 50,000-word manuscript. It might be better for first-timers to just focus on meeting their own writing goals for the month instead of competing, but if winning a prize helps you to keep going, then by all means go for it. Besides, the prize might help you on your next NaNoWriMo.

Here's a link to the website for anyone interested: https://nanowrimo.org


2. Outline Your Book

The only rule of NaNoWriMo is that you're not allowed to start writing the actual novel until November 1st. You're allowed to outline it as much as you want before that, though. Mapping out your story ahead of time is usually the best approach to writing a book under any circumstances, but it's especially handy when you only have thirty days to write one. That way, you can avoid writing yourself into a corner, getting hung up on plot holes, or stalling out because you don't know where you want the story to go.

Granted, outlines aren't always perfect. You might discover while writing your book that something in your outline doesn't make sense, or that you forgot a crucial detail in the planning stage that needs to be addressed in the story. Maybe you'll even think up a new plot point that's better than what you had in your outline and it will end up altering the rest of the plot. My best advice for things like that is to go with your gut feeling and maybe make notes for possible changes at the end of each chapter. The book might need work after NaNoWriMo, but having an outline will at least give it the foundation it needs.


3. Write, Don't Edit

What matters for NaNoWriMo is the pace of your writing, not the quality. No first draft of anything is flawless, so it's best not to stew over your word choices or punctuation when you're writing on such a strict time budget. Picture what's supposed to happen in the scene that you're working on, write down what you see in your mind, and then move on. This might sound alarming to more methodical writers, but eventually you will get comfortable with it. Personally, I found it more than a little therapeutic to to stop thinking about how the book might sound to readers and just focus on writing it.

This might just be a matter of preference, but based on my own experience, I recommend writing your first NaNoWriMo book from the First Person point of view. I typically write in Third Person, which tends to come out too wordy and poetic since the story is basically being told by some all-knowing, James Earl Jones-like narrator in the sky. It's from the point of view of someone above the characters, whereas stories in the First Person are from the point of view one of the characters themselves. This allows you to take a much less formal approach to the writing style, since you're writing it the way a normal person would tell the story, and I think that helps the writing to go faster. Your book will still need editing afterwards, but since you're writing it in a more naturalistic way, you might not think about that nearly as much in the meantime.


4. Keep It Simple

There's a part of every writer that dreams of becoming the next J.K. Rowling, but even the first Harry Potter book was pretty basic compared to its sequels. Writing 50,000 words in thirty days is challenging enough for first-timers, so it's probably not a good idea to tackle the most complicated story you can think of for your first NaNoWriMo. A simple, to-the-point story makes for quicker writing, and quicker writing makes for a more motivated, enthusiastic writer.

That's not to say that every NaNoWriMo book you ever write has to be simplistic. I just think it's good to get comfortable with a faster work pace first and then move your way up to telling more complex stories. Think of it like weight training; if you try to lift an eighty-pound barbell on your first gym visit, you'll probably hurt yourself, but if you start by lifting smaller weights, you'll eventually build yourself up to the point where you'll be able to handle a heavy load.


5. Make It Fun

Listen to your favorite music while writing your NaNoWriMo book. Let yourself go to the movies as a reward when you reach a big milestone on your word count. Drink a shot of something (responsibly) to celebrate every time you finish a chapter. NaNoWriMo is supposed to be a fun challenge, so do whatever keeps you in a positive mindset while you're writing.

If I have one piece of wisdom to give about writing, it's that if you like a story enough, it will write itself for you. In other words, if you write your book with enthusiasm, you'll be more immersed in it and more likely to keep coming up with fresh and creative ideas for it as you go along. An author's energy can really show in their writing, and that energy can rub off on readers and make reading your books all the more enjoyable to them in turn. And that's the goal of NaNoWriMo: to make writing a source of entertainment rather than stress. If you can accomplish that, then half the battle will already be won.

Is an Actor's Word Definitive?

It's pretty common knowledge that actors bring a lot of their own ideas to the table when playing a character. Not only can they add dimensions to a performance with ad-libs and personal quirks, but they often take the extra step by inventing backstories for their characters beyond what the script provides. This is pretty common knowledge too, and it makes sense for actors to do this. Having a personal history in mind that doesn't necessarily relate to the story at hand makes their characters feel more like real people, and that gives them something to draw from when finding their motivation for certain scenes.

One aspect of this that I want to explore though is what happens when an actor's vision of their character doesn't quite jibe with what's conveyed in the final product. I'm not talking about when the actor and the writer and/or director clash over creative differences. I'm talking about when those creative differences result in a major aspect of the character being ambiguous to the viewers. Sure, writers and directors are the top creative authorities on the overall project, but the actor is the one who delivers the performance we actually see. Does that make their word the more definitive one in the end?

Take the characters Pintel and Ragetti from the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films. Played by Lee Arenberg and Mackenzie Crook, they're a pirate duo who frequently switch allegiances depending on what's more beneficial to them, as pirates do. Unlike most duos in the series though, they never once turn on each other. They're completely loyal to one another from start to finish, and even when things descend into "every man for himself," they still more or less work as a team with their shared wellbeing in mind.

The movies (produced by Disney in the early-to-mid 2000's, mind you) seem to present them as just really good friends who have each other's backs because they've been through so much together. In fact, Pintel was a solo character in the first draft of the script, so it makes sense that splitting him into two characters in later drafts would result in a duo that always works together. However, a lot of viewers genuinely believe that he and Ragetti are a homosexual couple. There's even a deleted scene from the first film where Pintel mentions that he "used to date a eunuch." What complicates this further is that Lee Arenberg has said that he and Mackenzie Crook came up with the idea before filming that their characters were actually uncle and nephew.

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, aye?

Personally, I always favored the uncle and nephew theory since it came from the actors themselves. If that was how they played their roles, then it has to be what their characters' relationship really was, right? And it wasn't like one or both of their characters couldn't still be homosexual; they just wouldn't be a couple with each other. However, this way of thinking got turned on its head just a month ago when I saw the movie Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior for the first time.

See, there's a marauding male duo in that movie too. Their names are Wez and the Golden Youth, and they spend most of their shared screen time riding on a motorcycle together while dressed in black fetish leather, complete with a dog collar and chain on the Golden Youth and "assless" chaps on Wez. Wez always sits in front on the motorcycle with those chaps, by the way. One of the heroes kills the Golden Youth during a negotiation scene about a third of the way through the film, and his death sends Wez into such a vengeful rage that the lead villain has to restrain him and remind him that every one in their group has lost "someone we love."

The intention for these two characters would seem obvious, even for a film from 1981. However, Vernon Wells, the actor who played Wez, has a reported history of getting angry at people who insist that Wez and the Golden Youth were a couple. He's also said that director George Miller left it up to him to decide his character's backstory, which Wells decided was that of a surrogate father to the Golden Youth, and that a scene clarifying this was meant to be in the film at one point. To the best of my knowledge, no proof of this scene existing has ever surfaced, not even in older drafts of the script, and the Golden Youth was originally a female character.

Taking the actor's word suddenly doesn't seem like the most credible approach anymore. Granted, there are a few differing factors between these two cases.

The Pirates movies present Pintel and Ragetti's relationship in a very broad, distant light that allows for several interpretations. Mad Max 2, in contrast, seems to give Wez and the Golden Youth's relationship one very specific undertone, unless the idea is that they just dress that way because everyone has questionable fashion in Mad Max. Lee Arenberg and Mackenzie Crook could come up with any backstory they wanted for their characters without really contradicting the writers' ideas, whereas Vernon Wells was stuck on a two-man motorcycle in assless chaps. He's going to have a harder time convincing people of his interpretation because things like the wardrobe and staging were beyond his control.

The actors themselves and the timing of their films' releases are also big factors in credibility. If Wez really is supposed to be a homosexual, it's possible that Vernon Wells was never comfortable with that idea, or else he was comfortable with it back in 1981 but his view has changed since then. Or maybe he honestly never saw the role that way during production and resents that it's been interpreted that way. Another commonly known thing about actors is that they tend to accept roles that they're not entirely passionate about or don't fully understand because work is scarce at the time, and a lot of them do look back on those roles wishing they had turned them down or played them differently. Even Viola Davis recently admitted to having regrets about her Oscar-nominated role in The Help.

The bottom line seems to be that while actors do play a key role in bringing characters to life, they don't own those characters. Therefore, their word only holds so much weight. As viewers, we can still believe them if we want to—it's always good to view art from more than one perspective—but if you want the definitive word on something in a movie, show, or stage play, you're probably better off asking the writers and directors, the people who had to envision the bigger picture.

And for the record, I still prefer to think that Pintel and Ragetti are uncle and nephew. That's partially because I've written a 155,000-word fanfiction series based on that idea, and I like it when the words that I write hold a little weight.

3K Film Festival - Sign Up Today!

Are you a filmmaker in Western Pennsylvania? Ever wanted to compete in a weekend filmmaking contest? Now's your chance to sign up for our 3K Film Festival in November! 

The competition starts on Friday, November 2nd. Teams will draw the genre and style of the film they have to make, and then we give them exactly 50 hours (3,000 minutes) to make it.

Click the link below to sign up on our website. Register before September 15th, and you'll get our Early Bird discount for just $45. Sign up between September 16th and October 15th, and it will only be $50. The registration fee from October 16th to November 2nd will be the full $60.

> 3K Film Festival website <

Join the fun, and good luck!

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Loki of Jotunheim

While we're still on the subject of Loki's (we'll say "alleged") death in Avengers: Infinity War, there's one particular aspect of it that I think is worth discussing. It's actually a major aspect of his overall depiction in the MCU that a lot of fans would like to see the movies address again. I'm talking about Loki's Frost Giant appearance.

As established in the first Thor film, Loki isn't Thor's biological brother, but an adoptive brother who was born as a Frost Giant in the realm of Jotunheim. This means that in his natural form, he has blue skin and red eyes. Coincidentally, his supposed death scene in Infinity War was lit heavily with blue light and Thanos strangling him left Loki with bloodshot eyes. This led many viewers to wonder if the shape-shifting God of Mischief had reverted back into his Frost Giant form because the spell disguising him as an Asgardian wore off as he died.

It's understood now that this wasn't the case, but it does leave us wondering more than ever about the nature of Loki's dual appearance and where it fits into the MCU.

The first Thor is the only film to ever show Loki as a Frost Giant, and the first full reveal of it is a huge moment in that story. What's more, Thor never sees him in that form at any point in the film. Fans have been itching to see Frost Giant Loki again ever since, and who can blame them? It would be a great dramatic peak for Thor and Loki's relationship to have the God of Thunder finally see what his brother really looks like, and it would make Loki's arc feel more complete too since seeing himself in that form the first time was what made him fall from grace.

Some viewers have even cited his remaining in Asgardian form after death as proof that he didn't really die. Others just find it frustrating, sometimes to the point that they wonder if the screenwriters have forgotten about Loki's Frost Giant origins. I'm no expert, but based on what I've seen in the MCU so far, here's my take on everything.

For starters, the screenwriters haven't forgotten about Loki's origins. He introduces himself at one point in both Thor: The Dark World and Infinity War as someone from Jotunheim, and not only does Thor: Ragnarok show his real father Laufey depicted in a ceiling mural, but it also shows a stage play about Loki where a child actor covered head-to-toe in blue paint portrays him as a baby. I'll even offer that maybe Infinity War gave Loki blue lighting and bloodshot eyes for his presumed death as a subtle nod to the fact that he's a Frost Giant.

As for him not turning back into a Frost Giant when he dies, I don't think it's that simple. The only times we see him turn back into one in Thor is whenever he touches another Frost Giant or the Casket of Ancient Winters, and even then the transformation is brief. We also get a flashback where his adoptive father Odin finds him as a baby on Jotunheim and then Loki changes into an Asgardian. Frost Giants don't seem to have any appearance-altering powers, and we learn in The Dark World that Loki received his illusion powers from Odin's wife Frigga later in life. Because of this, we can assume that Odin was the one who originally transformed him into an Asgardian.

And I think that word is the key here: "transformed." I don't think Odin cast a mere disguise over Loki; I think he actually altered Loki's physicality, much like he transformed Thor from an Asgardian into a human while banishing him to Earth in the first film. Loki's Asgardian appearance was a deep-rooted, mostly permanent change that became his default form once it was cast, and Odin was the one who cast it. If Odin's death in Ragnarok didn't make Loki automatically turn back into a Frost Giant, then Loki's death probably wouldn't make that happen either.

Whether or not Loki's still alive, there are plenty of ways that the MCU can show him as a Frost Giant again. I personally like the thought of Thanos using the Reality Stone to taunt Thor with various illusions of his little brother, including one of Loki in his original form. The question is just whether or not the MCU will bother to show that side of Loki again. The character's last appearance will be in Avengers 4, however large or small his role will be, and since that film will most likely have a ton of more important storylines to juggle, it might just decide to close the books on Loki even faster than Infinity War did. He did resolve everything that he needed to in that film, after all.

I'll still hope for Frost Giant Loki to make a final cameo in Avengers 4, just because the films do keep reminding us of his origins, but as a Loki fan, I'm pretty sure he'll always leave us wanting more no matter what the MCU does with him.

Avengers 4: They're Not Quite Dead

It's been exactly three months since The Avengers: Infinity War hit theaters and turned the whole Marvel fan community upside-down. Practically everyone who's ever seen a film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is itching for next summer's release of Avengers 4, and directors Joe and Anthony Russo are doing everything in their power to keep the details about it under wraps until then. They don't even want to announce the film's title yet because they say it might spoil the plot. If the Infinity Gauntlet was powered by Avengers 4 details instead of the six Infinity Stones, the universe would still be safe from Thanos.

Because of this, countless fan theories have been popping up all over the internet in the past three months. Most of them center around characters who died in Infinity War and ways that they could come back to life, and while a lot of those deaths occurred when Thanos snapped his fingers with the Infinity Gauntlet to wipe out half the universe, some deaths occurred before that. These are the trickier ones to theorize about since they don't seem as easily reversible as the ones caused by the Snap. However, more and more fans are starting to look at some of these deaths from a new angle: that those characters aren't actually dead.

I could spend days researching and constructing my own theories about every "dead" character, but for the sake of brevity, I'll just talk about three of the more likely ones to turn up alive in Avengers 4.

1. The Collector

There isn't too much to say about this character, mainly because there isn't too much to say about his role in Infinity War. All we see is a brief scene of Thanos threatening him for the location of the Reality Stone, then a reveal that it was all just an illusion cast by the Mad Titan to draw the heroes out of their hiding places. The obvious assumption is that Thanos killed the Collector offscreen shortly before this scene occurred, but there are reasons to think that he didn't.

For starters, the MCU doesn't make a habit of killing notable characters offscreen. The only one that comes to mind is Sif from the Thor film series, who's been absent since The Dark World and was said in interviews to have died from the Snap. This lack of closure was mainly due to Jaime Alexander not being available to reprise her role though, and that clearly wasn't the issue with Beniccio Del Toro. The MCU is one of the biggest film franchises in history; if the screenwriters don't have enough time in one film to properly kill off a character and the actor is still under contract, they can probably afford to save that death for another film rather than just having it happen offscreen.

Second, let's consider the illusion that Thanos cast of himself threatening the Collector. He didn't kill the Collector at the end of the illusion, and their conversation throughout it was very detailed and true to the Collector's character. It's possible that Thanos was reenacting what actually happened when he confronted the Collector earlier, rather than fabricating a conversation off the top of his head. It stands to reason then that just like in his illusion, he didn't kill the Collector in real life. Thanos is a surprisingly merciful supervillain, so if the Collector gave him the Reality Stone without too much resistance, Thanos probably spared him.

The strongest piece of evidence though comes from this piece of artwork, which shows the Collector playing a board game with his brother the Grandmaster:

This is an official piece of artwork created by Marvel Studios for a Guardians of the Galaxy attraction in Disneyland, and it's prompted Studio President Kevin Feige to express interest in featuring the two characters together in a future film. Granted, such a scene could end up being a flashback that takes place prior to Infinity War, but it still leaves the door wide open for the Collector to be alive. Bottom line, his character still has a chance of turning up alive since we never actually saw him die.

2. Gamora

Okay, physically she is quite dead, but I think she's getting better.

Unlike the other pre-Snap deaths in Infinity War, Gamora's had a very spiritual element to it. Thanos killed her as part of a ritual to obtain the Soul Stone, an Infinity Stone with the power to control life and death. Her demise is directly tied to the Soul Stone, and the Soul Stone was the stone responsible for killing half the universe when Thanos snapped his fingers.

That was why he had a vision of Gamora in an orange-tinted realm right after he caused the Snap. Her appearance wasn't presented as a hallucination brought on by his guilt over killing her. It was presented as the real Gamora communicating with him in spirit. She didn't know what had happened until Thanos admitted it to her, and the scenery being orange (the same color same the Soul Stone) implied that her spirit was trapped inside of the stone. Thanos using the Soul Stone to such a huge capacity was probably what triggered Gamora's sudden appearance in the first place.

The Soul Stone is the only Infinity Stone shown in the movies to have any kind of rule set attached to it. You can't just snatch it up and use it like you can with the other five; certain actions have to be taken to prove that you're worthy to use it. You have to follow the rules in order for it to function properly. Because of this, it's entirely possible that an improper use or even a forfeiture of the Soul Stone could cause it to reverse the sacrifice that was made to obtain it and then render the stone unusable once more. This could mean a resurrection for Gamora in the near future.

As for behind-the-scenes evidence, the waters are a little muddier now than they were three months ago. Zoe Saldana is still active on the MCU publicity scene even though Infinity War's theatrical run is over, and Guardians of the Galaxy Director James Gunn has said that Gamora will have a "significant role" in the next film of that series. However, Gunn's recent firing from the project could undo a lot of his story ideas. This might not affect the Guardians characters too much though. Marvel Studios plans their films pretty far in advance, and the timeline of the MCU is so intricate and interwoven now that it would be very difficult to scrap story ideas. If the studio did that, it could cause a butterfly effect that would drastically alter their plans for a lot of future films.

Overall, I still think it's safe to assume that Gamora will come back to life. It's just what she'll do afterwards that's foggy.

3. Loki

I know, I wrote that huge two-part eulogy for him when Infinity War first came out and now I don't even think he's really dead. I still stand by most of what I said in my "Looking Back On Loki" essay, and to be perfectly frank, a part of me still likes to think that the God of Mischief really did meet his poetically poignant end in the first scene of Infinity War. That doesn't change the fact though that the events leading up to his death look EXTREMELY suspicious now.

Here's a rundown of what happens: Thor and Loki are cornered by Thanos, Loki stalls for time — promising Thor that "The sun will shine on us again" — and then he tackles Thor out of the way as the Hulk comes crashing into Thanos. The Hulk and Thanos have a brutal fistfight for several minutes, but not once does the scene ever cut away to Thor and Loki to show us what they're doing. This is odd enough, but what's even more odd is that Thor eventually shows up in the middle of the Hulk and Thanos's fistfight by himself. What happened to Loki?

There's still no sign of the God of Mischief even when Thanos apprehends Thor and kills Heimdall. It's not until Thanos is just about to make his exit that Loki shows up again, and when he does, he almost appears to step right out of nowhere. He tries to kill Thanos, seeming to use the bare minimum of his powers, and then his trick backfires and Thanos appears to kill him. This scene raises so many questions that it gets harder and harder to take at face value every time I watch it.

First of all, Loki's faked his death before in the MCU, and we haven't always gotten a clear explanation of how he did it. We still don't know exactly how he survived his fight with Kurse in The Dark World, so he could very well have survived against Thanos. For all we know, the person that Thanos appeared to kill could have just been a random dead Asgardian that Loki possessed and then projected his appearance onto from a safe distance away. We've seen him do both of those things to some extent before, even without the use of his scepter.

Second of all, photos have leaked of Tom Hiddleston as Loki on the set of Avengers 4. The scene being filmed seems to involve time travel since he has his clothing and hairstyle from the first Avengers film, but it still appears that Loki is supposed to be in the next film. What's more, Tony Stark appears in that same scene wearing what looks to be a disguise, suggesting that the Avengers might go back in time to alter the past or tamper with the timeline in other ways. Maybe the Loki who appeared to step out of nowhere at the beginning of Infinity War was a different Loki than the one we saw tackle Thor out of the Hulk's way a few minutes earlier.

Some might say that these theories are all moot, since Tom Hiddleston has done multiple interviews saying that his time playing Loki is over and that Loki isn't coming back to life in Avengers 4. However, Marvel Studios has a history of releasing bogus interviews to subvert fan expectations. Just look at Ben Kingsley's interviews about playing the Mandarin in Iron Man 3. Those were absolutely meant to be misleading, at least at the time when they first came out. Heck, the Russo Brothers themselves have insisted that Spider-Man and Black Panther's deaths in Infinity War are permanent, and yet both of those characters already have sequels to their own standalone films in the works.

Also, the interviews of Tom Hiddleston saying that his time playing Loki is over are only half deceptive; Avengers 4 is the last film on his contract, not Infinity War, but it just so happens that he was done shooting his scenes for Avengers 4 by the time that Infinity War opened in theaters. Technically there's nothing inaccurate about anything he said in those interviews, but having them come out right after we saw Loki die in a new movie does seem like we're being set up to have the wrong idea.

This is all a prime example of where things stand with the MCU these days. The franchise is so huge, the stakes are so high, and the studio has grown so clever with both its writing and its marketing that we have almost no way of predicting what's going to happen in their films anymore. Some fans may find all of this secrecy and uncertainty maddening, some may find it exhilarating, and some probably take it as even more of a challenge to try and figure out what will happen next. Whatever the case, we'll all probably be more and more eager to see these movies with each passing phase. Not many franchises can stay this engaging after ten years and twenty movies.

And if Marvel Studios has been throwing us more of these curve balls than they've needed to, then mischief managed, I suppose.