“Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge".

The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal.

But of course... it probably isn't.

The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary.

Now you're looking for the secret... But you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet.

Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige"."
― Christopher Nolan, The Prestige.

Spoiler Warning: The post you're about to read contains major spoilers for the movie Avengers: Infinity War, if you haven't seen it and don't want to have it spoiled, maybe you should skip it for now and come back later. Otherwise, if you're ready, I hope that you enjoy it!

Welcome to the Marvel Cinematic Universe

The picture above is taken from a scene from the trailer of Avengers: Infinity War, but contrary as you might expect, no such scene did ever take place in the movie.

In fact, all those scenes in the trailers where you see the Hulk running around in Wakanda are a total misdirection, that doesn’t happen in the movie at all.

The Hulk was beaten down to submission by Thanos, so much so that Bruce Banner could no longer transform into the hulk anymore.

This is one of the ways that Marvel likes tolead the audience to focus on one thing, distract the attention and then shock them with a big surprise that no one sees coming.

Just like a magician performing a mesmerizing act.

Masters of Miss-direction

What Marvel did with the Hulk in the trailer is nothing new for the franchise. For instance, this exactly like what happened in Thor Ragnarok’s trailer with Thor’s eye.

The same strategy was also employed in the Avengers Civil War trailers where Spiderman was CGied out of the battle.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe are experts in such a miss-direction, they make you think that the plot is going one way, and then when all of the sudden, they pull something totally unexpected out of the bag.

Remember that one scene that manage to escape Marvel’s grip and got leaked to the public?

It’s the scene where the Guardians of the Galaxy find Thanos torturing the Collector in Nowhere and they try to sneak up on him.

So imagine you’re watching that scene, thinking that you know what’s already going to happen. Only that you find out that Thanos was tricking the Guardians, and that the whole thing was just an illusion being played by the Reality Stone.

So at this point we discover that Thanos has three stones and the hype and emotional reaction towards the character keeps building up exponentially as the audience realizes just how dangerous he is, not only powerful but incredibly smart as well.

I wonder if the leak was on purpose or accidental, but what Marvel did a brilliant thing by letting people think that the scene is going in one direction - the only scene people thought they knew for sure before the movie - and they took that moment, and pulled a great switch that no one expected.

Another clever switch was when Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, stabbed Corvus Glaive with his own spear. He seemed seriously injured and even couldn’t get up from the ground.

At that point everyone was wondering how come the Avengers didn’t finish them right there.

Well, because that scene served an important role later on in the movie.

Notice that this scene was one of the few one released, and even showcased in TV programs and press-tours. It’s obvious that they wanted to put the attention on that scene.

In the third act - the Battle of Wakanda - Proxima Midnight sees the Black Widow along all the other heros and tells Natasha that she will pay for what she did to Corvus Glaive.

So now we’re all thinking that Corvus had died, and so do the Avengers. But that was all to maximize the surprize when he all of the sudden he sneaks up on the Vision while everyone was at the battlefield.

The art of misdirection consists on leading the audience to focus on one thing, distract the attention and then shock them with a big surprise that no one sees coming.

And since we’re on the subject, the mother of all miss-directions is the one that took place at the ending of the movie.

The most important scene in my opinion is when Dr Strange said to Tony Stark that he travelled through time millions of times to search for all the possible scenarios where they could beat Thanos.

Tony asked “Did we win any?” to which Stephen Strange answers “Just one”.

He later referred to that single last chance as the “Endgame”.

Now, this is a very short scene in the middle of a long and emotional movie where there’s so much epic stuff going on that if you blink you missed it.

Towards the very end and just before Thanos snaps his fingers, we see Stephen Strange telling Ironman to get ready because “This is the Endgame.”

A few moments later, Thanos achieving his goal and ended up wiping out half the life on the universe.

Now we’re all taken aback surprised of what we’re seeing, first Bucky dies, then Wanda dies, and then teenage Groot, the Black Panther, the Drax and Mantis die… Starlord is dying as well.

People start dying left and right and it’s hard to pay attention to detail as we’re witnessing something totally alien to most superhero movies, which is that the villain is winning and the heroes are falling like dominoes.

And just before Stephen Strange dies, the last thing he did is looking at a devastated and heartbroken Tony Stark and delivering him one last message.

“This was the only way”.

This of course is a clear reference to that only way he found to defeat Thanos. Thanos thinks he won, and maybe we the audience think he won as well, but that’s the magic of Marvel’s storytelling, the art of miss-direction.

I guess we’ll all see the outcome in the next movie which may very well be called Avengers: Endgame.

How about you? Do you think the snap was the real endgame and half the life of the planet has been wiped? Or do you think there is more to the story as we will see in the sequel?

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