Avengers: Infinity War held a lot of surprises, with the foremost being the failure of the heroes to stop Thanos from eliminating half of all life in the universe. For a genre often geared toward children, that's intense: as Jimmy Kimmel put it yesterday while hosting his ABC show Jimmy Kimmel Live!, "While children love superheroes, I'm not so sure how they feel about intergalactic genocide."
Kimmel decided it was time to "get the kids back" with a child-friendly retelling of Infinity War, and then he went the extra mile and had the stars of the movie read the illustrated book aloud.
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Mark Ruffalo, Scarlet Johanssen, Chris Hemsworth, Don Cheadle, Jeremy Renner and Chris Evans took turns reading from 'Twas the Mad Titan Thanos, peppering the nursery rhyme-style narration with their own reactions to it.
The simplistic art of Thanos drew some bleeped-out criticisms from the cast, as did the forced rhyme of "Groot" and "soot": "You can't find something to rhyme with 'to turn into soot?'" griped Cheadle.
Most of all, though, the Avengers seemed to be taking the opportunity to blame each other for the mistakes their characters made throughout the film -- particularly Thor, who we're reminded, "should have gone for the head."
"At least I got close enough to him to actually go for something," Hemsworth said in Thor's defense, "unlike the rest of the pathetic little useless *bleep* Avengers who didn't even really put a scratch on him."
Renner, whose character Hawkeye was referenced in the film but won't actually appear until the sequel, added, "I mean they really should have just called me. Could've gotten this done real quick."
The makeshift children's book, like the movie itself, ended with half of the heroes being turned to dust in the Decimation. However, it also puts in a plug for a hopeful resolution in the upcoming Avengers: Endgame: "But the Avengers may have a few more last tricks. You can find out in theaters in April two-six."
Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, Avengers: Endgame stars Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Paul Rudd, Brie Larson, Karen Gillan, Danai Gurira, Benedict Wong, Jon Favreau and Bradley Cooper, with Gwyneth Paltrow and Josh Brolin. The film arrives April 26.