Avengers: Infinity War – 5 out of 5
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been building and growing for a decade now. A decade! That’s incredible. I know jaded fanboys like to diminish this achievement and endlessly complain about minuscule details not fitting how they want things but the world building and universe construction that they’ve accomplished with the MCU at Marvel Studios is outright impressive. I’ve been an unapologetic fan since the debut of Iron Man and have been obsessed with every film, show and moment that has been supplied. Avengers: Infinity War is the culmination of all this work and, subsequently, has a lot riding on it. This one could have easily been nothing but hype and failed to deliver but that wasn’t the case. Infinity Waris everything I wanted it to be and more!
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| Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures That's a lot of awesome in one photo... |
Deep in the cosmos, the Mad Titan Thanos (Josh Brolin) sets out on a quest for power. Littered throughout the universe is the Infinity Stones; objects of great power than can grant control over time, space, reality and even death. After having a gauntlet forged for him, Thanos sets out to collect all the stones and sends his henchmen; Proxima Midnight (Carrie Coon), Ebony Maw (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), Cull Obsidian (Terry Notary) and Corvus Glaive (Michael James Shaw) to Earth to collect the stones held there. On the planet, it’s up to Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Falcon (Anthony Mackie), War Machine (Don Cheadle), Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) and Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and the entire Wakanda nation to hold off the Thano’s forces. Meanwhile, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) teams with Rocket (Bradley Cooper) and Groot (Vin Diesel) to gather up a powerful new weapon while Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) aligns himself with Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), Spider-Man (Tom Holland), Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Mantis (Pom Klementieff), Drax (Dave Bautista), and Nebula (Karen Gillan) in order to take the fight directly to Thanos.
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| Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures I know people are mad that there wasn't any Sherlock Holmes references but, from a writer's perspective, I can see the desire to steer clear of that low hanging fruit. |
Infinity War is an incredibly ambitious and amazingly busy film. The biggest risk this film had working against it is that it might have been too big and, with the enormous amounts of characters, it would have been easy for certain people to be left behind or lost in the shuffle. However, directors Anthony and Joe Russo, no strangers to huge Marvel storylines, did something astounding and made a feature that flows really well and captures the Marvel Cinematic Universe tone while, at the same time, forging a heavy tone that has clear repercussions on the universe.
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| Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Star-Lord and Iron Man, a collision of snark and sass. |
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| Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Thano's weakness is having his finger pulled. |
The Russo brothers took this absolutely gigantic story and were still able to balance the incredible action, sense of humor and the drama and heart that all things MCU holds. Even more amazing is how none of the characters lost any of their uniqueness and it was just an utter joy to see many of them interact for the first time. Finally, I was just blown away with how they made the story flow. There are a lot of teams all doing their own thing in this large scale fight against Thanos and the tale moves fluidly from one to the next. Never does one group feel overlooked nor does any group feel like they are the obvious center of attention. Each journey is told and explored at the right pace and perfect increments.
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| Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Add in the Guardians and that makes for a happy Ron. |
At this point in the MCU, everyone has their characters nailed down and, after 10 years, you either love them or hate them. For me, I love them and think everyone is doing such a great job; however, one performer I was absolutely enthralled with was Josh Brolin as Thanos. The Mad Titan is one of my favorite Marvel villains because he’s so powerful and I absolutely love how he is motivated by a distorted feeling of love (a love of the physical manifestation of Death). We get to see and, thanks to Brolin’s performance, feel Thanos’ insane devotion and drive to bring his own definition of balance to the universe. Marvel has had problems with their villains feeling very generic (a complaint pretty consistent with many comic book properties and from all publishers) but Thanos feels very deep and defined. You get a sense of the many facets that are working with him and this arrives in great part due to Brolin’s performance. Plus, the dude just has an intimidating voice that worked perfectly for the character.
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| Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Thanos has always been one of my favorite comic book villains, it's awesome to see him done justice on the screen. |
The only downsides I found in Infinity War came in the form of some very slow moving scenes involving Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany). While their scenes do play a pivotal role in both their development and overall importance to the story, there was no denying that these moments felt significantly slowly than the rest of the film—even during other sequences that were also methodically paced. Another part that I was a little bummed out with was how Thanos’ minions (they are called the Children of Thanos in the film but are The Black Order in the comics) are handled. While the action moments with Proxima Midnight, Cull Obsidian, Ebony Maw and Corvus Glaive are very cool and exciting, you don’t really get much of a sense of who they are as characters and end up suffering the stereotypical fate of a lot of comic book film villains—being terribly generic. Hell, we barely even got to know their names in the film.
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| Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures When your headache feels like you are an Asgardian having their head squeezed by Thanos. |
Avengers: Infinity War is a grandiose story and it is very ambitious. It’s attempting to adapt one of Marvel’s most iconic stories and do justice to one of their most notorious villains. While the movie isn’t just like the comic, it’s adapted incredibly well and Thanos is done terrifically. Even with my very minor complaints, from the moment it starts to the post-credit sequence (which made me squeal with delight), the film is exciting, hilarious, fun, emotional and full of heart. It’s a rollercoaster of awesome and I absolutely loved it!
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