Marvel Studios
So I should admit one failing as a comic book movie nerd watcher — I haven’t seen The Incredible Hulk and I couldn’t make it through a single episode of Inhumans. Otherwise I’m all caught up, watching some of those movies multiple times.
Avengers: Infinity War is the nineteenth movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and boasts characters or at least references to characters from all of them. Considering the sheer number of characters, the movie could not possibly serve them all equally. You get some with character arcs (redacted for spoilers), some with decent character moments (redacted for spoilers), and some poorly served that you’ll only care about because of their other movies (redacted for spoilers). And even a few ‘Not Appearing In This Movie’ characters, but I didn’t miss them.
So considering things through without spoiling anything, let me run down the points of note. The story is in many ways a straightforward adventure, bad guy Thanos wants to get all Infinity Stones to create balance in the universe from his twisted perspective, the good guys want to stop him. As the film progressed, although it was quite long, I felt most of it was paced quite well. The movie cuts back and forth between a few parallel events leading up to the final showdowns, and some of these work really well.
One thing that was very strong was the humor — I laughed quite consistently through much of the movie, although it was helped that the Guardians characters basically all worked perfectly in every interaction with themselves and others. That’s another big positive, the way so many different characters were integrated basically seamlessly and without much in the way of unnecessary exposition. Pulling together the weird magic of Dr. Strange, the quippy fast action of Spider-Man, and the overabundance of punching, it works surprisingly well.
There are a lot of underlying themes, of sacrifice and the ‘needs of the many’ that permeate the movie, and this also ties into the final moments and the not-that-surprising ending that has its own surprises. For me, what is the most surprising is how well Thanos worked as a character, the driver between all action and plot. He was the most interesting character in the movie, with a kind of mysterious depth that inspires further consideration. That’s good, considering that he had very little characterization until this point as the Big Bad behind the scenes.
Some of the action also worked well, but some of it (like that seen in some trailers) of the Wakandan ‘army’ versus the aliens wasn’t particularly interesting and seemed like padding in a movie that didn’t need any. This also leads into one of my issues with the movie — the lack of the true level of stakes.
Considering we know that there are movies in the future (I won’t spoil the announcements in case you haven’t heard them already), it means that many of the character deaths don’t have the emotional punch of say, Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy or Yondu in GotG Vol. 2. That said though, some of those moments do work, do have emotional resonance even if most do not.
I feel like I really need to do a really spoiler-heavy deep dive at some point, because otherwise it’s hard to defend all of my positions, but in general I did like the movie, a solid entry in the comic book canon. I don’t think it can be enjoyed at the same level if you haven’t seen all of the movies, but I think there’s a bit of a tiered thing going on. Miss the last Thor, Spider-man, or even Black Panther movie and you’ll still be okay.
But miss the last Captain America or Guardians and I think not only will you be lost, much of the depth will be meaningless. At least that’s my opinion.
Avengers: Infinity War has a run time of 2 hours 29 minutes and is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action throughout, language and some crude reference.
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