Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Don Cheadle, Tom Holland, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Danai Gurira, Letitia Wright, Dave Bautista, Zoe Saldana, Josh Brolin, Chris Pratt
Intro:
...an epic romp across the breadth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with all the action, comedy, pageantry, and sturm und drang you could hope for.
And so the hour comes round at last. Avengers: Infinity War, the 19th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, functions not so much as a movie in its own right as the biggest season finale of all time, bringing together a huge ensemble of characters from across the franchise’s various series to battle the space tyrant Thanos (Josh Brolin) for control of the Infinity Stones that have littered the Marvel films since 2011’s Captain America. Thanos’ goal is to wipe out literally half the intelligent life in the universe, and when all six stones are housed in his gaudy Infinity Gauntlet, he can do it with a snap of his fat, purple fingers.
Now, if none of that made any sense to you, you may want to seek your cinematic pleasures elsewhere. It’s not that the price of admission is particularly high for Infinity War, but you must be At Least This Geeky to Ride; the film assumes a knowledge of and investment in pretty much the whole sweep of the MCU, and has little time to hold the hands of any newbies. There’s simply too much going on, and too many beats to hit.
That also means a fairly frenetic and disjointed pace while all the pieces are put on the game board, and it’s a really good half an hour before Captain America (Chris Evans) shows up, Alan Silvestri’s Avengers theme swells, and things really settle into a sweet groove. In the meantime, we have three plot strands getting set up and eventually woven together in the mandatory massive final act smackdown. After the Asgardian refugee ship is destroyed by Thanos, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) hooks up with the Guardians of the Galaxy (Christ Pratt, Zoe Saldana, et al) and goes off in search of a weapon capable of destroying the Mad Titan. When Thanos’ henchman, Ebony Maw (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) attacks New York City, Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr), Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), and Spider-Man (Tom Holland) hitch a ride on a giant space ship and find themselves on Thanos’ home world. On Earth, Cap and the gang hole up in Wakanda with Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and Bucky/The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) in order to protect the android Vision (Paul Bettany), who houses the Mind Stone that Thanos seeks.
As befitting its title, Infinity War has a huge canvas and the way it cuts between vast cosmic panoplies, alien worlds, the majesty of Wakanda, and the decimated landscapes left in Thanos’ wake is dizzying to the point of being overwhelming. This is a film that is absolutely packed to the gills with spectacle and action, to the point where it almost doesn’t have time to breathe. The thing clocks in at a whisker under two and a half hours, and a longer cut on home release would be welcome not to jam in more chaos, but perhaps a touch more character time.
For all that, we do get some nicely observed, generally quickly sketched, character moments, though. Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts barely gets a look-in, but her relationship with Tony Stark, which has largely occurred off screen of late, has actually progressed the way human relationships tend to. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) and Black Widow’s (Scarlett Johansson) relationship has not, given Banner’s two years’ crackin’ skulls in the Space Colosseum, but we get a brief and trenchant moment there. The relationship between Vision and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) is brought to the fore as the android argues that he should sacrifice his life to ruin Thanos’s genocidal plans, saying that his life is worth trading for the untold billions who will perish if Thanos wins (Cap, bless his red, white, and blue socks, will have none of that).
The film also gets decent mileage out of putting disparate characters together and letting them bounce off each other. Thor’s cosmic-level masculinity evinces jealousy in Star-Lord (Drax (Dave Bautista) decides he’s some kind of “pirate angel”), but the Thunder God bonds with Rocket (Bradley Cooper) over their shared sense of loss. Meanwhile, over on Ebony Maw’s ship, alpha dogs Doctor Strange and Iron Man, who for all their specific differences are damn near the same character in the broad strokes, butt heads over the leadership of their little team, which is never not fun to watch.
Yeah, the whole thing is a blast – which sits at odds with the often wrenching deaths of several major characters.
No spoilers here, but the body count in Infinity War is both significant and surprising. The sudden tonal shifts are essentially a genre feature inherited from the pages of the MCU’s source comics, which cheerfully bounce from action to comedy to pathos and back, to varying levels of success. Anyone with an eye on the broader MCU as both an ongoing narrative and a business has been in no doubt that some heroes would be left toes-up in the course of Infinity War, and that’s appropriate; a bloodless war is not a war. In execution, the effect of these deaths is… questionable. Or, at the least, variable. A couple seem arbitrary, cutting off character arcs that didn’t seem finished (then again, that’s what sudden death tends to do, right?). A couple are wholly dramatically appropriate and absolutely crushing. And the rest?
The rest seem temporary.
And now we must drift across the line into the Spoiler Lane just a little bit, because there’s something significant about Infinity War that must be discussed to put it into context as a film and as part of the overarching Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is as bold a filmmaking experiment as any, but has by this stage certain inherent structures and tenets which mean that we the audience should have, by rights, seen this coming. Bale out now if you feel the need.
Infinity War is Part 1 of 2.
This feels like a cheat, particularly given that Marvel/Disney have gone out of their way to tell the world that, while originally conceived as a duology, Avengers 3 and 4 are discreet, self-contained films. The viewing experience, however, is very much a Deathly Hallows or Mockingjay vibe – the story is left half-told. We’re left at the midpoint of the narrative, with everything left largely unresolved, and we need to come back in 2019 to find out what’s what. Now, to some degree that’s part and parcel of the serial nature of the MCU, but it’s never been done to this degree, and the result is that Infinity War is a great episode in the ongoing saga, as a distinct filmgoing experience it is at least somewhat unsatisfying.
And as for those temporary deaths alluded to earlier, that’s something the canny viewer picks up metatextually. We’re left at a narrative point where certain events are almost bound to be reversed – it’s just the way these stories work. This too is a hangover from the source comics. Death is very much a temporary condition in the on-paper Marvel Universe, and it’ll be interesting to see how this trope translates to the on-screen Universe and how it affects the emotional stakes thereof – self-sacrifice doesn’t mean much when there’s a spell or a widget or an Infinity Stone that can reverse the cost. And even putting those concerns aside, some of the casualties are just starting out in their own series – there’s just no goddamn way they’re leaving some of the fallen in the dirt for too long.
Which is not to say that Infinity War isn’t emotionally resonant. It packs a wallop, and if you’re invested in these characters and their stories, there are moments that are going to knock you back in your seat. Conversely, if you’re pretty much only here for the spectacle, you’ll get that in spades: the Battle of Wakanda is one for the books, and if you ever wanted to see a god kickstart a dying star, well, here’s your shot. Following in the footsteps of Thor: Ragnarok, Infinity War frequently goes full-on Jack Kirby, and that’s nothing less than a complete delight.
Infinity War also gives us a great, great villain in the form of Brolin’s Thanos, which comes as rather a big surprise. Largely relegated to glowering in the background in previous appearances, Thanos was looking like a bit of a risk, and possibly another addition to Marvel’s roster of weak villains. Instead, Infinity War goes out of its way to define Thanos as a character. Like all great villains, he thinks he’s right – his crusade to wipe out half of the universe is, to his mind, an act of mercy, a necessary evil, and a terrible burden he bears for the greater good. That’s a hell of a change-up; previously the Mad Titan came across as Ming the Merciless in purple warpaint, but now, along with Killmonger and Loki, he’s an upper echelon Marvel bad guy, and thank God for that – the last thing we needed was another Whiplash/Malekith/Ultron/name your poison.
Ultimately, Infinity War is not the stunning apotheosis of all that has come before, and that’s a bit disappointing. It is a hell of a lot of fun, though – an epic romp across the breadth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with all the action, comedy, pageantry, and sturm und drang you could hope for. It’s so damn close to being an all-timer, though, and what galls is that it falls short of greatness due to the self-imposed demands of serial storytelling. The irony is that the very story model that lets us have a big screen Marvel Universe is what prevents its flagship event movie from being as transcendent as it could be.
You’ll still have an absolute blast, though.
A pretty fair review. It seems that with this movie as is often the case, the critics are looking at it objectively while the fans don’t really notice any flaws until some time after release. You look on IMDB and just see a whole bunch of fan reviews with 10/10. It’s a good film – but not that good.
I pretty much agree with the review. The ‘deaths’ for the most part don’t carry much emotion since you’re expecting that they’re somehow going to be temporary. Which is often the case in comic stories and the film’s plot seems to suggest it. I found the ending pretty unsatisfying. I know it’s a 2 parter but it just seemed a really disappointing finish for an otherwise good film.
One thing that did irritate me was the over-use of ‘suspense reveals’. We all knew this movie would be a who’s who of marvel characters. So we have a moment in the film where someone’s off camera and there’s a moment of suspense before the camera reveals who it is. Will it be captain america? Will it be black panther? That was amusing the first couple of times they did it but got a bit old when they used the same thing a good 6 or 7 times across the first hour of the film.