AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Rating: 8.5/10

STARRING: Dave Bautista, Paul Bettany, Chadwick Boseman, Don Cheadle, Benedict Cumberbatch, Benicio Del Toro, Peter Dinklage, Robert Downey Jr., Winston Duke, Idris Elba, Chris Evans, Karen Gillan, Danai Gurira, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Tom Holland, William Hurt, Scarlett Johansson, Pom Klementieff, Anthony Mackie, Elizabeth Olsen, Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris Pratt, Mark Ruffalo, Zoe Saldana, Sebastian Stan, Benedict Wong and Letita Wright

Featuring the Voices of Bradley Cooper as Rocket, Vin Diesel as Groot,

and Josh Brolin as Thanos

RATED PG-13 for intense action and violence, language, scenes of destruction, scenes of torture, and emotional content

**SPOILER FREE REVIEW**

If Avengers: Infinity War existed in a vacuum – one where the moviegoing public knew nothing about such things as actors’ contracts, extended universes, or planned sequels – it might go down as one of the most astonishing, audacious blockbuster films ever made. It’d be up there with The Dark Knight as one of the rare “mainstream entertainment” films in which actions had real, harrowing consequences, and no one onscreen was safe.

Well, we don’t live in a vacuum, so, as stunning as parts of Infinity War were, I’ll only truly be satisfied with the movie's quality after we’ve seen the next one (the still-untitled Avengers 4). While there are sequences in Infinity War that have the ability to draw gasps and tears from viewers, and leave whole theaters in silence, I have a feeling some, if not all, of those sequences will be undone, thereby relieving audiences of some of their shock, grief, and rage, and this movie of a great deal of its impact and profundity.

That being said, Infinity War is still a pretty audacious film. Or, rather, the effort and planning that went into its conception were pretty audacious.

I remember when I saw the original Iron Man, which was released in theaters on May 2, 2008. I was more or less dragged to it, thinking it would be some other over-the-top superhero hype piece (remember, this was less than a year after Sam Raimi’s Spiderman trilogy crashed and burned with an over-the-top third installment). I left Iron Man pleasantly surprised by the mix of action, wit, and spectacle, all of which was fronted by a terrific performance from recovering-addict actor Robert Downey Jr. Having never read comics, I knew little about the extended universe and the crossover stories that would bring together heroes and even side characters from two, three, four, five different stories. It was difficult to imagine then. All that to say, while it’s been a highly-publicized ride, it’s still pretty impressive to see Infinity War, the 19^th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), which features appearances by characters who all appeared in at least one of 18 other films. And it doesn’t even feel overstuffed. True, not every character gets a meaty dramatic arc, an epic monologue or a character-building flashback, but here’s a movie built off a literal decade of other films (since ‘08, only 2009 had no MCU films) that does some level of justice to each of those other movies, and yet also moves forward with an intriguing, engaging, powerful story of its own.

DISCLAIMER: I feel like I don’t need to say this, but I will: Infinity War includes characters/elements from Iron Man and every MCU film since, including February’s Black Panther. I don’t think you have to have seen all of them, but if you have not seen most of them – particularly recent ones like Panther and November’s Thor: Ragnarok – you will be lost. In fact, Infinity War opens immediately after the climax of Ragnarok, at least as shown in that film’s post-credit scene.

Early in Infinity War, we find the Guardians of the Galaxy traveling through space in response to an interstellar distress call, thinking they might save some people and make some money in the process. The Guardians, as you likely know, are comprised of half-human Peter Quill/Star Lord (Pratt), quasi-love interest/lethal assassin Gamora (Saldana), brooding humanoid Drax (Bautista), wide-eyed Mantis (Klementieff), scientifically enhanced Rocket Raccoon (Cooper) and tree creature Groot (Diesel). The Guardians soon stumble across Thor (Hemsworth), a survivor of the now-wrecked ship that was carrying the survivors of Asgard’s Ragnarok-wrought doom. A distressed Thor promptly tells the Guardians about Thanos (Brolin), a hulking purple Titan with monstrous minions, an intergalactic army, and supernatural strength. Gamora, who was raised and trained by him after being stolen away from her family, knows there’s more to the story. Thanos wears a high-tech gadget known as the Infinity Gauntlet, a metal device that was made to combine the powers of the six all-powerful Infinity Stones. The Stones (five of which have appeared in other MCU movies) are: the purple Power Stone, the green Time Stone, the blue Space Stone, the yellow Mind Stone, the red Reality Stone, and the only one that has yet to be unveiled, the orange Soul Stone. According to Gamora, if Thanos can get a hold of all six and plug them into the Gauntlet, he can destroy half of the existing universe with a literal snap of his fingers. As of the Guardians’ finding Thor, he has nabbed two of them. Worse, two others are on Earth.

One of the earthbound stones is the Time Stone, which is in the possession of the metaphysical wizard Doctor Strange (Cumberbatch). Because one of Strange’s order’s sanctums is in New York City, it’s there that some of Thanos’ minions first touch down, starting a fracas between them, Strange, Strange’s assistant Wong (Wong), and bystander Tony Stark/Iron Man (Downey Jr.). This destruction and fighting also catches the attention of Queens-born teenager Peter Parker (Holland), who is better known as Spiderman.

Another stone, the Mind Stone, was embedded into the head of Vision (Bettany), who is laying low in Europe with his sweetheart, Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Olsen). When Thanos’ minions come after them seeking the Mind Stone, this attracts the attention of Steve Rogers/Captain America (Evans), as well as Sam Wilson/Falcon (Mackie), Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier (Stan) and Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Johansson). These multiple instances of chaos soon capture the attention of other earthbound heroes like James Rhodes/War Machine (Cheadle) and Bruce Banner/Hulk (Ruffalo), and lead to all the heroes hiding out in the secretive African nation of Wakanda, which is led by T’Challa/Black Panther (Boseman), his younger sister/tech whiz Shuri (Wright), and his wise, skilled right-hand Gen. Okoye (Gurira).

All these heroes and their powers make for quite a sight and quite a team, but when Thanos shows up, he proves more than a match for them, even without his minions and his army. And the more Stones come into his possession, the more powerful he gets.

As you can see by the cast size and the sheer number of power-imbued heroes on the scene, Infinity War is a massive, sprawling film. And yet, despite its size, its length (149 minutes), and the amount of computer-generated effects onscreen, it holds the viewer’s attention effortlessly. This is partly because the film hits the ground running, opening with an epic mano-a-mano between the big green Hulk and the like-sized Thanos, and rarely slows down after that. But in reality, it’s due to the characters and, more than that, to the heads at Disney/Marvel who’ve been planning this massive crossover for years.

In recent years, audiences and critics have (rightfully) derided Marvel’s main competitor – DC – for rushing into crossover films like Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad, and Justice League in an attempt to catch the public’s interest (and dollars) in the same way the MCU. The failure, on one level or another, of each of those overwrought films feels all the more damning in the face of Infinity War, which is almost always interesting, and flat-out entertaining, through two-and-a-half jam-packed hours. Here, you can jump between one pack of heroes harnessing the power of an exploding star, another group in an epic tag-team fight against Thanos, and another in an apocalyptic showdown against Thanos’ minions and army, and be equally-entertained all the way around. As viewers, we’re invested in all of it, and it’s a treat to be pulled away from one engaging action to another and be reminded oh yeah, this is in the same movie! Marvel has put in the time and money, weathered some more modest hits, occasional middling critics’ reviews and some fan backlash to bring all these pieces together. Now, they can reap the fruits of that labor by putting together a film with a main cast of about 25 characters, and do it almost seamlessly. With a bare minimum of exposition and backstory, audiences are treated to largely-realized characters in a number of dream scenarios: serious-minded Thor joining forces with the quippy, irreverent Guardians; alpha dog Tony Stark having a battle of wits and egos with Doctor Strange; Stark exercising parental instincts in dissuading the ambition of adventure-hungry Peter Parker; star-crossed lovers Vision and Scarlet Witch fighting to keep hope alive; the Guardians battling Stark, Strange, and Parker in a confused, wild scuffle; and our most familiar heroes (Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Hulk) coming face-to-face with Thanos, their most dangerous adversary yet. Along the way, we get touching flashbacks, alternate-reality shocks, and epic music cues. Infinity War is a massive entrée, and with all the seasoned ingredients present (finally!), it goes off like gangbusters.

In such a huge film, the focus isn’t on the actors so much as the characters, but most of the well-known thesps acquit themselves well. Downey Jr. is in his eighth go-round as the wisecracking, furiously entertaining Stark, and he continues to fit the role like a glove, though Stark is a much more haunted, guilt-ridden, contentious presence than he was when we first met him. Saldana gets a meaty role – what with Gamora reconnecting with her haunted past as an orphan of genocide, then an unwitting assassin trainee – and makes the most of it, up to a devastating moment when she underestimates the depth of Thanos’ cold-hearted ambition. Hemsworth has some nice moments playing off the Guardians and showing how Thor has grown from a pompous heir into a weary, humbled warrior more worthy of his tremendous displays of power. Olsen and Bettany have a sweet, sincere chemistry, though it comes with layers of fear and deep emotion as Vision more than once wonders whether he ought to simply destroy himself rather than allow Thanos to obtain the Mind Stone that gives him his life force.

Thanos himself is a treat, played by a near-perfect mix of CGI and gravel-voiced Josh Brolin. One of the main weaknesses of the various MCU films has been the fairly forgettable villains, but with Thanos being the biggest baddie of them all, the MCU clearly needed to step up their game. They do, and it works. Towering, muscle-bound and coldly decisive, Thanos lives up to his reputation as a monster who would order the massacre of a planet’s population as soon as set foot on its surface. He’s powerful—never out of a fight and equal to nearly all our heroes. But he’s also revealed to be a somewhat weary figure. Thanos acts with the resigned conviction of someone who has had an all-important destiny thrust upon him—one that feels at least partially unwanted (remember that old cliché about power and responsibility?). And yet he plows forward, killing people, approving genocide, and destroying worlds, all in the name of improving the quality of life for select individuals in an overcrowded universe (sound familiar at all? If not, take look at your history books.). And in a turn that may surprise many, he turns out to truly care for Gamora, who has always thought of Thanos as one who stole her away, corrupted her and exploited her.

As mentioned, many of the returning actors in this film give strong, memorable performances. But it’s Brolin/Thanos – in his first significant part after a few tease moments in other MCU films – who really stands out. He’s a worthy entrant in this packed cinematic universe, and one of the X-factors in this engaging monolith of a film.

Infinity War is not perfect. As much as this movie has to cram, not all of the characters get particularly juicy bits to play (the Wakandan entrants, in particular, are short-changed). There’s the aforementioned question of whether any of the drastic things that occur within the film’s runtime will end up being permanent, or whether this movie will end up something of a tease. I know that’s me being cynical, but it is a real question, one that prevents me (and perhaps others) from fully realizing the emotion of this story. How will this movie look in hindsight, after we’ve seen its conclusion? I have another nitpick I will not go into in depth for fear of spoilers—to put it simply: at one point, a character suffers a wound that probably should be fatal, but our attention is diverted and it is never mentioned again.

Plus, there’s my ever-present complaint with the MCU—that they insist on infusing humor into moments/scenes/settings where humor is not needed. It’s not that I’m against these movies being funny. Iron Man makes wisecracks—that, I get. And this movie reminds me what a ball it is to be around the Guardians when they are having a good time. But when Thor is fresh from seeing his friends/countrymen killed, and he’s making jokes? When entire scenes are undone just to do more Drax-is-clueless gags? This reliance on humor shows itself in more than one way—Chris Pratt, for example, has some of his most emotional moments yet as Star Lord, and his transitions from comedy to drama aren’t always convincing. Pratt’s a natural comedian, but a master of teary-eyed drama he is not.

Still, these are little complaints. I’ve sat through the movie twice, and would gladly do so again. Infinity War is immediately among the MCU’s best entries—worth all the time, hype, and money committed to it.

Bottom Line:

Avengers: Infinity War is the 19^th film in the MCU, and all 18 that came before have been building toward it (and its forthcoming sequel). I’ll say it’s one of the best (probably not the best, but in the conversation), though my overall opinion of its quality and relevance depends on what happens in the next movie. The writing is strong, pulling together more than 20 established characters without any real stretches in credulity, and it gives them a more than worthy foil in the hulking, conflicted Thanos. The effects are excellent, as usual. This is a hugely impressive achievement, and I’m very interested to see what history will ultimately say about this movie—part one of a pet project Marvel/Disney have been working on for 10 years.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo

Screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely

Based on the comics by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby

Rated PG-13

Length: 149 minutes