Avengers: Infinity War (2018, Dir. Anthony and Joe Russo):
Eighteen movies and ten years later (as the Marvel Studios logo up front reminds us), the moment has finally come. Avengers: Infinity War is the latest Marvel movie, but it’s also a culmination, a declaration of triumph, and a box office behemoth intended to send shivers down the backs of rival film franchises. Marvel has diligently fashioned an interconnected cinematic universe, compiling comic book heroes of all shapes and sizes, and in Infinity War, nearly every Marvel character alive (and even one that we thought was dead) is chucked into the fray, with the fate of the entire universe at stake. Talk about kitchen sink: this isn’t just Ragnarok (we already covered that with Thor: Ragnarok), this is a Götterdämmerung rivaling the Bible in its scope and proportions.
If nothing else, Infinity War is a monumental feat of logistics as it unites all corners of the Marvel universe in something that resembles a coherent plot. The fulcrum upon which the story revolves is Thanos (Josh Brolin), the purple-hued baddie who cameoed in previous Marvel films. Chunky, implacable as granite, and unusually pensive for a supervillain, Thanos is an environmentalist gone psycho. Firmly believing that an overpopulated universe will be the death of us all, he concludes that the best solution is to cut the population roughly in half, with the aid of six infinity stones that give him domain over neat things like time, power, and reality. Thus, the narrative engine of Avengers: Infinity War is established: get hold of (or destroy) the magic stones before Thanos appropriates them all. It’s as simple as an Easter egg hunt, if you can imagine an egg hunt that spans dozens of locations throughout the known galaxies, pulling in everyone from Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.) to those misfit Guardians of the Galaxy, to the current Marvel golden boy, the Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman). Speaking of which, audiences coming off the high of the recent Black Panther movie (a sturdy superhero flick that also had thematic and social depth) might be a tad disappointed to find themselves back in a less weighty milieu of sparkly powers and bloodless apocalypse, but Infinity War proves that Marvel still has the knack of showing audiences a good time.
Rocket Raccoon: This is Thanos we’re talking about. He’s the toughest there is.
Thor: Well, he has never fought me.
Rocket Raccoon: Yeah he has.
Thor: He has never fought me twice.
Infinity War stumbles out of the gate in media res, with everyone’s favorite god-like hunk Thor (Chris Hemsworth) getting his ass kicked by Thanos, as the audience receives a taste of what is to come: unexpected deaths, a general atmosphere of doom, aliens and sets bursting at the CGI seams. Marvel is cocky enough about the universe it’s already established that it expects the audience to tear up when some familiar characters are offed at the outset, but these moments are raced through, leaving little time for reaction, let alone emotion. Fortunately, once the action relocates to Earth and more familiar faces are pulled in, the film finds its footing. As you’d expect from a Marvel product, the fights are fast, furious and mostly fun, while the tetchy interplay between our mix-and-mismatched heroes keeps things light even as the story goes to dark places.
Cannily pairing up characters from different franchises and spinning them off on side-quests, Infinity War is at its zippiest when our protagonists take a breather from worrying about the fate of everything and crack wise with each other. Reprising his goofy turn from Thor: Ragnarok, Hemsworth’s Thor is a good comedy foil with Bradley Cooper’s irascible Rocket Raccoon (or, as Thor deems him, the smartest “rabbit” around), when he’s not doing Thor-like things, like absorbing a full blast of radiation from a neutron star. Mark Ruffalo’s kvetchy Bruce Banner tips over into humorous exasperation as he deals with “performance issues” as the Hulk, while Spider-Man (Tom Holland), over-awed by the whole affair, resorts to eighties movie references, which helps endear him to the Guardians of the Galaxy. (“Is Footloose still the greatest movie in history?” Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) queries. “It never was,” is Spider-Man’s flummoxed reply.) Meanwhile, Downey and Benedict Cumberbatch (Dr. Strange), both of whom have caustic portrayals of Sherlock Holmes on their résumés, snark up a storm as they try to out-ego each other. Whatever emotional substance the movie has comes primarily from Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Thanos’ vengeful adopted daughter. A bland counterweight in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, Saldana gets to play with more dramatic beats this time, drawing out some unexpectedly touching work from Brolin and Pratt.
Stuffed to the brim with incidents and supporting players, Infinity Wars isn’t the most well-rounded of spectacles. Apart from Thanos, none of the baddies, save the cadaverous Ebony Maw (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), are notable even as pieces of character design, and the film’s climactic tussle in Wakanda, with our heroes facing down countless CGI alien hordes, plays like an outtake from The Lord of the Rings. (Though the action scenes are brisk, they’re often edited within an inch of their lives to maintain that all-important PG-13 rating.) Given the cosmic stakes at play, the more earth-bound characters get short shrift. Scarlett Johannsen’s Black Widow, Dominic Cooper’s Bucky Barnes, Anthony Mackie’s Falcon, and Don Cheadle’s Colonel Rhodes share perhaps a dozen lines total, while Chris Evans, so winning in the Captain America movies, seems both disinterested and out of his depth. For the most part, though, Joe and Anthony Russo, who helmed the latest Captain America movies, are rock-solid conductors of this orchestra, and unlike the previous Avengers movie, Age of Ultron, the stakes are high enough, and the pacing just fleet enough, for the concoction to go down easy.
Dr. Stephen Strange: I’m Dr. Strange.
Peter Parker: Oh, we’re using our made-up names? In that case, I’m Spider-Man.
If you want a comic book war movie that’s as sleekly designed as one of Thanos’ wheel-like war machines, Avengers: Infinity War will satisfy. If you seek something a little more playful, aspirational, or transcendent, as comic books often are, you won’t necessarily find it here. The Russos have fun in their gigantic sandbox, but are either unable or unwilling to push past the typical Marvel template, a la Black Panther. (Even the doomy, moony love scenes between Quill and Gamora, or Vision (Paul Bettany) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), are only there to serve plot points.) Mournful yet sprightly, dazzling yet downbeat, heavily reliant on our built-in affection for these characters, the film concludes as a threnody, as numerous heroes meet their apparent end. But given what we know about sequels, is there any doubt that we’ll see a bunch of resurrections in the next Avengers movie, coming soon to a theater near you? (The obligatory post-credits scene hints at the arrival of yet another new Marvel superhero, and without venturing into spoilers, you can probably predict who will triumph and who will have a last hurrah in the inevitable sequel, just based on who survives here.) The Marvel movies have been predicated on the idea of safe entertainment: bad stuff happens, but nothing really lingers around except our heroes. Try as Infinity War might to suggest that real losses have occurred, we arrive at the cliffhanging conclusion with the conviction that just about everything will be eventually be put right. After all, the ultimate universe that must be conquered is that of future box office.
