Quick Review: Avengers Infinity War

Saw Infinity War this weekend, waited until I saw it twice to give some concrete thoughts. There’s not much I can add that hasn’t already been said at this point so I’ll just give my impressions. Everyone and their mother has seen it by now so I will say SPOILERS ahead, but I figure any embargo time has long since passed.

In short, it was good. Very good. Many reviewers seem to categorize it in terms of “Best Marvel Studios movie yet!” or not, and that seems silly to me. It’s the penultimate chapter in a long-form film narrative, so to judge it on an individual basis would be pointless. If we’re judging it as a film on its own merits, no, it isn’t the best, simply because it’s incomprehensible as a stand-alone if you haven’t seen all the prior ones, and have more than a passing familiarity with the world. In fact, I was lost at several points, mainly the opening scene on Thor’s ship, and I’ve seen them all several times. But as a big action film that pays off what comes before? Yes, it works in spades. Most of the enjoyment comes from it BEING the payoff we’ve been waiting for, and the acting out of moments and beats that have been percolating for years.

And yes, it benefits highly from getting you attached to the characters, though I would argue DC didn’t do SUCH a poor job in comparison (We did have eight prior Batman and Superman movies each to prep us), and we had to switch Rhodey and Banner in the MCU very awkwardly to actors who looked nothing liked the last versions, and pretend those were the dudes who were always there. Surprisingly, the MCU flicks the layman would need to familiarize themselves with the most for IW would be the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. Several things would not make any sense without seeing those, and most of the emotional beats come from a working understanding of the dynamics of those characters. And other than that, I would say Marvel relied way too much on the most recent films from Phase 3 as set-up, jamming all the new characters they wanted to introduce into solo films in the last two years, instead of spacing it out as well as some give them credit for over the last ten years. The ones who “mattered” more always seemed to be the main Avengers we’ve followed for 5-6 films each.

But beyond that? It was really cool. There was a lot, lot, lot to like. The action was great, the storytelling and plotting was as good as they could have gotten it, and although I didn’t care for he constant back-and-forth of the random character ensembles who would appear, then disappear for another twenty minutes, the pace and momentum were pretty perfect, keeping the suspense up until the end. The performances were all top-notch across the board, and I really can’t think of any one major groaner in the whole production, besides the usual MCU-trope silliness that’s in every one of the movies of course. The characterization of Thanos was probably my favorite bit, as he became by far the best and most three-dimensional of all the Marvel Cinematic Universe villains (Sorry, Loki, but you died too many times for me to care).

I was surprised by how complicated and sympathetic Thanos was. The dude in the comics was always a weird cypher who spoke in over-the-top comic booky nonsense. A fake Darkseid with a little Jughead crown. Here, jettisoning his lame “I want to court Lady Death” motivation, we kind of understand where he’s coming from. He truly thinks he’s doing the right thing and helping the universe by bringing balance to it, and with a heavy heart, believes that task has fallen to himself to accomplish. He isn’t wrong, and there’s a fairness in the indiscriminate way he randomly eliminates half the galaxy (supposedly). But he was definitely the MVP of the film, with Josh Brolin somehow able to emote out of the giant purple CGI creature without it entering uncanny valley territory. Ironic that it was almost the opposite with Oscar Isaac’s Apocalypse in X-Men: Apocalypse, where he was wearing minimal makeup and little CGI was used, and yet he couldn’t emote beyond calling everyone “child” and had extremely weak, cartoonish reasoning. The only thing I remember about him was his pathetic death scene, where Phoenix roasts him and he replies in a satisfied manner, “Ah, all is revealed!” Don’t knock the ‘Poc.

Thanos’ motivations were not completely selfish; something I only caught the second go-round was what he meant when he said he ignored his destiny once, to his detriment. When he shows the wasteland of his home planet Titan, he explains how it was overpopulated until it reached its current state of desolation. He suggested they weed out the herd, and was ignored as a lunatic. But rather than destroy it, he did nothing, and watched as his planet destroyed itself. That’s actually a pretty good reason for him to do what he did later. Everyone but me got that the first time, huh? He was not overly cruel; but lest we feel too sorry for him, he was evil and sadistic when he used several characters’ love of each other against them to get what he wanted. And to the last person, each character chose love and gave in to his demands, perhaps showing what separates the heroes from the villain is that when push comes to shove, they will lay it all down just to save one person versus the universe. They’re human, after all, and that’s why we love the Marvel stable. I liked how they didn’t even need to explain how Gamora and Nebula patched it up even though they were at each other’s throats last time we met; we just know that it’s unspoken that deep down, they still cared for each other, even if we didn’t get an overt declaration or reminder of that.

Speaking of, my favorite scene, and yours as well I’m sure, was the whole scene where Thanos gets the soul stone. It was really cool to FINALLY see the Red Skull make a reappearance, and tie up the plot point of just where the hell he’s been. But I really liked how they humanized Thanos with his Sophie’s Choice of having to sacrifice something he loves to get the stone, which we of course assume will be a non-starter, as the Mad Titan clearly is too insane to love anything. But no, he’s able to get it by killing Gamora, because he truly did love her like his own daughter. It was a bit too reminiscent of Deathly Hallows territory, but that logic was even more specious to me, so it’s all good. Just as the best of the heroes were not without weakness and foibles, so too was Thanos himself not without feeling and humanity. “I’m sorry, little one.” And my other favorite line, by far, was Strange telling how he visited the 14,000,605 possible futures to see all the outcomes. “In how many do we win?” “One.”

One of my favorite aspects was the score. I know it’s rotten to praise someone by denigrating another’s talents, but man, I didn’t realize how glad I was Alan Silvestri was here doing an actual score, until I watched a marathon of the other MCU films. And with a Michael Giacchino or a Tyler Bates, while they are great composers in their own right, they come up with one (cool) theme, and then use it over, and over, and over. Iron Man, Thor and Cap all had a variation on the exact same theme for awhile, the theme at the beginning of the Marvel logo! Silvestri actually turned in a proper score, with different motifs instead of the same redundant one. In both screenings, the audience cheered when Cap and Thor made their respective entrances; my guess is, they were cheering half for the score as much as the characters. We haven’t really heard the “Avengers” theme since the first movie, which was cool.

The humor was, of course, in abundance too. By far the biggest laugh, both times I saw it, was Stark calling Ebony Maw “Squidward.” That killed. I guess it was such an anachronism, that people were tickled? The same beats seemed to get the same huge laughs, and some not at all. It’s bizarre, but I guess some things are universal. Spidey describing the “really old movie” never got a laugh, because I think it was a callback that was too exact to the original line. I thought Drax complaining about the “blanket of death” was really funny, and nobody else laughed. Oh well, there was certainly no shortage of lame humor to go around, so I’m sure there was something everybody liked! Stan Lee’s cameo was a knee-slapper as usual, but I tend to think part of the reason why everyone always enjoys it, is that he always gives a super-awkward line delivery- in every cameo- that’s so out of context with the scene he’s in. “Haven’t any of you kids seen a spaceship before?” he asks, as if he’s never seen a spaceship before, nor is seeing one now. Stardom, thy name is Stan!

Something else humorous I noted: I think the only reason Black Widow’s hair was dyed blonde, was so that we could tell her apart from Wanda/Elizabeth Olsen. Who was about 20 years too young for Paul Bettany, which was also humorous (or creepy)! Still, I think the real-world reason is that Marvel has firmly established the characters enough that they’re not adhering to their comic book looks to the letter anymore if it interferes with the performance, and are just letting the actors appear as themselves. Hence Scarlett Johansson gets to keep her natural blonde color, Thor can rock Chris Hemsworth’s short spiky hairdo, and Tony Stark proudly marches in Robert Downey Jr.’s monster lifts.

Small nitpick: I thought it was a bit of a cheat how we sidestepped the issue of whether Aunt May knew Peter was Spider-Man or not and whatever was going on in his corner. Which only reinforced my belief that it was dumb to set that up as a plot point just for the sake of a final gag at the end of Homecoming, which wasn’t even needed. But I guess it’s a moot point now. May may have dissolved into dusty old bones for all we know. Other small nitpicks were depriving us of small moments that we waited for more than many other time-wasting scenes, such as Tony and Steve finally confronting each other again if not reconciling; and tiny, bothersome things that irk, such as Gwyneth Paltrow’s whole appearance. I halfway thought we were going to be subjected to one more scene with her at the end turning into ash and getting out one last complaint (“That’s it Tony, you’ve done it this time!”), just to make sure he lived with guilt forever. But no, she probably lived to ruin the ending of the next one.

One big frustration was Peter Quill acting like such a dumbass the whole movie, and then the story painfully falling into the trope of the heroes just about to get the gauntlet off, when Quill has his tantrum and punches Thanos, ruining the whole effort. It reminded me of that episode of The Simpsons where Superintendent Chalmers is evaluating Skinner and he beams, “Congratulations Seymour, I’m giving you a perfect 10! I’ll just write the zero in first…” We all knew where that was going as soon as Stark said the glove was almost off. Even OJ could tell you that. And I did wonder, was this one of the future scenarios Strange visited? If not, what would have happened had they got the glove anyway? I’m of the camp that he had to hand over the time stone in order to fulfill his one future where they do win, but still, I don’t see how getting the glove away could be a loss! Perhaps Quill acts like a dumbass in every scenario, or Tony Stark tries the gauntlet on in that future and causes tomfoolery? Much like Reed Richards putting on the glove in the comics to will it out of existence, and everyone freaking out because it’s him. “Oh no! Not Reed! Anyone but him, with the possible exception of Bad Bad Charles Xavier!”

As for the ending: I know I’m probably alone on this, but I thought it would’ve been so cool if after Thanos finally got all the stones, Thor DID decapitate him right then and there, and they just dispose of the gauntlet, the end. That would have been THE most unexpected thing they could’ve done, mostly because they’re so shameless with the stretching out of stories. We wait the whole movie for him to get it, and then bam, he just gets an abrupt ending right at his moment of triumph. Well, I thought so at least! Speaking of the ending, while I admire the narrative choice, I did think it was a bit lame that the Avengers who lived were the ones they could pick and choose and control for marketing purposes a la House of M (only 198 mutants in the world kept their powers, which coincidentally includes all the X-Men and their villains). We’re still left with the entire main Avengers team and have merely temporarily eliminated all the ancillary characters, of which Spidey, Panther and the Guardians already have sequels announced. We know they’ll come back somehow, and I really feel bringing Gamora back would weaken the power of her death scene and character arc. But whatevs, we know they will. Maybe they’ll REALLY be daring, and say the characters who dissolved were actually the ones still alive, and the ones left behind are dead in a pocket dimension, as a way to retire the main actors? My personal thought was that they would use the reality-altering function of the Gauntlet to just de-age and re-cast the roles. But if we have the ability to change characters’ appearances or go to alternate dimensions, it would be quite a shame to not get one last appearance by Hugh Jackman and/or Tobey Maguire, as they kicked the whole thing off. Just one scene, they don’t even need to even be in costume, just have them jump into the fight as themselves and not even give their names!

I also think it was a big mistake for Feige and the Russos to withhold the title of the fourth and final Avengers film like it was some big surprise, and claim the two were unrelated separate entities. It is now pretty clear that this is truly a Part 1 of 2, and Marvel wrote themselves into a corner that now cannot possibly live up to expectations, since we have no info about Avengers 4 whatsoever. Let’s face it, they aren’t magically going to jump to Secret Invasion or Secret Wars (as many hoped from all the secrecy) since it’ll take a whole movie to finish up the cliffhanger/Thanos plot anyway. So they probably should have just called Part 1 “Infinity Gauntlet” and Part 2 “Infinity War” and been done. Knowing what the fourth one would be called (say, “Avengers Forever”) ahead of time instead of leaving it as some mystery box would have tempered the expectations a bit, and not left us thinking we might be getting a whole meal. I think clearly Marvel/Disney’s intent was to set up the notion that THIS film would be the wrap-up and the following one a coda, so they’d get your money and the “end of a decade’s worth of stories” hype twice. This entry was built up as the big culmination film as opposed to next year’s Part 2 (in a way Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 was most certainly not), so the ploy clearly worked.

Anyway, it is what it is. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to next year already; I just really, really thought the Gauntlet story’d be done here and they’d be transported to Battleworld or whatever at the end, but as we reached the two hour mark and Thanos was just getting the fourth stone, I had a sinking feeling this was not going to finish today and we were merely at the halfway point. But such is the MCU movie machine; it’s a continuing narrative, like a comic series, and it works for them and audiences seem to dig it. The end is at least, hopefully, in sight. In 2019, we get “Avengers: Even More Finaler War,” and this time, everything as we know it will never be the same, for reals yo. But first, on to Ant-Man! I would legit Lol if Ant-Man & The Wasp literally picks up right after this movie and they all say, “I can’t believe half the people in the world just turned to ash last week,” and then we just move on like it’s no big deal to more hilarity in the Quantum Realm and Baskin Robbins.