AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR (2018) - A balance of strengths and flaws

Avengers: Infinity War is a 2018 superhero movie that celebrates the Marvel Cinematic Universe's 10th anniversary. The movie is directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, stars literally everybody, and follows the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy as they attempt to stop the mad titan Thanos from obtaining the all-powerful Infinity Stones. While it is a sequel to 2012's Avengers and 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron, the movie is a culmination of all eighteen movies that have come before it, bringing together characters and plot threads from the preceding movies and providing the first of a two-part story that will conclude in next year's yet untitled Avengers 4.

I think the most important thing to consider when it comes to this movie is to understand what it is and what it achieves at doing. This is a movie that is a culmination of all its previous films, and while I'd argue it's more of a sequel to about three films (Civil War, Guardians 2, and Ragnarok), it really does feel like everything in this franchise has been leading up to this film. And not only that, but it's balancing such a huge ensemble cast of characters, all from very different movies coming together for the first time. While not as good as the first Avengers movie, Infinity War does a good with the unique interactions between superhero pairings. Tony Stark and Doctor Strange's personalities clashing together is great, and Star-Lord and Spider-Man's little interaction about Footloose is a little too perfect. Thor's new comedic side works wonders with the rest of the Guardians, especially Rocket Racoon ("sweet rabbit"). These character interactions are a huge part of the appeal behind superhero team-up movies, and while it doesn't pull this off with the same grace that past Avengers films had, it's still an astonishing job considering the sheer magnitude and scope of it all.

But it's simultaneously this sheer magnitude and scope that leads to some of the film's worst aspects. Most of the pacing and editing in the first half of Infinity War is actually quite poor, and it feels like four different movies stitched haphazardly together--at one moment we're with Iron Man, Spidey, and Doctor Strange on an alien space ship, then we're with Captain America and his crew flying to Wakanda, then we're with the Guardians as they try to find one of the Infinity Stones before Thanos does, then we're with Thor, Rock, and Groot as they try to construct a weapon capable of fighting Thanos. The movie is constantly switching between these four perspectives without any sense of connection or proper pacing between them. And yeah, I get that it's supposedly to show our heroes as separate and disassembled as a stark contrast to the previous two Avengers movies, but it leads to one moment where I hear that one of the heroes might have to die to save the universe then the next moment I'm watching an episode of Thor and Rocket's Wacky Adventure. It's really not until around halfway through the movie that the pacing starts to improve drastically.

Speaking of which, despite the movie's healthy amount of classic MCU jokey jokes, Infinity War is decidedly the darkest the MCU's ever gotten. There is a constant atmosphere of helplessness and hopelessness that permeates Infinity War as our heroes continually fail over and over again. It's like the big purple space man says: "In time, you will know what it's like to lose. To feel so desperately that you're right, yet to fail all the same. Dread it, run from it, destiny still arrives." A lot of critics will talk about the "Marvel formula" and how every Marvel movie is the same, but this is the movie that really breaks away from that formula. Our heroes are against a foe so powerful that nothing they can do can succeed in stopping him, and you really do feel it. Thanos always gets what he wants, and the reason is what I believe to be the film's greatest achievement: despite being the villain of the movie, Thanos is the film's protagonist.

Avengers: Infinity War is decidedly and without question Thanos' movie. The vast majority of the movie's 160-minute runtime is dedicated to Thanos, on fleshing out his motives, on revealing his backstory, and on showing how far he's willing to go to achieve his goals. The few and sparse times we've seen him in previous movies and in the trailers depict him as a cackling, evil maniac with a god complex, and yet this movie shows him for who he really is--an introspective, sad man who truly believes what he is doing is for the good of the universe. The greatest villains are the ones who view themselves as the hero, and Thanos is unquestioningly the "hero" of Infinity War. While not as compelling as Killmonger, he's still a surprisingly deep villain whose motives and ideology about achieving balance are quite understandable once you think about it.

However a big setback in terms of plot is that this is very much a "Part 1" type of movie. Not much of substance really happens plot-wise or thematically, and a lot of the movie feels more like events that happen rather than a properly composed story. Thor's interactions with Rocket and Groot are great, but their whole sideplot with the forging of a new weapon is kind of on the boring side. The siege on Wakanda is visually spectacular, but it also kind of feels meaningless and lacks any sense of flow until the very end. The battle on Titan was the best of the three scenarios. And while I'm disappointed there couldn't have been a fuller and more polished story in this movie, I can't really judge it as it is now until we've seen Part 2 next year, so I won't treat it as a flaw on the movie.

Final Verdict

Avengers: Infinity War ironically follows Thanos' philosophy of balance to a tee--it has a lot of good but perhaps an equal amount of bad. There are so many characters in here and it's amazing how they've all come together and split off into unique and interesting groups, but there are so many characters in here that very few have any meaningful character moments and many are regulated to basically cameos. The plot is so big and epic to accompany this universe-shattering event, and yet the movie feels so bloated, blocky, and disjointed until the third act, with stuff just HAPPENING rather than being all tied together in a well constructed story. The movie does a great job at setting up for Avengers 4, and yet it's still nothing but set-up. And while its ending is definitely mind-blowing and probably for the best considering what it sets up for Avengers 4, I can't help but feel a bit cheated by it.

Whether or not it pays off, we'll have to wait a year to find out.

Also, Marvel sure loves to go meta with its villains' motives. Avengers had Loki who thinks that the idea of putting together all these superheroes from different worlds into one team won't ever turn out well (exactly what a lot of people thought at the time), Avengers 2 had Ultron who thinks that there are too many superheroes in the world and that they're more trouble than they're worth (exactly what a lot of people thought at the time), and now Avengers 3 with the biggest cast ever has Thanos who thinks there are too many goddamn people in this universe. I see you Marvel. Sneaky.

Score: B+

Click here to see how this movie ranks compared to the others in the MCU.

Spoiler Thoughts

• If there's one thing Marvel's really good at, it's throwing us off with our predictions. We were all convinced Hawkeye would die in Age of Ultron and we were wrong. We were all convinced either Tony or Cap (or at least SOMEBODY) would die in Civil War and we were wrong. Now we all knew for sure Tony or Cap would die in Infinity War and turns out it's literally everybody else. I'm just going to give up at theorizing now.
• Everyone is giving crap to Star-Lord because "oh it was totally his fault that half the universe was wiped out," and I really can't agree with that sentiment. First of all, Star-Lord has long been depicted as emotionally vulnerable, hot-headed, and hyperreactive when it comes to the deaths of his loved ones--this is the same man who started gunning down his own father right as he found out he was responsible for his mother's death after all. And not only that, just moments earlier he had to kill the love of his life whom he feels is an emotional replacement for his mother. And yeah, he didn't actually kill her (we'll get to that in a bit), but it was a very real moment for him nonetheless. So of course he would react very badly upon hearing she was killed.
• I find it very interesting that a clear divide between our heroes and Thanos is their unwillingness to sacrifice their loved ones in service of their goal. Star-Lord started beating up Thanos upon hearing about Gamora's death despite knowing that would ruin their plan. Cap and Wanda refused to kill Vision despite knowing that would ruin Thanos' plan. Gamora gave Thanos the location of the Soul Stone to save Nebula from getting tortured. Who was the only character who was able to sacrifice a loved one for the sake of their goal? Thanos. And ultimately, as we can see in the last shot of the movie, he is very content with his victory.
• Interesting how the only surviving Avengers are the original crew (plus War Machine but...). It sets up Avengers 4 to be a darker version of the original Avengers, except this time they have to deal with the reasons they broke up, and not all of them are coming out alive.
• Iron Man 3: Tony loses his arc reactor.
  Captain America 3: Cap loses his shield.
  Thor 3: Thor loses his hammer.
  Avengers 3: Everybody loses their lives.
• Loki's death was well done and it did a good job at completing his character arc as he finally embraces his love for his brother.
• Gamora's death hurt me a lot more than I care to admit. But as much as I love her character, I don't know if I would quite agree if she's brought back to life somehow in the next movie. I feel like it would cheapen her death, especially when...
• Everyone who vanished is coming back. That's obvious. If it had only been a few of the supporting characters, I would've believed it. But no way are they killing of Black Panther, Spidey, Doctor Strange, and all of the Guardians sans sweet rabbit. And I feel like their deaths were kind of cheap because of that.
• Spidey's death still got to me though because of Tom Holland's great acting.
• "Why is Gamora?" is probably the hardest I laughed in the entire movie. By far.
• Iron Man's Bleeding Edge suit and Spidey's Iron Spider suit are both awesome. Really awesome.
• Say what you want about the Children of Thanos/Black Order. They're kind of Steppenwolf-ish but I still think their presence, powers, and design are classic comic villains and I like it.
• Peter Dinklage. Okay.
• Red Skull. Wow. Okay, that was cool.
• Vision and Wanda's romance was well done and I really bought into it. It makes me wish Vision could come back in the next movie (I mean, he IS just an android right? It wouldn't be implausible).