Film Review: Avengers: Infinity War [SPOILERS]

Warning: This review will contain major spoilers! If you don’t want to know about specific plot or character details in the film, watch it first, then come back.

There are moments when I wish I could be at a certain point in time to see older movies with the opening night crowd, and witness the immediate reaction to a classic scene. Scenes like Marion’s death in Psycho, the big twist in The Sixth Sense, the first appearance of Christopher Reeve’s Superman in all his glory, or that chestburster scene from Alien. I think the biggest one might be the ending of Empire Strikes Back, a bit of a cliché maybe, but for an audience who came in after loving the adventurous romp of the first one, only to have the sequel end with our humble hero getting his hand chopped off and being told that he’s the son of the villain, and also having the fan favorite being frozen in carbonite. I say that because Avengers: Infinity War is probably the closest I’ll ever come to experiencing a moment like that.

Granted, it’s not quite the same. Marvel Studios demands more from its audience, be it remembering small details, following multiple character arcs, and keeping track of those silly stones. For better and for worse, Kevin Feige and co. have always been 100% committed to not only bring the comic book characters to life as if they were ripped right off the page, but to also format their films’ overarching stories in a way that is authentic to how stories are told in comics. Infinity War is a big, crossover comic event brought to life, and you have to choose whether you’re on board with that or not. It’s everything that makes Marvel…well, Marvel, and times a thousand. The quips are here, the action is here, the big clashing personalities are here, but like I said, time a thousand.

For people who aren’t totally devoted to this, it can be a bit of mixed experience. It’s a busy film, stuffed with lots of things to keep track of, requiring the audience to pay attention to every second. Unlike many of the previous films where the infinity stone stuff is usually kept in the background with occasional lip service, this one has to stop to fully explain what each stone is, what they do, and what happens when Thanos (Josh Brolin) gets a hold of them. The sheer number of characters require them to largely be broken up into mini-teams, sometimes having to recap certain plot details from their solo movies to each other as they all go into their own plot thread, and your enjoyment of any given thread will rely on how much you enjoy those particular characters. Given the scope, some characters will be less important than others, so prepare to be disappointed if a character you love doesn’t get the same amount of screentime as others. It also doesn’t help that we do get introduced to some new locations and characters with those weird, cosmic names such as Eitri (Peter Dinklage), and the four henchmen – sorry “Children of Thanos” – Black Dwarf (Terry Notary), Ebony Maw (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), Proxima Midnight (Carrie Coon) and Corvus Glaive (Michael James Shaw), plus there’s also the somewhat confusing return of Red Skull (Ross Marquand), who has been stuck all alone on the planet Vormir. Don’t ask me why he’s there, or how he became the keeper of the soul stone because I have no clue. The action in the film, while not necessarily relentless, is very prevalent and when it isn’t, there is an overwhelming sense of doom and gloom. The opening reminds me of Alien 3, in how we see the charred remains of the ship containing Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and all the Asgardians from the end of Thor: Ragnarok. Heimdall (Idris Elba) and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) are the first to go, very quickly making it clear that the movie isn’t messing around. By the way, if you’re wondering if this also means Valkyrie or Korg are also dead, I honestly don’t know, it’s not really addressed.

But that sense of doom, and sadness continues through to the very end when Thanos finally has all the stones and snaps his fingers, eliminating half the universe, and the audience is forced to watch many characters fade away. The movie is a blast, but it’s not so much in a way that begs for multiple rewatches. And of course, given how we are in a state where every bit of information about a film from conception to release is reported in the news cycle, it can be considered hard to really be invested in the deaths of characters like Spider-Man (Tom Holland) for example, when you’re already aware that a Spider-Man: Homecoming sequel has been in active development for a while and – last I checked – plans to shoot in literally less than a month from now. Or even with Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), he may disappear at the end of the film (which had maybe the strongest vocal reaction from the crowd), but that billion dollar gross from his solo movie’s box office will make sure he won’t be gone for good. These things can certainly impact someone’s viewing experience, and those feelings are reasonable and valid, but it’s important to also remember that, at the end of the day, these are movies aimed mostly at a young audience. It’s the kind of audience that isn’t hyper aware of every movie being developed by Marvel Studios, and thus only takes in what the movie gives them. So, a kid – like the one who sat next to me at my screening – will find themselves challenged and terrified and saddened in ways most blockbusters aimed at this demographic wouldn’t normally dare to attempt. I could see him sniffing and wiping his tears away as Spider-Man grabbed Tony, telling him that he doesn’t feel good, and that he’s afraid, and doesn’t want to go, while Tony simply stares utterly helpless and devastated, slowly watching what is basically his student dying and fading away, like he was never even there to begin with. That’s where the impact will hit the most, and it’s why this movie will be a lasting moment in a lot of younger kids’ moviegoing experiences.

I don’t think anyone will argue that Infinity War is the best, or even tightest film to come from Marvel Studios, but that doesn’t stop it from being a remarkable achievement in longform storytelling. Obviously, there’s all the big payoffs to the big threads setup with all the stones over the course of the films, but what really impressed me were the small details. There’s many I could name, but the most striking one out of all of them is in the end. After the snap, after everyone fades away, Tony Stark is left on a desolate planet with Nebula, he is silent, looking around, horrified. His ultimate nightmare from Age of Ultron has come true, and Robert Downey Jr. does a wonderful job at expressing the quiet heartbreak of someone who has been paranoid and traumatized for years, doing his best to stop something bad from happening to all his friends, only for it to happen anyway. But alongside something like that, there’s also a fun little moment with Rocket (Bradley Cooper), who gives Thor a robotic eye, which may or may not be the same eye that Groot (Vin Diesel) left with him in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, but it’s still an amusing payoff to what was previously a character quirk with his bizarre obsession with artificial body parts. It’s with these payoffs, both big and small, that really shows all the care and attention and thought that the Kevin Feige and the filmmakers have put into the film. And they also show that they aren’t just here to have fun with the characters, but are more than willing to challenge them. Multiple times throughout the film, characters are faced with a dilemma where they have to decide what they are willing to do and sacrifice for the greater good like Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) being willing to kill Gamora (Zoe Saldana) if she is ever at risk of being captured by Thanos, or the lengths Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is willing to go to keep the time stone from being taken or Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) coming to terms with the possibility of Vision having to die so that the mind stone on his forehead can be kept away from the enemy. Because the characters have been so well defined over the past decade, they are each able to react in a way that is distinctive with their own unique motivations for their decisions, thus preventing the beat from feeling repetitive.

After all, the main concern for Marvel Studios has been to get the characters right, and authentic to the spirit of their comic book counterparts. The joy of seeing these movies come mainly from watching how these characters all bounce off each other, and the way the film decides to create the groups is interesting and varied. Whether it’s something like watching the nearly identical (in both manner and look) Tony Stark and Doctor Strange instantaneously despising each other’s company, to cheering on Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Okoye (Danai Gurira) as they fight side by side in the big, climactic battle, to the hilarity of Rocket asking Bucky (Sebastian Stan) how much he wants for the metal arm and later shooting bad guys on Bucky’s shoulder mirroring the similar moment from the first Guardians, to Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) meeting Groot for the first time, who saying his usual phrase, and Steve simply responding with “I am Steve Rogers.” The way the film (which is written by the duo, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely) injects these bits of personality, pathos, humor, and cheer moments weaving in and out of the action and various tones is rather awe-inspiring.

However, the character that makes the biggest impression isn’t one of the heroes, it’s in the villain, Thanos. Josh Brolin does stellar work in bringing him to life, making him more emotional and soft spoken, avoiding some of the common big bad tropes that comes with this type of villain, which we had fairly recently with Justice League. He is in many ways the main character of the film. He is by far the most active character in the film, taking charge in his quest to find the stones while the heroes are more reactionary in how they scramble together to stop him. He has a motivation that is somewhat understandable. He feels this sense of responsibility that he believes no one else has the will to pull off, and it comes in the form of some twisted vision of saving the universe by eliminating half the population. He talks about how his homeworld, Titan, used to be a paradise, but its beauty and natural resources became ravaged by overpopulation, and eventually, it became a desolate wasteland. He believes that eliminating half the population of the universe (which is done randomly, as a way to be “fair”), he thinks the universe will find some kind of balance again. He tells his story as if it’s this big cross he has to bear, and oh, woe is him to be the one person in the universe who can make the hard decisions. It’s a bit of a strange departure from the comics, and a tad Bond villain-ish, but it works, and it’s mostly because Brolin can sell the hell out of it. Plus, there’s a nugget of an interesting meta-commentary that seems to go hand in hand with the original Avengers. Whereas that film is literally all about whether you can bring these different characters together into a team and make it work (a question everyone was pondering), and in this one, the villain argues having too many people only leads to self-destruction (and the biggest worry for a lot of people is whether this film can handle so many characters), and I suppose the big payoff for that will be in the next film. But back to Thanos, I really got a kick out of the juxtaposition between the cruelty endured by our heroes at the climax, and the small moment before we cut to credits, where we get a glimpse of Thanos at a peaceful home, quietly enjoying the sunrise. Since it’s basically his story, we get to experience this final moment, almost like a form of catharsis, since that is what he feels. His work is done, and he can finally be at peace. The silence of this moment manages to be both haunting and a relief given the excessiveness of everything we saw beforehand, and it’s a genuinely provocative end.

The film is directed by the brothers, Anthony and Joe Russo, who were also behind Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Captain America: Civil War, both film that I didn’t really enjoy, or in the case of Winter Soldier, didn’t find as rewarding on rewatch as I did in my initial experience. This is their best work yet, in terms of taking everything that Marvel Studios has built, and crafting a palatable experience that keeps things moving fast, cohesively, and engaging while servicing “the brand.” Their voice as filmmakers I don’t find particularly inventive or as interesting as someone like a Ryan Coogler or a James Gunn, but their workmanlike direction is more than solid enough to hold it all together. However, I still have a huge problem with their excessive use of high shutter speed during hand-to-hand combat sequences. It’s not an inherently bad thing, but that combined with excessive use of close-up shots and quick cutting and busy framing (lots happening in foreground and background) can make some of the seemingly well choreographed fights feel jittery and hard to discern, and it gets really bad at the climactic battle in Wakanda. I think this approach to superhero action is cool, but they need to go easy on that shutter speed. But still, that’s not to take away what they pulled off here, especially when you compare the scale of their previous work to the literal universe-trotting scope of this. I admittedly came into this somewhat doubtful, and it was mostly because I was skeptical of those two pulling this off, and they proved me wrong, which is maybe one of the best feelings you can have when watching a movie.

Saying “Avengers: Infinity War is the Empire Strikes Back of the MCU” is an understandable, but somewhat simplistic take on the film. It really is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before, bringing that epic comic event style to the big screen in a way that was only briefly felt with the likes of Avengers: Age of Ultron or Captain America: Civil War. As a culmination of ten years and eighteen movies’ worth of buildup, it absolutely succeeds in creating a star studded extravaganza full of soap opera-esque drama, character driven comedy, splash page spectacle, cosmic weirdness, and unabashed edge-of-your-seat entertainment that remains faithful to the spirit of the comics in its most well realized form yet. Sure, it’s ultimately a corporate product that’s been continuously designed and tinkered by a collection of people for years, but given its willingness to go to some challenging and bleak places, it never ceases to feel like a daring and bold move every step of the way. The issues that some people will have on this are perfectly valid issues, but the wonderment and euphoria I experienced seeing the film is something I haven’t experienced before. I don’t know if Marvel Studios and the Russo brothers will be able to replicate this level of success with the sequel coming next year, but I kind of don’t care if it does. As far as I’m concerned, this is the best that this kind of film could ever be.

But hey, I’d love to be proven wrong.