Avengers: Infinity War was… epic.
What an enormously ambitious film. I can say with some relief that it largely succeeds at both realizing its ambitions and earning its runtime. This is a fast-paced epic with relatively little downtime. If we compare it to the first Avengers film for example, the amount of action roughly triples. What few scenes we do have to build characters & relationships are not wasted. Though there is an abundance of quippy dialogue here, Infinity War makes the smart choice not to drown the film in bathos that would undercut every emotionally resonant scene in the film. This use of bathos has been a startling trend in Marvel films that I’m glad doesn’t continue here.
The amount of mileage you get out of this film with depend greatly on why you like Marvel films if you do at all, and on how many of the previous films you've seen. Having seen all of them myself, there were references to past events and inside jokes all over the place that I enjoyed immensely as they added to the sense of inter-connectivity that these films are trying to achieve.
I'll break the film up into categories in this review to give a better sense of organization to this lengthy review.
Plot (spoiler free): As previously mentioned, this film is a culmination of events, spanning 18 previous films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Thankfully, Infinity War does not try to overextend itself and sticks with the main point of conflict that they have been slowly alluding to over the course of the years. That is to say, it focuses on Thanos.
Nothing really serves to distract from the threat Thanos poses here, everything rightly takes a backseat to the Mad Titan and we see a great deal of him in this film, this serves the story well, Marvel finally has a villain worthy of their heroes. Almost every Marvel hero is here with a few exceptions which I won't spoil for you, and while there are some great hero moments in this film, they take a distinctive backseat to Thanos himself which I felt was an excellent choice. Our heroes are all well established at this point, but despite so much buzz about Thanos he remains mostly a mystery going into this film. The slow reveal of just who Thanos is that is fully realized with the ending of the film really seals the deal here. I'm aware this is a very vague commentary on the plot, but I can't do much better without spoiling everything that happens. The best I can give you is that it is thoughtfully and methodically planned out, some of the character decisions seem unreasonable at first but are explained later, and some others are not so well explained and seem out of character, but overall the plot is cohesive and satisfying and emotionally resonant if you have come to identify with any of these characters over the past decade of Marvel films.
Character’s/Acting: This is possibly the biggest stumbling block for this movie for me. Some of the characters which have been built up in other films don't translate into this film as well as I'd have hoped. Sometimes their lines and actions just don't quite line up with what I think they would do based on how they are portrayed in other films. That said this is fairly minor except in a few places where it just seemed lazy and really made me question the characters legitimacy. The acting reflects how well cast these characters are, almost everyone embodies their role effortlessly, Josh Brolin's Thanos is particularly striking in this film as well as RDJ's continued excellence as Iron Man.
CGI: All top notch, and it needs to be because there is an absolute ton of it. Considering the effects going into rendering Thanos as a believable entity, it is an amazing technical achievement. There are pieces here and there where something doesn't move quite right or dips just a little too far into the uncanny valley for comfort but overall a strong showing that is gorgeous to watch unfold.
Costume/Set Design: We go to a lot of different planets and locations throughout the film and they are all made to look distinct and organic, not just in an, ice planet, fire planet, sort of way either, a lot of detail is put into each to give them, a sense of history and scale beyond what we fully witness onscreen. Not all the costumes change but those that do tend to embrace darker colors to reflect the tone the film is going for, there are also some cool additional tools at the hero’s disposal that integrated really well into the film.
Cinematography: This is passable, there are some stunning establishing shots, but I think that has more to do with the uniqueness of the settings than the camera work itself. I’m really a huge fan of the way all Marvel films tend to be shot in the same way and thus all sort of blend together visually, this one sadly doesn’t differentiate itself here despite the strong visual style of the sets and costumes.
Fight Choreography: As usual for Marvel, they do a great job not just highlighting individual heroes’ powers during a fight but integrating them into combination attacks with other powers, it's an absolute blast to watch unfold on screen. There are a few times where things are happening so quickly and the camera is so tight on the action it can be hard to really make sense of what's going on but this is rare and in one case it actually fits the context of the scene.
Conclusion: This is an excellent film that Marvel clearly spent a lot of time building up to. They almost completely nailed it. The few issues I noticed in both the script and the presentation are insignificant except for one big thing which I will go into in spoilers below. But even that didn't stop me from thoroughly enjoying just about every minute of this epic tale. If you like Marvel movies you will like this movie. If you don't why the hell did you read this long ass review?
9/10 Oh snap
The Big Problem (Spoilers below):
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Thanos repeatedly uses the hero's love for one another against them, he uses it to directly acquire multiple infinity stones. First with Loki by almost killing Thor, then with Quill's inability to kill Gamora, then by torturing Nebula to get the soul stone's location out of Gamora, then by Wanda (Scarlet Witch) not being willing to go through with killing Vision until it's too late.
My problem is not that the characters have emotional attachments, my problem is that this theme is crazy obvious to the point where by the third time this happened I was rolling my eyes, it's not a unique theme here and honestly they chose some really bad pairings for this to get the audience invested in the choice, Vision and Wanda are barely established as a couple before this film so it's hard to really be empathize with Wanda’s emotional attachment. Loki and Thor have one of the more complicated relationships in the MCU and Loki's guile is all but absent in this scene which feels off. Nebula and Gamora worked after their relationship is really built on in the events of Guardians Vol. 2. But even that falls flat if you haven't seen that movie. Gamora and Quill is also well established but is undercut by the fact that Thanos would never have let Quill kill her anyway, this is even used against Quill again later to prevent Thanos from using the gauntlet.
Without a solid investment in these relationships it can be hard to get behind the characters in these moments, they can appear selfish and short-sighted rather than sympathetic. To contrast this, when Thanos is forced to make a sacrifice of the same kind, that is very impactful and gives the theme a lot more legitimacy. Given how much the Avengers lose at the end due to their refusal to make sacrifices it makes me wonder what they will have to resort to in the sequel to make things right, or if they even can. Despite my gripes about how the film chooses to portray this weakness I still think it's a very compelling question to raise, one that I honestly didn't think Marvel would have the balls to go through with. What happens when the bad guys win?
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