Matt Reviews - Avengers: Infinity War

WARNING: GIANT-SIZED MARVEL SPOILERS Follow

Viewer Discretion is Advised

Avengers: Infinity War is a movie ten years in the making. It’s not just a sequel to the last Avengers movie, but a sequel to the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s the culmination of the 18 different movies that came before.

With such an ambitious premise and a decade of hype built around it, does Marvel deliver once again?

Oh my, yes.

To briefly summarize the plot: The alien warlord Thanos (Josh Brolin) – whom you might remember from the post-credit scene from The Avengers and his “pivotal” role in Guardians of the Galaxy – is on the hunt for the Infinity Stones so that he can bring balance to the universe by wiping out half of all life. The Avengers join forces with Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Black Panther, and the Guardians of the Galaxy in a battle that takes them to the ends of the earth and beyond the cosmos as they fight to stop the Mad Titan from rewriting reality.

So both surprisingly and not, this is a brutal movie. People die. A lot of people. The film starts out on a heart wrenching note with the deaths of Loki and Heimdall, and from there other prominent characters like Gamora and Vision meet their tragic demises. Eventually, this culminates in Thanos’s iconic finger snap erasing half of the cast from existence, meaning we have to watch fan-favorite characters like Spider-Man, Star-Lord, and Bucky Barnes tearfully fade into cosmic dust. Every action scene had me actually nervous for once as to if these characters were going to survive. Had the scene where Gamora tells Star-Lord to kill her played in any other Marvel movie, I wouldn’t have worried. But since this movie had shown that it’s pulling no punches by killing off Loki, it’s most recurring bad guy/anti-hero, I was nervous that whole scene.

Of course, the comic this movie is primarily based on (The Infinity Gauntlet) is equally as brutal. That one begins with Thanos wiping out half of the Marvel Universe with a thought, and then proceeding to murder the remaining heroes that stand up to him. Marvel surprised me by how faithfully they translated this brutality to the screen because, well, it’s Disney. Killing off these many marketable characters seemed like something they wouldn’t really be into, especially given how Marvel tends to try to be more “family friendly” in their movies than DC. But then again, I’m forgetting Rogue One, another Disney properly that basically obliterates the entire main cast by the end.

They call it "Infinity War" because it goes on forever.
They keep introducing new characters every two hours.

That being said, these deaths won’t stick, like in the original Infinity Gauntlet story. The heroes are obviously going to find a way to reverse these deaths since most of the heroes they killed off have future movies coming up (Spider-Man, Black Panther, the Guardians). So immediately, some of these deaths lose their emotional weight, but that doesn’t mean they’re still not heartbreaking to watch, especially Spider-Man’s. Man, is Tom Holland a good actor when he needs to act like a scared kid.

Personally, I hope they don’t reverse all the deaths. Just the ones caused by Thanos’s finger snap. Leave Loki, Heimdall, and Vision dead. Gamora can come back because she’ll probably be in Guardians of the Galaxy 3. Besides, given the events of the movie, her soul is probably just trapped in the Soul Stone, so that’s a semi-plausible excuse to bring her back (by comic book logic standards).

So let’s talk about the cause of all this brutality and death, and the star of this show: Thanos. This is a villain who has done basically nothing but sit around for 6 years and lose the Infinity Stones he’s been trying to collect, yet Marvel has been hyping him up as the biggest big bad in the universe. My biggest fear, which I’m sure was shared by others, is that he would be a disappointment after all that build-up, but Marvel actually knocked it out of the park. They establish off the bat that Thanos is the colossal threat he should be, effortlessly kicking the crap out of the Hulk and Thor and killing Loki after sensing his betrayal. And that’s all before he gets most of the Infinity Stones.

Aside from how much of a threat he is, they also make Thanos a compelling character. He’s not just the pure evil genocidal dictator that we were promised in Guardians of the Galaxy. He sees the universe is dwindling in resources and overabundant in people, so he genuinely believes that wiping out half of all life will fix that. He has actual emotions other than “evil”, love being the strongest one. His scenes with his adopted daughter Gamora are some of his best in the movie, all coming to a head when he sheds actual tears at the thought of sacrificing his favorite daughter to obtain the Soul Stone. Much like characters like Killmonger and the Vulture before him, Marvel has really been putting in all the effort when it comes to their villains in Phase 3. Also, that is some GREAT CGI on him.

Who would win: The entire Marvel Universe, or one pissed-off California Raisin?

I mentioned before that despite being the antagonist, I consider Thanos the main character of this movie. He has the most complete and compelling arc in the movie, and the whole movie is basically about Thanos collecting the Infinity Stones. On the hero side of things, the other candidates for main characters could be Iron Man, Thor, the Guardians (particularly Gamora),a and maybe Doctor Strange, only because these characters also have bigger and more complete arcs like Thanos.

Speaking of the heroes, another highlight of the film is getting to see all of these different characters interact with one another, in combinations we haven’t seen before. Tony Stark’s ego clashes with that of Doctor Strange. Star-Lord competes for masculinity with Thor, who strikes up an unlikely friendship with Rocket Raccoon. Captain America responds to Groot’s “I am Groot” with “I am Steve Rogers.” It’s a lot of fun.

The problems that I have with this movie are mainly nitpicks, some more major than others. One of my biggest is that the beginning overrides the hopeful ending of Thor: Ragnarok, with Thanos’s massacre of the Asgardian refuge ship basically making the final events of Ragnarok pointless. However, if half of the ship’s population survived like Thor says, it’s likely that characters like Valkyrie, Korg, and Miek (who are sadly missing from this movie) could have survived. While all of the characters and plot threads have their time to shine, I feel like Captain America is the one that gets the shaft in some way. This is mostly due to the placement of his storyline in relation to the rest of the movie. It doesn’t cut back to the stuff on Earth with him and his Avengers nearly as much as the stuff with Iron Man or the Guardians, meaning that there’s like an hour wait from when Cap says they need to go to Wakanda and when they actually arrive there, and by that point it’s time for the final battle.

Also, not really a criticism, but I feel that Rocket should have been the one to disappear at the end instead of Groot. We’ve already seen Groot die before in these movies, and if Rocket dies, that allows Groot to interact more with the remaining heroes in Avengers 4 and allows him to grow up into the hero that he’s meant to be. And I kind of wish Cap got wiped out instead of Bucky for similar reasons.

Spoilers: This scene isn't even in the movie.

I don’t know if people who aren’t caught up with MCU movies will be lost during this one, considering there’s not a whole lot of introductions for previously-established characters or plot points. But considering how integrated into pop culture these superhero movies are, I feel like everyone will get some enjoyment out of this. I still worry about some parts of the movie, like Red Skull’s reappearance after 7 years, effectively confirming a fan theory about his fake death (which to me, was the biggest surprise of the movie). If you’re not familiar with the MCU, go in with the buddy system and bring a nerd friend to explain things.

Infinity War has a ton of characters and plot points, but it never feels overcrowded. Everyone gets their time to shine. It is an emotionally exhausting movie, though. There’s a lot of emotions, a lot of deaths, and it has a dark, depressing tone through most of the movie, with a few jokes peppered here and there for levity’s sake. Unlike DC, Marvel has earned this tone because of how the rest of their movies have been. This movie feels rightfully big, important, and devastating, with a ton of characters we’ve grown to know and love. It’s 20 minutes short of being a three-hour movie, but it doesn’t really feel like it. There’s constantly action and stuff happening to keep you entertained.

It ends on such a dour note that while you’re sitting there in shock over what just happened, you’re also anticipating how the heroes are going to get out of this one.

Or, you know, what cop-out the writers are gonna pull to fix this.

Final verdict: 5 out of 6 Infinity Stones

So is there a reason Peter Dinklage’s dwarf character was like 20 feet tall? Is that like a Norse thing that dwarves are actually huge?

Also is there a reason his British accent is still terrible after 7 seasons of Game of Thrones?