Infinity War Movie Review – SPOILERS

INFINITY WAR SPOILERS

Where to begin?

I grew up loving the Amazing Spiderman. If I had a hero as a kid, it was probably that good-natured, smart, marginalized nerd who was given great power and chose, after a rough road, to accept the responsibility that is supposed to go along with it. I watched the cartoons of Iceman, Firestorm, and Spidey whenever it was on, and I even managed to pick up a few, long-lost and then expensive, comics.

But I never really read much of the Marvel Universe. When X-men came along, I watched some of that, but I was getting older and going to school and building models to avoid my… well… to avoid stuff that I needed to avoid.

Over the years, there were a handful of Marvel characters converted into television—the Hulk, for example (long live Lou Ferigno)—but beyond that limited exposure, I really had no clue as to the who’s and what’s of Marvel.

And then 2008 came along. My childhood faith in Star Wars was waning, and I needed a saga to wrap my uber-geek up in. Enter Ironman. Jon Favreau was a favorite of mine in places I’d seen elsewhere, and it was hard not to see the parallels between Downey Jr. and Stark. CGI had come into its own, so I figured that Ironman 2008 would be a hard-to-miss success, and I was right.

But that was just the beginning.

As one film after another unfolded before my eyes, I found myself reliving a childhood that I sorely missed. But more than that, I looked upon these comic-book characters with the eyes of an adult, one who could understand and appreciate how important and life-like flawed characters can be, even when they are fictitious heroes and gods set in impossible situations.

What I’ve come to understand now, something that might have always been at the center of Marvel (and even DC characters), is that every story is a morality tale, like those of Greek lore in some respects. Each film held up to the light those things that are best and worst in those members of our society who have been blessed and even cursed with great power over others.

Ultimately, that’s what every film has at its heart—the notion of power and how best to wield it. To date, I have seen all of the modern Marvel Universe, both in film or Netflix, excepting the latest Jessica Jones season and the full Agent Carter series. I’ll be catching up with Agent Carter at some point, and I’ll probably binge the second season of Jones (although, that last doesn’t quite interest me). Regardless, it’s safe to say that I have a pretty good idea of the overall Marvel story arc that has been presented to a very wanting audience over the past ten years.

There was a time when I could have gotten my Doctorate in Star Wars. I’m close to that degree of understanding with the Marvel cinematic universe, and it is for this reason that I find what they’ve done with Infinity War to be both a masterpiece and a bit of a disappointment.

When one steps back and examines the whole of that immense body of work, from 2008 to present day, the scope of the endeavor is nothing less than history-making. What they have created is literally the largest and most interwoven storyline in human history. There’s a case to be made for Doctor Who, but that story is more linear and serialized than it is a pre-planned and singular story arcs that culminates in a finite and fixed point in space years later than the first episode. I could also say that Babylon 5 had the potential to be in the same league, but its legs were cut out from underneath it early on.

But I digress.

What we have before us, in just the first nineteen films and eighteen seasons of serialized shows, is a storyline that maintains integrity from start to finish and does so with the Infinity War at its center in one way or another.

Let that sink in for a minute. No franchise in history has come even close to what Marvel (with and without Disney) has accomplished, and I think it’s likely that nothing ever will. That’s why Infinity War is such an amazing piece of work. Virtually every key facet of it was laid out years before in other films.

As a creator, I would love to see the big whiteboard in a room somewhere that tracks all of this and maps out the next few films that are still coming. The writers and directors should all get awards for that alone. But Infinity War, the first installment of the culmination of over a decade of work, isn’t perfect.

Perhaps nothing can be, especially through the eyes of a writer who does his best to construct complex worlds, characters, and story arcs for a living. First and foremost, my problem with Infinity War was how hurried it seemed. The story covers about a half-dozen storylines, with all of them converging on that anticipated moment when Thanos assembles the Infinity Gauntlet.

That brings me to one of my primary complaints, but I think my complaint has more to do with not knowing the Marvel comic universe than it does anything else. We don’t find out until partway through this film that Thanos wants to eradicate half the population in the Universe. That one thing feels a bit deus ex machina. It’s dropped in at the last second so we understand the stakes. Personally, they had opportunities elsewhere to reveal Thanos’ motives much earlier. Having done so would have built more tension early on.

The appearance of the gauntlet itself is also a bit impromptu. Granted, the whole scene with the giant dwarf (props to Peter Dinklage), while meaningful, is particularly abrupt. Frankly, an entire film could have been dedicated to that particular quest. Indeed, that is perhaps my problem with each of the side-stories that take place in Infinity War. There’s Thor’s quest to replace Mjolnir, that of Strange and Ironman chasing Thanos, the Guardians chasing down stones, and even the remaining Avengers on Earth coming together in opposition of the Council.

Let me put it this way. Most of us have invested our time and passion in the nineteen films and eighteen seasons, with more yet to come. Why not plan a film trilogy that is the Infinity War—treat it like the old Star Wars trilogies, where those three films are part of a greater whole, yet they encapsulate an entire saga wrapped around one particular story line?

I would have watched the hell out of that.

On a more positive note, Infinity War was suitably dark, as it should be, considering Thanos’ success at the end, but there was so much jammed into those nearly three hours that it became a blur that kept me from truly appreciating, nay, savoring the scale of what was going on.

In a nutshell, I needed the scope of this story arc to be expanded over more time, with the details coming at me in smaller doses and building greater tension. After ten years of work, the creators seemed to rush the ending, as if they just wanted to get it out of the way.

Did I love the film as a whole, from storyline to characters, to scale, to conclusion? Yes. Could it—should it—have been more?

I think so.

I also have a bit of a problem with the brunt of the casualties in the battle falling to Wakandans on their home soil. I see what they set up, and I understand they needed to centralize the combat for film purposes. I even understand that Thanos would have focused his resources upon just getting the last stone from Vision. But it felt both a little too convenient and a bit contrived. This doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy what they did, I just think more would have been considerably better.

On a high note, I loved the interplay between Stark and Strange. I always wondered what that would be like. They’re both super-geniuses possessed of monumental egos, so the interplay was bound to be amusing. I also appreciated the interplay between Banner and what can only be described as the “toddler-Hulk.” The nature of those two very different personalities coming to terms with each other is something I’ve really come to enjoy.

I will say that I’ve seen folks lamenting the situation of the no-show Hulk who doesn’t want to come out and play. However, I totally understand the motivation there. The stage was set in Ragnarok, with a little boy accustomed to kicking everyone’s ass. Hulk has always been the big gun—the BFG, actually. In Ragnarok, it was made clear that his time “on the surface” allowed him to develop from a big green rage-baby to a developing intelligence that, at this stage, is little more than a toddler who can throw tanks around.

And then Thanos literally kicks the shit out of him—I mean, he mops the floor with that toddler. If you understand anything about kids and ego, you know that your first bloody nose really sets a hook in you. Doubt and mortal terror, like the doubt and terror Stark has dealt with in his own story arc since Avengers 2, is precisely the sort of thing that can keep you off the horse rather than jumping back up on it.

I do have to say that I’m not all that fond of Tony turning Spidey into his own version of a Mini-me. Spiderman, and I’m talking about the one I grew up with, was always that skinny kid in spandex who could take a beating and just keep going—always one step ahead of the bad guys and dishing out more licks than he took. Now, he’s just a wall-crawling Ironman, and I sort of wish he’d stuck with the spandex.

As for Thanos’ murder of Gamora: totally plausible and necessary. In fact, I really like the fact that they sacrificed her when and how they did. That one scene (with Red Skull as witness, which was a nice touch, by the way), was the very best means of making Thanos a more three-dimensional character. They built that tension up with the Collector scene, compounded it with the throne room scene, and then hit us all in the gut with her murder.

There had to be fatalities in this one, and while I knew ahead of time that Thanos was able to snap his fingers, I wanted them to cap a few good guys (and gals) along the way. In fact, I wish they had eliminated a few more during the combat. In a battle that big, more of the good guys needed to buy it.

Now, that may all play into the next film (or films) where what the Infinity Gauntlet did is undone—speculation on my part—but dropping Scarlet Witch, War Machine, Winter Soldier or even Falcon would have upped the stakes more. In fact, I would have found a way to have Buckey “cut the wire” to let Stark survive. I really do want that line to come back. Stark either needs to sacrifice himself at some point or watch someone else cut the wire and die to save him.

It’s important for me to mention here that I left out the core Avengers from that list for a reason, and it was Vicki—new to the whole Marvel Universe—who pointed it out to me. When all was said and done, and a litany of our beloved heroes had crumbled into ash, those that remained were, essentially, the original Avengers: Captain America, Ironman, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, and Hawkeye.

I believe that the next installment will be the original crew going out to undo what hath been done to the Universe. I could be wrong, but if I were writing it, that’s the direction I would go.

Finally, there is something that I want to talk about that actually has more to do with the real world than it does with the film, although it’s the film that spawned it. I’ve seen in a number of posts and blogs how Thanos is, somehow, the hero… that he is on his own hero’s quest, and his motives actually make him one of the good guys.

I could not disagree more.

If there is one thing we’ve seen depicted time and time again in these stories and even in humanity, it’s that when one person decides the fate of the masses, with acceptable losses for the greater-good, it never ends well. I accept that as an axiom. In fact, this very notion is at the core of the confrontation between Captain America and Ironman in Civil War. It may be the very essence of the morality tale inherent in Infinity War.

What Thanos is doing is imposing his will upon literally half of the entire universe, exterminating that portion of its population, and doing so with the dubious rationale that everyone will live in some sort of paradise … as he sees it… because of overpopulation

If ever there was a perfect example of the perils of fascism, there it is, in black and white, larger than life. Freedom of choice is a sentient being’s greatest right, even when that choice (or the choice of entire populations) is self-destructive.

As a society, I think it’s rather dangerous to think of Thanos as some sort of hero to which we should aspire. Indeed, that may be the darkest moment in film history, where a single entity wipes out trillions, all with the laughable notion that from that moment on everyone will enjoy “paradise.” And it doesn’t begin to address the obvious flaw in reasoning.

The universe doesn’t work that way.

Civilizations don’t work that way.

Genocide is always genocide, and it’s something that everyone should do their best to stomp out when those among us actually take steps to bring it about. And frankly, the truth is that if one were to wipe out half of the universe’s population, each species would go right back to being overpopulated in short order.

So, where does that leave us with regards to a movie review?

Avengers: Infinity War is an exceptional film that ties together over a decade of storytelling. It accomplishes things that have never before been accomplished in film, and it does so in a way that keeps audience after audience on the edge of their seats and gasping for breath.

It really is a fantastic film, and I know I will watch it again and again. I’m looking forward to the day when I can take a full week’s vacation and watch everything, from start to finish, in chronological order, with this and the next Avengers film as the dénouement.

Certainly, I have issues and a few complaints about some of the execution, but in the grand scheme of things, those are mostly nits. I LOVE this movie, and I can’t wait to have it in my collection.

If you haven’t seen it, you should. If you haven’t watched all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe materiel that came before, start there. It’s worth it.

So, that’s it.

4.5 stars out of 5, and the promise that I will keep watching this epic saga over and over again in the decades to come.

 

~ Q