Movie Review: Avengers Infinity War

Title: Avengers Infinity War

Director(s): Anthony & Joe Russo

Release Date: April 27, 2018

Rating: 4/5

All photos courtesy of Marvel

What do you do when there’s just too much? Well, according to Marvel, you put it all into one big pile and squish it together. What follows is largely up to the future to decide. Warning, there will be spoilers ahead for Avengers Infinity War. Nothing too detailed, but if you want to see the movie, I suggest doing so first and then coming back for a read. Ready? OK.

A movie ten years (kind of) in the making, Infinity War set some high expectations for itself. When you give a movie years and years to build hype, it can be dangerous, but Marvel is oh-so-very confident now, that they could release a Howard the Duck movie and it would probably still break records. Note to Marvel execs, please don’t release a Howard the Duck movie. So the main question has to be: did it live up to the hype?

From left to right, Chadwick Boseman as Black Panther, Chris Evans as Captain America, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, and Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes

Maybe. Everything was happening so fast, I couldn’t really tell. In a movie starring maybe literally everybody ever, it needs a lot of moments to tell the stories of these characters. Obviously, not everyone could have arcs, and the pacing suffered a little bit because of it. My main qualm with Infinity War infinite cast was that they didn’t have time for everybody, despite it being an almost-three-hour movie. Chris Evans is the best Captain America, possibly ever, and he had maybe ten lines? Maybe more, but my point is is that he simply didn’t have enough material for a character that they’ve seemingly built up to be “The Guy.” This was a thing with many characters in his particular group. Black Widow didn’t have much outside of her fight scenes and Falcon was there basically to fly around.

However, the characters that did get their own arcs had some really great development. Thanos, being Gamora’s father (and certainly not winning any father-of-the-year awards) provided some really great development for her character, and for Starlord too. Thor’s entire adventure with Rocket was one of my favorite parts of the movie, and seeing his development from giant, happy man to an angry, sad and determined god was one of the best parts of this ten-year adventure. Tom Holland got to show off as Spiderman just a little bit more, and, as always, Robert Downey Jr. does such a good job with Tony Stark. Other standouts include Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch, and Dave Bautista as the always-hilarious, not-so-sneaky Drax.

The sets are beautifully designed and colorful, though most Avengers movies have never been lacking in color. Two standout areas were Vormir, the desolate, snowy planet wherein Thanos takes Gamora for a surprise father/daughter trip, and Wakanda, the now-familiar African land with its lush forest and sweeping plains. The final fight scene in Wakanda was beautifully intense which was punctuated by the driving score, ever-pressing forward toward Thanos’s arrival. Though the movie had a lot of good moments, the great battle had to be my favorite.

Though you may need a little bit of context going in, the movie manages to show relationships and history through small moments. I’ve never seen Dr. Strange and I had no problem following his character, or what he was doing. Not to mention that it’s 2018. If you haven’t seen at least one superhero movie, what are you doing?

The ending begs the question: what happens now? And it’s a very cruel cliffhanger, but it’s very effective. What does happen now? How do we move forward? I’m not sure, but my brain will be coming up with 14 million different ways that this could go, in the meantime.