Avengers: Infinity War is, no surprise here, the 19th film in the ongoing Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s also one of the best of these films… and is pretty great, despite it risking being a bloated 2 hr 30 min mess with nearly every Marvel character showing up. It’s a remarkable juggling act that works out.
Basic premise: Thanos, the villain who has occasionally appeared as the menacing background villain in a half dozen of the movies finally makes his move. He wants to find all six Infinity Stones that have been directly or indirectly referenced throughout the movies. With all six… well.. he doesn’t want tea and crumpets… and the Avengers (along with the Guardians of the Galaxy and a few others) are the only ones who can stop him.
You’ve heard this story before, right? Just another slam bang superhero flick with no stakes and a boring villain? Probably full of comedy and action that’s good enough, when its not being cut down by that comedy? Well, not this time. Due to clever marketing by the studio and by the film press, we’ve been assured this film has stakes. It has consequences. There have been tons of speculation as to who could live or die. And the movie holds to those rumors… the film’s action and story DO have stakes. There are consequences. And I’m here to tell ya, that’s makes the difference.
In most of these movies, sure, maybe the action is good and the heroes fun… but you rarely get the feeling anything is REALLY at stake. When the character’s safety is not on the table and we have literally dozens of heroes at play in this one, suddenly things feel more important. They matter. We wonder if our favorite is going to die. Maybe we even do the calculus if that actor’s important enough or if he or she has been in the franchise long enough (if we’re being honest as movie goers). In other words, there’s suspense. Uncertainty. Where is this gonna go?
What else helps is the film’s sense of humor. It has one, of course. The Guardians of the Galaxy are in it, after all. And so are Tony Stark and Spider-man. The humor has its place though… this film knows when to turn it off and play the drama seriously, without pulling its punches with a pratfall that cuts the legs out from under the epic or dramatic moments.
Also to the film’s credit, they manage to turn Thanos, a villain who was looking to be a generic mwa-ha-ha-ha bad guy, into something remarkably interesting. I’d even say he’s the best villain the series has had, though given the quality of the villains, that’s a low bar to hurdle. But he’s better than the best the series has had: Loki and Killmonger. Not only do we get a surprising amount of time with him, we get to understand his motives and his plans. They make sense… they aren’t GOOD but we understand why HE thinks they are good. We also get a surprising amount of emotional weight – actual pathos – out of a giant purple CGI motion capture performance from Josh Brolin. It’s a surprising performance and a surprising turn (at least to me, someone who has not read the comics this film is based on).
The fourth thing that makes the movie work – and an important one given the amount of it – is that the action in the film is all pretty darn good. It can be fast-paced and eclectic but it’s usually understandable and intense (especially when those stakes I mentioned are at play). This helps because there are eight or nine big epic beatdowns…. the movie is more action-packed than any previous such film so it’s to the film’s credit that it all works. There may be one or two scenes that you could argue could have been trimmed or shortened for a shorter runtime, but I didn’t feel like they SHOULD be.
Which leads to the only real problem with the film… there’s barely any time for any human interaction and drama that isn’t tied to the sturm and drang of the pretty basic plot. Very little downtime for our heroes to talk and just be people. In fact, given how long and far-ranging the story is, there’s very little humanity in it beyond these superheroes. I’m not personally declaring it a problem since everything else works so well… but if you aren’t buying into the action and find it all a bewildering mess, not having that extra bit of humanity will probably make the movie drag a bit.
So, yeah, if you want to see a movie that crams all these heroes into one flick and you aren’t sick to death of superhero films, this is a pretty great flick. Certainly anyone who has seen all eighteen previous films or at least the last five or six really will get a lot out of it. The action is strong, the impact meaningful, the characters fun, and the villain kind of fascinating. This is a pretty great flick… and this is coming from someone who finds most of the Marvel movies pretty good…. not amazing, not without problems, but certainly consistently (mostly) good.
Score: 90