No plot
spoilers beyond the general premise today – I’ll save my more detailed thoughts
for next Marvelous Wednesday.
This is
it, the big one of big ones (at least, until the fourth Avengers comes out next year.)
Virtually all the heroes from all the movies in one giant extravaganza
ultra-crossover event. As such, it
shares a lot of the hallmarks of a big crossover, for both better and
worse. Ultimately, it’s a crazy ride, by
turns entertaining and intense, and I really appreciate the time Marvel took to
build up to this. The previous movies
from all the various franchises laid the groundwork to help the spectacle here
1) feel earned and 2) matter.
He’s
existed on the edges of the films for a while now, largely in the post-credit
scenes (although he has a slightly bigger foray in the first Guardians of the Galaxy,) but now,
Thanos is ready to kick things up a notch.
He’s collecting the six Infinity Stones to gain ultimate power and, in
his mind, save the universe in the most genocidal-maniac of ways. It’s serious all hands on deck, and the
threat calls for Earth’s mightiest heroes – along with a handful of our
favorite MCU aliens – to band together and fight on multiple fronts.
Like Civil War before it, I was a little
nervous going in about how well the film was going to balance its
ludicrously-enormous cast (seriously, it makes The Hobbit trilogy look intimate,) but I continue to be impressed
with the Russo brothers and their team in juggling the many heroes onscreen
here. The characters are mostly divided
into several main groups that shift a bit over the course of the film, rather
than cramming everyone together in a giant scrum of superpowers (narratively,
probably a good move.) It means certain
fan-dream meet-ups don’t happen in this film, but each grouping does include meetings between
chararacters who’ve never encountered each other before, mainly by bringing the
Guardians, Doctor Strange, and the Wakanda crew into various folds. And hey, the fourth Avengers is still coming, so we’ve got time on those meet-ups that
didn’t happen here!
For the
most part, I think the film does a good job with this. Some characters inevitably have more
screentime than others, as they’d have to, and there are some that I wish had
gotten to do more (i.e. Cap and Natasha,) but the give-and-take largely feels
appropriate for what’s going on. All of
the massive cast turns in fine work, but I’m voting for Chris Hemsworth’s Thor
and Tom Holland’s Spidey as the movie’s MVPs, the Guardians make a strong
showing in their introduction to the larger central franchise, and not for
nothing, this is the first time that I’ve genuinely enjoyed Doctor Strange as a
character.
Naturally,
the cross-franchise meetings provide many of the film’s highlights. It reminds me of other crossover events I’ve
seen, like the DC-show crossovers on the CW and multi-Doctor stories on Who, because at least 80% of the point
of this thing is seeing the different characters interact. Obviously, it’s very cool to watch all these
heroes with their assorted powers and/or gadgets fight alongside each other,
and there are plenty of BAMF moments to be had.
And even better than that are simply the meetings: all the new character combinations, the more
grounded characters encountering the more out-there ones, the priceless
reactions from characters who, up till now, have been in separate
franchises. The movie absolutely
delivers on that front, and it brings the same sort of fandom warm fuzzies as
watching Kara and Barry pal around on Supergirl/Flash crossovers or Two and Three snark
on each other in “The Three Doctors.”
With so
many characters to fit in and so much (justified) emphasis on fanservice-y
meet-up elements, story can be an afterthought in crossovers like this. Overall, I think Infinity War does a better job with that than most – Thanos is an
interesting villain, and there are some strong emotional stakes. That said, while I enjoyed the movie hugely,
it doesn’t rank near the best MCU films in terms of story (a la The Winter Soldier, Black Panther, etc.) There’s
some sloppiness, especially in the early part of the film, the plot sometimes
relies a bit too much on heroes doing dumb things to keep the plot moving, and
to some extent, no final judgment can be made on the film until we see the next
one and are able to put it in its full context.
Warnings
Comic
book violence, swearing, a little gross-out humor, and strong thematic
elements.
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