I just left the theater, but I have a lot of thoughts about
Infinity War. First, the movie is fantastic. It exceeded my expectations in
every war, including plot, execution, character development, and conclusion. I
was becoming increasingly concerned about the scope of the film and this difficulty
that would present in explaining what characters were up to and why. After
watching, I no longer have any of those concerns. Second, this movie is not
for casual fans. I suspect some will be left wondering who some characters are
and why they’re doing what they do. Marvel did not seem to care, which is
awesome. Thanks for having the biggest payoffs for the biggest fans. It’s
something Warner never does with their movies and it’s appreciated by the
faithful. Finally, the movie is long, but not too long. The action is well-paced,
heavy, and fun. I never felt like the story became plodding or trite (like I
and others have complained about with some of the Netflix products) in spite of
the length. It was wholly appropriate in my opinion to make this film over two
hours. The grand scale renders it necessary.
Where does it rank in relation to the best Marvel products?
Very highly. Probably only as low as the top three, maybe as high as number one.
It is as funny as GotG Vol. 1, as twisting as Winter Soldier, and nearly as
heartwarming as Homecoming with superior action to all three. The universe
spanning plot has very few broken portions (I will discuss some concerns) and
so many things going right that it’s an immediate contender for the best Marvel
film.
Is it better than Batman TDK? No. End of story. We may never
see a comic book movie like that ever again, or at least not until the current generation
of Warner/DC films execs retires. Is it Marvel’s TDK? Sort of. Thanos is the
same type of compelling villain as Ledger’s Joker, even if not as compelling.
He’s the first villain in the same category as the Joker that Marvel has
produced. It took them 826357635 movies. That said, DC films are trash, except
those first two Batman movies, and, yes, I’m including Wonder Woman (sorry, but
I’m not sorry). The future of Marvel films is bright and the future of DC films
is questionable at best (and potentially an unmitigated disaster and my
personal opinion leans this direction).
Good or bad news first? Bad news? Ok, here it goes…a
definitive list about things that were not good in Infinity War:
Vision & Scarlet Witch: I loved Paul Bettany in Avengers
2. He looked great. His acting was compelling. Vision seemed to be a character
on the up and up. He’s given us solid performances up to this point. Elizabeth
Olsen has been less exciting of a character both because of the MCU nerfing of
Scarlet Witch’s powers and because of her association with Quicksilver (who
sucked) and disassociation with Magneto (who Marvel didn’t own the film rights
to when she was introduced). As a result, the romance of Vizh and Wanda has
basically no spark, the performances are not particularly compelling, and their
sort of at the heart of the personal drama for the climax of the film. It’s
just not working. The two don’t work well on screen together, no one is feeling
it, and neither of the heroes is developing anything on their own to
compensate. Olsen does awesomely drop some thresher spaceships on a bunch of space
dogs, but that’s basically the only decent moment either has in the whole 2+
hour long movie and one of them has an infinity stone in his face. Sad!
Dinklage: Burning Tyrion on some weird dwarf (who is,
ironically, super tall) with voice immodulation disorder was a waste. Unlike
some others, I enjoyed Nidavellir, especially the interaction between Thor and
Rabbit (Rocket, constantly referred to as Rabbit by Thor). Loved the scene where
Groot improvises the handle to Stormbreaker. And showing Thor taking a star to
the chest is a pretty good power-level demo. But Dinklage is an A-list actor
stuffed into a D- performance (maybe, the worst of the film) burdened by poorly
written dialogue, poorly envisioned vocal work, and generally looking like a
bassist for a space metal band.
The Soul Stone: Thanos doesn’t love anyone or
anything except the gauntlet. He’d never get the stone by tossing Gamora into
the pit of doom because he doesn’t love her. She was right, the writers were
wrong, end of story. If this was the Marvel Universe, not the MCU, he could
have sacrificed Death, but that’s the only thing the Mad Titan loves other than
genocide. His acolytes are tools for his ego, not people he cares about for
their intrinsic worth. I don’t buy the tears, I believe her, and nothing will
change my mind about this. Perhaps we haven’t seen the last of Gamora’s story
arc given the weird red room Thanos enters before wiping everyone. Maybe we’ll
get a second try on the soul stone later. To me, this is the single plot hole I
can’t reconcile myself to. It’s relatively minor, I’m a stickler and I know it,
so I can let it go and enjoy the rest for what it is.
The good news
There’s so much. This is going to take a while…
Empire: Thanos Wins! He wipes out half the life in
the universe. It’s awesome. Just when you think the heroes have done it in the
nick of time, he turns back the clock, wipes out Vision, then Thor kills him,
but he doesn’t, and Thanos kills everyone. It’s awesome. It’s the MCU’s Empire
Strikes Back. It’s the first time the villains didn’t drop the ball on the goal
line. I can only imagine how ten-year-old me would be reacting right now. Jaw
agape for 13 months until I get some friggin’ answers. The silence at the end
of the film is deafening, both on the screen and in the audience. I can still
hardly believe they did it. Making no excuses for Thanos’s power and never
letting the heroes off the hook with McGuffins and freak power ups makes this
movie the most unpredictable, unforgiving, and consequential MCU product to
date. Empire is a once-in-a-generation movie. Infinity War may just be that
same class.
Sense of Humor: The jokes are great, and, genuinely,
getting better. Guardians has set the tone for this phase of the MCU and it has
positively affected all of their properties and was executed here to a tee. The
banter between Stark and Strange, between Parker and everyone, between Thor and
the Guardians, especially Rocket, and between all the Guardians and anyone else
is wonderful. It feels like a Marvel comic book and that’s a very good thing. Parker’s
“Oh, we’re using our made-up names…” and Drax’s deadpan “turning invisible” bit
were both fantastic. Batista has become a very strong comedic actor and Tom
Holland is the future, period. He steals every scene he’s in. This movie is fun
in spite of the universe-wide genocidal backdrop.
Action: The movie starts with a royal rumble Thor and
the Hulk, the Avengers two biggest brutes, taking on (and getting their asses
hand to them by) Thanos in the first five minutes. That’s really something. It
sets the tone that this movie is not holding your hand. The film will show you
what’s happening and you’ll figure the rest out on your own. They don’t do a
quick introduction of the Black Order, or even refer to them as such, they just
start doing nasty stuff and you figure out their Thanos’s bros, and that’s
that. Everyone gets into the action, including some characters we’ve not seen
do much before (like Mantis) and some others we’ve never seen do what their
doing (like Tony’s even more Extremis-inspired nanotech armor and the Iron
Spider version of Spider-Man). The Battle for Wakanda is epic and glorious. Wakanda
Forever!
Huge Moments: The big three of the Avengers all have
epic moments in the film. Thor has the most for sure, given that he takes a
star in the face, he spins the rings that power a dying star with his legs, and
then he bifrosts his ass to Wakanda just in time to drop Stormbreaker all over
the space dogs murdering his friends. Thor’s a god. It’s only fair he has the
most badass things happen to him. Tony has a lot of great moments, including
dropping the ship on Thanos, the one-on-one faceoff with the titan, and his
heart-wrenching embrace with a dying Spider-Man. He’s the beating heart of the
Avengers, even if he’s not it’s heaviest hitter. Cap’s profiled introduction in
the first attempt to de-stone Vision got a great pop from the crowd, his foot
race with Black Panther is great, and his test of strength with Thanos, even in
failure, reminds the audience just who Steve Rogers is, the bravest Avenger of all.
For me, watching Thor light up on the field in Wakanda was, no pun intended, the
most electric moment of the film.
Big Surprises: Two things stand out the most: Red
Skull is alive and looking over the Soul Stone and Fury dialing up Captain
Marvel in the post-credits. I’m pretty sure I audibly gasped when Skull walks
out from the darkness in his introduction. That’s just rad. Skull is too
important a Marvel villain to trash out in a Captain America movie that wasn’t
ready for a villain of his grandeur. It is a promising prelude to his
reintroduction into the MCU at some point in the future and all the Hydra (and
Zemo, and Strucker, and the list goes on) glory he entails. I was blind-sided,
and I’m not often surprised by anything in a comic book film. The post-credits
scene was subtle and not exactly a shocker, but it was a well-executed segue into
the upcoming Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers version) film debuting around a
month before Avengers 4.
Analysis
What’s next? What’s the resolution? Theories and thoughts…
So, did Thanos just kill everyone? Let’s recap: Winter
Soldier, Groot, Black Panther, Falcon, Scarlet Witch, Star-Lord, Mantis, Drax,
Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, Maria Hill, and Nick Fury have all been willed out of
existence by the Infinity Gauntlet. Or so it seems. They similarly disappear
off the face of the planet by appearing to turn to ash and then just fading
away. Some things to keep in mind about the gems: we’ve never seen a stone
directly kill someone. When it affected Drax and Mantis earlier on Knowhere,
they just go back to normal later. The gruesome things it does to them should
kill them, but they don’t. So that’s weird. The soul gem is a mystery. They say
so directly in the film (“no one really knows how it works”) and it doesn’t have
a direct analog to an obvious material power like the others (power is like
energy manipulation, time, space, and reality all manipulate those dimensions,
and the mind gem allows for powerful telepathic powers – not that Thanos ever
uses those, that we know of). Is it possible that the stones can’t kill anyone
and that the people Thanos “wiped out” were really just blinked into the soul
gem (which, in the Marvel Universe, has a soul realm where many, including
recently Gamora and historically Adam Warlock, the dude most likely in that egg
at the end of GotG Vol. 2, folks have lived). IMO this is one of the most plausible
resolutions of the story: half of the world is trapped in the soul gem, a weird
parallel reality, and the other half has to bring them back.
The other best explanation I’ve got is that Dr. Strange
already knows how the heroes win and he’s manipulating events to ensure that
the heroes accomplish the moon shoot 1: 15,000,000 chance he’s seen in his trips
through time. To do so, he knew he had to let Thanos win so he’d lower his
guard and wouldn’t kill Tony, who is essential in some way to the ultimate victory
over the Mad Titan. It’s plausible some sort of time/dimensional travel is
necessary to do so and Dr. Strange has left the heroes clues through time on
how to do it. Captain Marvel’s film takes place in the 1980’s and it’s feasible
that Strange passed on some critical info to her in the past that could impact
the ability of the Ultimate Alliance to win in the end. Time or
interdimensional travel could also kickstart some changes in heroes’ identities
necessary for addressing the impending retirements of some actors in key roles
in the MCU, and help introduce both the Fantastic Four and the mutants once the
deal with Fox is finalized, most likely in the 2020-2021 film seasons with
teasers starting as early as next year.
Hawkeye and Ant-Man? As noted by Natasha, they’re on house
arrest for the events of Civil War, but, really, they didn’t even show up at
all when space aliens landed in Greenwich and Wakanda? Fury didn’t get them
involved? Cap, the greatest strategic mind in the MCU, doesn’t drop them a line
on the way to Wakanda? I have a strange feeling there’s a role yet to be played
by these two and that they’re being held on deck for a reason. I understand
that shoots-arrows-guy and size-manipulation-guy may not seem like a huge deal,
but Hawkeye is a proven leader with not only incredibly accurate marksmanship
but also great strategic sense and tactical execution. His usefulness in a
global conflagration of this size is without a doubt, even if he isn’t
singularly decisive. Ant-Man is more useful here for being small than being big
for sure. His stealth could allow him to get under an infinity stone and break
up the gauntlet’s monopoly without Thanos detecting him. He could be a real
difference maker. Along with Wasp, they’d make for a formidable one-two punch
between the ears as well.
Loki will come back, but not the Tom Hiddleston Loki. Asgardian
gods don’t tend to stay dead for long, but they come back in new forms,
sometimes de-aged, sometimes non-human, sometimes gender-swapped. I’d bet on a young
Loki going forward, but perhaps alongside Hemsworth continuing as Thor. I see
no reason he couldn’t go on for a couple of more films as the Odinson.
One final theory: everyone that looks like they’re dead is
alive and everyone that looks alive is dead. Being stuck in the “real” reality
is the hell-on-earth and Thanos’s picturesque reality created by the stones is
the one where all the reality-bent heroes went to. Maybe no one is dead and Thanos
just broke off a new universe. It is odd that all of the newest MCU characters
are the ones that faded, and all of the impending retirees are still up and
going at the end of Infinity War. It’s not what you expect so maybe it’s not
what you think either. I wouldn’t be shocked if the swerve is that only
the faded heroes live somehow. It makes the most sense for the ongoing MCU if
they do so. I must admit that the sequels to GotG, Spider-Man, and Black
Panther all seem odd going forward without their stars and all have been
confirmed by Disney/Marvel.
Concluding thoughts
This is probably enough for now. I loved the movie. It’s a
special ending to the first generation of Marvel heroes. I hope folks enjoy it
the same way I did, on the edge of my seat for 2+ hours. I’ll be looking
forward to Ant-Man & Wasp, Captain Marvel, and Avengers 4 over the next 13
months. And, of course, to the upcoming books from Marvel and DC on Free Comic
Book Day this Saturday. Until then, Make Mine Marvel.
