Avengers: Infinity War

Ten years ago, I was a twelve-year old middle-schooler who was a complete virgin to the way the world works, and that couldn't hold any truer to my perception of movies. Movies were just something fun to watch on the big screen, and I would have to beg my mom to go see a new movie when it came out and hope I got lucky enough that she would pony up the cash for some big box office release. It was 2008, and one of the films she agreed to was Iron Man, a movie about a superhero I knew but didn't know enough to really care. But boy did it look cool then, and I still love it today.

Today, I'm a 22-year old college student who's going on his third year of taking films seriously, and I know more about what makes the world go around. Every week I pony up my own cash to see at least one release just to turn around and chat about it on r/movies and write a quick review on here that hardly anyone ever reads. It's 2018, and we've now had nineteen films that have spawned off from that original Iron Man in 2008, and the road has been rough up to now. Yet, here we are, and this is apparently the film we've all been waiting for: Infinity War.

I've waxed poetic about my thoughts on the MCU before, so I'll save the rhetoric for once, because you know the rules. It's one of the biggest franchises in the world, duh. So, with that out of the way, we can get down to the nitty gritty. I was skeptical about Infinity War, the trailers made the film look like one giant clusterf**k of MCU heroes coming together to fight one giant villain. I was scared that things would get too clouded to really pay attention, and that this may be the first theatrical flop for the MCU (flop is a broad term).

Was I right? Thankfully no.

Infinity War definitely does deliver on its promises. Rather than being one giant mesh of characters coming against one common enemy, it does its best to flesh out these characters and keep them to their own private battles. It spreads out the story to three basic plotlines, which all really come together in the end in one way, shape, or form. The Avengers still feel just as broken up as they did when we left them in Civil War, even if they've sort of patched up the relations in this film, it doesn't seem very hamfisted...for the most part (more on that later).

For one, I really welcomed the fact that this film actually holds some weight to it, some actual honest emotion in some scenes (and I'm trying to write this the best way without spoiling the whole thing). There are scenes that will actually hit you in a tough place due to the cinematography, score, and the acting of the cast, which is actually really well-done for a movie of this caliber. These MCU films are no stranger to having their sadder moments, but in the past they've always undercut them with cheesy jokes or something that completely negates their weight. There are jokes in this film, but they're more well-timed, which doesn't completely throw everything off. It was an issue I had with Black Panther, and I'm glad they learned from their mistakes.

Now as I was mentioning earlier, the movie doesn't do a bad job at meshing these characters together, so it doesn't seem like such a mess when they come together at the end, but I wasn't a fan of all of the setup. There was definitely a feeling of way too much going on in certain parts, where you had three groups of different heroes going on to do their thing in preparation for the final battle. Sometimes you would forget that one group was on their thing, as the movie would take great lengths focusing on another, and when it would switch back you would be like, "Oh yeah, they're doing that thing too." I feel like there could be a better means of blending that together to be less jarring than it is, especially when they did all come together in the end. It's not terrible, just a tad overwhelming.

Overall, I was very surprised by how well Infinity War was pulled off, especially after feeling so let down by Black Panther in retrospect. It's not the most perfect MCU film but it's definitely one of the better ones, it's a lot of fun, and if you enjoy these characters and this franchise, you'll love it. It gets an 8.4/10.