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For a 160-minute epic that unifies a far-flung superhero universe that took a decade to build, packs 76 characters into one story, and has four to six plotlines cooking at any given time, "Avengers: Infinity War" hangs together pretty well. The plot finds the intergalactic bad guy Thanos ( Josh Brolin ) and his army of Green Goblin-looking warriors bouncing from star system to star system, torturing and killing various adversaries in order to gather six super-powerful Infinity Stones and embed them in Thanos' oversized glove. Once he's collected all six, Thanos will be able to achieve his dream of wiping out half the population of the universe in order to preserve its precious resources and restore "balance." The only thing standing in his way are the Avengers, led by Thor ( Chris Hemsworth ), Hulk/Bruce Banner ( Mark Ruffalo ), Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow ( Scarlett Johansson ), Steve Rogers/Captain America ( Chris Evans ) and the rest. Plus all the characters from " Black Panther ." And the ones from " Guardians of the Galaxy ." And a few more Marvel characters who are new to this film.

Co-directors Joe and Anthony Russo , co-writers Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus , their small army of actors, and their hundreds of filmmaking collaborators have managed to get on the same page and stay on it. The film's running time doesn't fly by, exactly, but it rarely seems to stall out, which is impressive when you consider how many of the movie's big scenes consist of people talking, sometimes emoting, in close-up. The Russos swagger headfirst into melodrama here, more blatantly than in any previous Marvel film they've directed, though there are problems with their approach that I'll outline in a moment. The gambit works, mostly, because the story is an operatic tragedy that necessarily has to end with the heroes in a deep, dark place. In light of all this, it's inevitable (and in no way a spoiler to reveal here) that not every character makes it out alive, and that if you come away from the movie feeling bummed out and anxious rather than elated, that means "Infinity War" has done its job, just as " The Empire Strikes Back " and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One" did their jobs.

If only the film were better modulated, or perhaps longer, or more elegantly shaped, or ... well, it's hard to say exactly what's wrong here. But something's not up to snuff. This is, as many have pointed out, one half of a story broken in two, but it feels like less than half somehow. Until pretty recently, MCU films have suffered from collective curve-grading—each film seemed content to settle for "better than expected," as opposed to being really, truly good—and that feeling returns here, unfortunately. "Infinity War" faced so many challenges, many of them unique to this particular project, that it's a small miracle that it works at all. On some level, it feels ungrateful to ask a movie that already does the impossible to do it with more panache. But what are superhero movies without panache really good for? If there was ever a moment to swing for the fences, it was this one.

I like how the movie builds everything around Brolin's CGI-assisted but still fully inhabited performance as Thanos—an oddly wistful and lonely figure who is, essentially, a religious fanatic, yet carries himself with the calm certainty of a military man who's read the ancient Greeks and speaks tenderly to cadets while stepping on their necks. (Thanos' second-in-command, the snide and hateful space wizard Ebony Maw—played by Tom Vaughan-Lawlor —makes an equally strong impression, though he doesn't have many scenes.) Some of the movie's most affecting and/or frightening moments see Thanos tormenting captive heroes (including Zoe Saldana's Gamora and her sister Nebula, played by Karen Gillan ) until they disclose the location of the stones, or forcing them to consider killing themselves (or having others kill them) to stop Thanos from achieving his dream.

The movie treats Thanos as an agent of pure chaos, like an Old Testament curse come to life, picking people up by their skulls, deconstructing them into three-dimensional puzzles with a wave of his hand, even rupturing the structural integrity of the universe. He seems to have the brute force of the Hulk and the conjuring skill of Benedict Cumberbatch's Doctor Strange, one of the only characters who routinely manages to counter his destructive power. At various points, characters wonder aloud if they'd have been better off not fighting him. These are action heroes, but the threat facing them is so daunting that they contemplate an alternate reality in which they don't act.

Vision ( Paul Bettany ), who has one of the stones embedded in his forehead, gets attacked while he's off the grid in Scotland, enjoying the company of his beloved Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch ( Elizabeth Olsen ); after they fight off Thanos' goons at great personal cost, he quips, "I'm beginning to think we should've stayed in bed." Peter Parker/Spider-Man springs into action during a class trip after spotting Thanos' enormous, doughnut shaped spacecraft descending on Manhattan, then gets the stuffing kicked out of him and says, "I should've stayed on the bus." The movie has wicked fun foreshadowing the possible demise of our heroes. In the only scene featuring Tony and his partner Pepper ( Gwyneth Paltrow ), they discuss Tony's dream that they had a baby; it feels like the superhero version of one of those scenes in a war flick where the young draftee shows off a photo of his fiancee and declares, "Ain't she pretty?" Thanos' assault on Wakanda, where Cap and the gang take Vision in hopes that Shuri ( Letitia Wright ) can preemptively extract and destroy his Infinity Stone, is depicted as the logical, awful result of revealing the once-hidden country's location, and aligning it with global defense organizations after centuries of neutrality.

And yet, despite the movie's embrace of pain and fear—exemplified by a scene where Thor lists all the loved ones he's lost, and appears to be battling PTSD like Tony—it almost never feels as special or as powerful as it ought to. The direction is part of the problem. Marvel's conceptual artists, visual effects technicians, colorists, and sound designers and mixers are operating at what might be their aesthetic peak here—as well they should be, considering how long this company has labored to perfect a consistent style and tone; the panoramic vistas showing wrecked cities and space stations and distant planets and alternate dimensions, a jumble of psychedelic ironwork and watercolor clouds, seem as strongly influenced by the legendary Marvel illustrator Jack Kirby as Taika Waititi's disco lark " Thor: Ragnarok ." 

But rather than match their support team's inventiveness, the directors avoid risk. They capture both the violent (sometimes cruel) action and the emotionally intense private moments in either a boringly flat or frantically hacky manner (snap-zooms on falling figures; herky-jerky camerawork and fast cutting during fight scenes; the same stuff you see in most action films made during the past decade). They use the camera in an expressive or poetic way so rarely that when they do bust out a heartfelt flourish (like the long, slow camera move that reveals the Guardians in their spaceship engaged in a sing-along, or the "wipes" that reveal the reality that Thanos' illusions hide, or a climatic fight between Thanos and multiple heroes) it's as if somebody had briefly sparked a dull wedding reception to life by going out on the dance floor and demanding a song with a backbeat.

This would all be a lot less grating if the MCU hadn't produced two back-to-back hits, "Thor: Ragnarok" and "Black Panther," which had vivid directorial personalities (Waititi and Ryan Coogler , respectively), and took as many stylistic/tonal risks as Marvel's brand would allow. The studio is too bottom-line driven to permit the sort of eccentricity that would've made this project truly pop (Joss Whedon's ungainly potluck " Avengers: Age of Ultron ," with its spiky wit and nihilistic robot philosopher baddie, is looking better in retrospect). But it's no compliment to the Russos to say that it's tough to tell just by looking at the movie if they were were on a tight corporate leash the entire time, or if they decided to minimize the innate risks of a project this huge and eagerly anticipated by making vanilla choices.

Another issue—and I'm getting dorm room-philosophical, so bear with me—is that the format of a blockbuster MCU movie with 76 characters exposes the limitations of telling a superhero story via this now-well-established cinematic template, as opposed to telling it on the printed page, where the only limits are the writer's imagination and the illustrator's flair for presentation. The storytelling vocabulary of superhero movies doesn't have to be constricted (FX's extravagantly inventive TV series "Legion" is proof) but it feels quite constricted here; it always has been, notwithstanding occasional outliers like "Thor: Ragnarok," "Black Panther" and "Ant Man." There are an infinite number of striking or subtle ways that comic book writers and artists can convey exposition, character details, psychological states, and simultaneous events occurring in parallel storylines; you can do stuff like expand a single decisive instant so that it fills up six pages, or show Spider-Man swinging through midtown Manhattan in a full-page splash panel dotted with thought balloons that summarize a year's worth of his life. But in the sorts of Marvel films that the MCU has released since 2008, we've mostly gotten stuck in linear time, which is where most commercial narratives unfold. Most of the scenes in "Infinity War" fall into one of two categories: (1) scenes where people go into rooms or out onto the street and talk to each other, and (2) action sequences where characters banter while punching and zapping each other and dodging falling rocks, buildings, and spaceships and trying not to get sucked into time-space portals.

There's only so much information that can be put across when you've limited your storytelling in that way. The ticking clock proves a more formidable enemy than Thanos. There are only so many moments or lines that "Infinity War" can give, say, to Tony and Pepper; or to Bruce and Natasha, who had a powerful connection in "Age of Ultron," got separated soon after, and are confined to a couple of brief exchanges here; or to Peter Quill/Starlord ( Chris Pratt ), Rocket Raccoon ( Bradley Cooper ), Drax ( Dave Bautista ) and Mantis ( Pom Klementieff ), who are stuck doing comic relief when they aren't suffering greatly or setting up Peter to make some very bad, dumb choices. Heimdall ( Idris Elba ), The Collector ( Benicio Del Toro ) and Proxima Midnight ( Carrie Coon ) are barely in the film. Cap gets maybe two dozen lines and a few meaningful glances, mostly aimed at Sebastian Stan's Bucky/Winter Soldier, who has even less to do. Chadwick Boseman's T'Challa/Black Panther, who anchored his own marvelous feature just a few months ago, is reduced to a glorified field general in "Infinity War," standing alongside Okoye ( Danai Gurira ) and M'Baku ( Winston Duke ) and watching Thanos' troops burn, trample, and otherwise disfigure the countryside (an image that's more upsetting, for various reasons, than a lot of Thanos' violence against individuals).

Another downside of packing so many people into one film—so many that they apparently had to cut a few; the film's IMDb page lists numerous major players who are nowhere to be seen—is that you start to notice that certain characters are redundant variations on/photocopies of other characters, a realization that you might not have had if you were were watching them star in their own self-contained movies. Putting Tony, Peter Parker and Peter Quill in the same scenes, for instance, might sound like a slam dunk, but once you spend a few minutes with them, the barrage of wise-assery becomes grating. It's like being stuck at a party where every other guy in the room mistakenly believes he's the funny one. (The scenes between Thor and the Guardians are much better because Thor plays the straight man to Quill, who is threatened by his awesome masculine beauty.)

As is often the case in Russo-directed Marvel movies, the humor comes across more vividly than the action. (" Captain America: The Winter Soldier ," with its paranoid thriller stylings and brutal, close-quarters action, is still their zenith.) The movie makes excellent use of Thor and his trickster brother Loki ( Tom Hiddleston ), and gives Hemsworth more chances to show off his formidable deadpan (when Rocket expresses amazement that he can speak Groot's language, he explains, "They taught it on Asgard—it was an elective"). But the joking around doesn't so much complement the film's dark material as clash with it and undermine it. The self-aware humor that the MCU has always done so well ends up working against "Infinity War" in the end. Marvel's "just kidding" sensibility was a refreshing counterweight to the fashionable darkness of early DC Universe movies, as well as to the "dark & gritty" mode that became a global pop culture default after the success of Christopher Nolan's Batman movies. But if there was ever a time for Marvel to bust out the Zack Snyder-style, heavy-metal gloom and slap the smirk off its own face, it's here, in a film that's mostly about summoning the courage to fight battles that you know you can't win, and accepting the likelihood of dying on your knees with your head held high.

This movie shouldn't just engage and amuse and occasionally move us; it should shock and scar us. It should kill Ned Stark and Optimus Prime and Bambi's mommy, then look us in the eye after each fresh wound and say, "Sorry, love. These things happen." The last 15 minutes have the flavor of that sort of trauma, but without the actual trauma. Deep down, we all know that modern superhero movies are operating with even lower dramatic stakes than Star Wars or James Bond movies: beloved characters rarely stay dead after they've been killed, and no plot development, no matter how grave, is irreversible, so there's no possible way that what seems to be happening on the screen could really be happening. But we shouldn't be thinking about any of that as we watch Thanos hurt characters we've grown to love and cast the universe into ruin. The very sight should rip our hearts out.  

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Film credits.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action throughout, language and some crude references.

149 minutes

Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark / Iron Man

Chris Hemsworth as Thor Odinson

Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner / The Hulk

Chris Evans as Steve Rogers / Nomad

Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow

Chris Pratt as Peter Quill / Star-Lord

Josh Brolin as Thanos

Benedict Cumberbatch as Stephen Strange / Doctor Strange

Don Cheadle as James Rhodes / War Machine

Tom Holland as Peter Parker / Spider-Man

Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa / Black Panther

Paul Bettany as Vision

Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch

Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson / Falcon

Sebastian Stan as James "Bucky" Barnes / White Wolf

Tom Hiddleston as Loki

Idris Elba as Heimdall

Peter Dinklage

Benedict Wong as Wong

Pom Klementieff as Mantis

Karen Gillan as Nebula

Dave Bautista as Drax

Zoe Saldana as Gamora

Vin Diesel as Groot (voice)

Bradley Cooper as Rocket Raccoon (voice)

Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts

Benicio Del Toro as Taneleer Tivan / The Collector

Danai Gurira as Okoye

Letitia Wright as Shuri

Winston Duke as M'Baku

Tom Vaughan-Lawlor as Ebony Maw

• Anthony Russo

Writer (comic book story)

• Jim Starlin
• George Perez
• Christopher Markus
• Stephen McFeely

Cinematographer

• Trent Opaloch
• Jeffrey Ford
• Matthew Schmidt
• Alan Silvestri

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‘Avengers: Infinity War’: It’s Marvel’s Universe. We Just Live in It.

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By A.O. Scott

• April 24, 2018

Considered on its own, as a single, nearly 2-hour-40-minute movie, “Avengers: Infinity War” makes very little sense, apart from the near convergence of its title and its running time. Early on, someone menacingly (and presciently) says, “You may think this is suffering. No: It’s salvation.” That’s a bit overstated either way. It’s puzzlement and irritation and also, yes, delight. But of course this film, the 19th installment in a series, was never meant to be viewed or judged in isolation. In that respect it shouldn’t really be thought of as a movie at all, at least in the ways people with jobs like mine are accustomed to using the word. Which poses a few difficulties, for me and also, I would argue, for you.

Directed by Joe and Anthony Russo , scrappy fraternal climbers up the 21st-century Hollywood ladder, “Infinity War” is a chunk of matter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a vast entity that long ago expanded beyond the usual boundaries of sequelization and brand extension. This synergistic expression of the corporate interests of Marvel Studios and the Walt Disney Company — which now include 19 feature films and much else besides — has come to be less a creative or commercial undertaking than an immutable fact of life, like sex or the weather or capitalism itself.

Anatomy of a Scene | ‘Avengers: Infinity War’

The directors anthony and joe russo narrate a scene featuring robert downey jr., benedict cumberbatch, mark ruffalo, benedict wong and tom holland..

Hi, I’m Joe Russo. And I’m Anthony Russo. And we are the directors of “Avengers: Infinity War.” This scene takes place about 20 minutes into the film in Dr. Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum. And Tony Stark is looking at the burner phone that Steve Rogers gave to him, trying to decide whether or not he’s actually going to contact Steve about what’s occurring in the movie when he is interrupted by a sound. “Say, Doc. You wouldn’t happen to be moving your hair, would you?” “Not at the moment, no.” Part of the creative appeal of this movie was us bringing together disparate characters throughout the MCU and kind of smashing them together in a crisis situation. The intention was to create propulsive narrative, where the plot is driven by the villain, and he keeps interrupting the heroes because he’s one step ahead of them. This is one of those incidents. And this shot, you know, part of what we tried to bring to the MCU as filmmakers on a tonal level ever since our first film, “Captain America, Winter Soldier” is just a grounding and a real world patina over who these people are to try to bring out their humanity a little more in contrast to their powers. And this shot here is in that vein in the sense that it’s a very long shot. We stay in the perspective of these characters as they walk out into Greenwich Village and discover the scene of chaos unfolding. And we discover it as they discover it, and the scope of it as they discover it. It’s a way to increase tension as they walk down the sidewalk. What are they going to see? What is the audience going to see? And then here is probably the most asked about VFX shot in the movie is the hair standing up on Peter Parker’s arm. We’ve been asked hundreds of times how we got Tom Holland’s hair to stand up his arm. And it was a very gentle blowing on his ear actually did it. [laughs] It’s a CG shot. But this fulfilling the promise of “Infinity War” is that all of the characters are working together in this movie to try to stop Thanos, including Stan Lee. “What’s the matter with you kids? You never seen a spaceship before?” While this is a multi-perspective film, Thanos is the glue that binds all the characters together, as we watch Peter Parker swing off towards the incident in New York. [music]

That makes the franchise hard to criticize. You can’t really be for or against Marvel (in spite of the conspiracy theories of some DC fans ), and you can’t quite opt out of it either. They don’t call it a universe for nothing: Where else are we going to go? So we make our zigzagging ways, picking out our favorite planets and solar systems, accepting a baseline of tedious, standardized dead space that makes the brighter constellations seem disproportionately fresh and surprising. “Guardians of the Galaxy” was so funny and weird. Not like a superhero movie at all. Same with “Thor: Ragnarok.” Captain America is such a complicated guy. “Black Panther” gave audiences so much to root for and talk about.

[ Read A.O. Scott’s spoiler-filled article about the ending of “Avengers: Infinity War.” ]

Those interesting, unusual specimens — what we used to think of, in simpler times, as “good movies” — aren’t exactly accidents. They are carefully planned exceptions that uphold a rule (meaning a regime as well as a norm) of passive acceptance disguised as enthusiasm. This universe is engineered for variety and inclusiveness, within certain strict parameters. Above all, the Disney-Marvel combination is a giant machine that manufactures maximum consent. The cosmos is theirs. The rest of us just live in it.

I’m not complaining, but rather pointing out how pointless, how silly it sounds when anyone bothers to venture a complaint. Who wants to be a hater? Still, it’s worth noting that the ascendance of Marvel (and of other, not quite as universal entities like it) has narrowed the parameters of criticism. I’m supposed to tell you, in this review, how much fun you’ll have at “Infinity War.” (Yes, you will have some. Will you have enough? Almost.) But I’ve probably already gone too far in trying to think about what it means. The Marvel movies and others of their kind often produce an illusion of profundity, a slick, murky overlay of allegorical suggestiveness. This provides grist for the kind of think pieces that spar with one another — “Infinity War” is liberal; no, it’s conservative; but don’t you see that it’s a protest against Trump; actually, it’s an attack on the tyranny of political correctness — until they catalyze the inevitable anti-intellectual backlash. It’s just a movie! Don’t spoil the fun!

And of course it is with respect to “spoilers” that the policing of discourse is most ruthlessly and effectively practiced. Reviewers who attend advance screenings take a vow of silence about plot details that will be widely known within a week and all but forgotten a week after that. Government secrets are guarded with less care, and requests from public officials to go off the record are addressed with more skepticism. But if I mention which superhero dies, or which one has an unexpected relationship with someone else — well, I wouldn’t dream of it. Not because I’m afraid of Disney executives. It’s the wrath of their obedient, weaponized minions I fear. In other words: you.

This is not a healthy situation. The reasonable concern that major plot elements not be divulged has spawned a phobic, hypersensitive taboo against public discussion of anything that happens onscreen. If, for example, I were to share that Thor (Chris Hemsworth) mistakes Rocket (Bradley Cooper), who is a raccoon, for a rabbit — whoops, you already hit “send,” didn’t you? The joke is repeated a half-dozen times, so it kind of ruins itself. And until the end, the whole thing is weirdly free of any but the most superficial, mechanical surprises.

The action is especially tedious and predictable. I mean both the scenes of fighting and flying and the overall rhythm of the first two hours or so. People talk for a while, sprinkling jokes and morsels of personality into the heavy dough of exposition. Then they fight in the usual way, by throwing giant objects (and one another) and shooting waves of color from their hands. The noisy, bloated spectacles of combat were surely the most expensive parts of the movie, but the money seems less like an imaginative tool than a substitute for genuine imagination.

There is so much to explain, but basically a large purple fellow named Thanos (Josh Brolin) wants, on vague Malthusian principles, to wipe out half the life in the universe. As you try to keep track of all the good guys massed against him, you may decide he has a point. But he’s not a bad villain. I mean, he’s very bad, but his malevolence is laced with melancholy, and there is a ghastly grandeur to his ambition.

To fulfill his evil plans, Thanos needs to collect six “infinity stones,” which in spite of their awesome power look a lot like what you would find in the craft kit you have been meaning to regift since your kid’s seventh birthday. Also, come on: Another quest for magic gewgaws? This one lumbers from Vormir to Knowhere to Titan, with terrestrial stops in New York, Scotland and Wakanda. Along the way, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) stage a Sherlock Holmes meta-duel and compare goatees. The hunky-Chris showdown — Hemsworth vs. Pratt (Peter Quill) vs. Evans (Captain America) — ends in a three-way tie. Zoe Saldana is heartbreaking as Gamora. If you end up wanting more Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) or Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) or War Machine (Don Cheadle), or whoever your favorite happens to be — well, that’s kind of the idea, isn’t it?

But where you end up may not be where you thought this was going. The final act, including the post-credits sting (to infinity and beyond, as it were) brings a chill, a darkness and a hush that represent something new in this universe. “Infinity War” is the first half of the final installment in the series, and it concludes with a premonition of finality. Its intimations of grief and terror feel shrewdly attuned to what is happening in the actual, unmarvelous world. But those emotions can also be folded back into the movies themselves. This universe is coming to an end. And then where will we be?

Avengers: Infinity War Rated PG-13. Rough talk and large-scale digital slaughter Running time: 2 hours 36 minutes.

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Avengers: Infinity War review: Marvel’s biggest, most bizarre movie

Avengers: Infinity War isn’t the best Marvel movie. But it’s Marvel’s most daring. 

by Alex Abad-Santos

Avengers: Infinity War feels like a Marvel movie on bath salts. Trying to describe any part of it alone will make you sound like you’ve lost your mind; trying to describe it all kind of makes it sound like it’s lost its mind. And it’s all the more confounding for how closely it mirrors its decade of movie predecessors only to end up shattering that mirror: Infinity War moves, sounds, and acts like a typical Marvel movie, but then unmasks itself as a creature distinctly its own.

Throughout Marvel Studios’ 10-year cinematic history, we’ve seen the world saved multiple times, from threats ranging from a chunk of Earth poised to crash down and wipe us out like the dinosaurs in Avengers: Age of Ultron to the unkillable goddess of death in Thor: Ragnarok .

You don’t have to squint too hard to see that all these villains and their endgames (take control of the planet and/or the universe), as well as our heroes’ efforts to stop them, have started to look essentially the same.

“We don’t trade lives,” Captain America ( Chris Evans ) tells his compatriots in Avengers: Infinity War , essentially summing up Marvel’s ethos over the past 18 movies: Leave no men, women, children, or any other life form behind.

Directed by the Russo brothers , the architects behind Captain America: Civil War and Captain America: Winter Soldier , Infinity War slyly betrays Cap, presenting his and the Avengers’ worldviews as naive and privileged. Instead, it dares to ask what happens if saving the day means taking real, tangible losses — a concept so foreign that it comes in the form of an intergalactic purple titan named Thanos ( Josh Brolin ).

It’s a testament to Marvel and the Russos’ daring that Thanos is actually one of the less surprising things about Infinity War . For the past six years, we’ve been told that he’s on a collision course with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, setting us up for the chaos that ensues in this long-heralded culmination. What I didn’t fully realize is just what that chaos would look like, and that Marvel had the guts to, mostly, pull it off.

Infinity War is more of a Thanos movie than an Avengers movie

The most difficult task facing Infinity War is addressing all of the characters, motivations, subplots, and relationships that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has built up over the years without making it feel like an expository avalanche careening down a mountain to bury the audience below.

For example: Gamora ( Zoe Saldana ) and Nebula ( Karen Gillan ) are adopted daughters of Thanos, the villain of Infinity War and the big bad lurking in the shadows of Marvel’s movies since 2012’s Avengers . Gamora and Nebula hate each other and hate Thanos, who tortured them by pitting them against each other; he also killed the family of Gamora’s Guardians of the Galaxy teammate Drax ( Dave Bautista ).

Gamora, Drax, and the other Guardians aren’t technically Avengers, but that’s just because they operate in Marvel’s cosmic universe, which we found out in Thor: Ragnarok is connected to Thor’s Asgard, a recently destroyed world populated by Norse gods and goddesses.

That intricate web of characters and motivations barely scratches the surface of four of Marvel’s recent movies; there are 18 total, not including Infinity War .

The Russo brothers’ solution to this dilemma is to turn a movie nominally about the Avengers into a movie about Thanos, played by Brolin decked out in lumpy mounds of purple CGI.

The special effects needed to turn Brolin into Thanos distract in the villain’s softer moments, as when he explains how exactly he came to be the Mad Titan. We’re told that, ages ago, Thanos’s home planet was bountiful but resources were finite. To alleviate the stress on the planet, Thanos had the idea to reduce it by half, eliminating life in order to preserve it.

Not satisfied with culling his own planet, Thanos has continued on a mission to eliminate half the life in the universe, and needs the Infinity Stones to do so. And it just so happens that our Avengers are the only thing standing in his way.

Thanos’s story allows Saldana to shine, as she rounds out Gamora with more humanity and purpose than the Guardians movies have allowed her. That she’s acting opposite a computer-enhanced Brolin in a majority of her scenes is even more impressive.

But giving Thanos such an expansive history comes at a price.

Most of the Marvel superheroes appearing in Infinity War, particularly Black Panther and Captain America, are compressed, concentrated versions of themselves. T’Challa ( Chadwick Boseman ) is given five or so lines to be majestic in his defense of Wakanda; Cap gets a few more minutes to be noble and inspiring. Spider-Man ( Tom Holland ) is around to remind us that he’s young.

Scarlet Witch ( Elizabeth Olsen ) and Vision ( Paul Bettany ) have scenes together to tell you they’re in love. Characters like Drax, Mantis ( Pom Klementieff ), Falcon ( Anthony Mackie ), Bucky Barnes ( Sebastian Stan ), Shuri ( Letitia Wright ), Okoye ( Danai Gurira ), Rocket ( Bradley Cooper ), Black Widow ( Scarlett Johansson ), and, of course, Groot (Vin Diesel) have a few one-liners.

Instead of showing us why these characters are so beloved, the Russo brothers employ a Marvel shorthand of sorts, relying on past movies to do most of the work. And that’s not an unreasonable instinct: Captain America’s first onscreen return in Civil War is awe-inspiring in large part because he’s the Captain America who’s lived in the Marvel Cinematic Universe for the past seven years.

The same kind of chills happen when the “Wakanda” theme plays in Infinity War — a testament to the power of Ryan Coogler’s massive film . For devotees of the MCU, there’s plenty to read into between the lines of Infinity War , but only if you know where to look.

Not all of the film’s heroes are underutilized, though. Tony Stark’s ( Robert Downey Jr. ) fear of a galactic threat, established over the past few films featuring him, is fully realized in Thanos, and Downey sinks his teeth into Stark’s vulnerability and apprehension. Stark has to not only defeat this villain but also reconcile that mission with the fact that Thanos’s plan is horrifyingly adjacent to Stark’s dream of a universe so safe that Avengers are rendered obsolete.

Benedict Cumberbatch ’s Doctor Strange and Chris Hemsworth ’s Thor are apt counters to Stark. Cumberbatch’s Strange is coolly stubborn, calculating in ways that Stark isn’t. And Hemsworth, after flexing his knack for comedy in 2017’s Ragnarok , taps into that same humor but laces it with jagged grief and anger informed by having seen Thanos’s wrath firsthand.

It would have been stellar to see all of Marvel’s superheroes allowed these little pockets of storytelling in between the Thanos action, but there’s already not enough room in Infinity War ’s two hours and 40 minutes. I don’t envy the difficult decisions the Russos had to make about the heroes and storylines to spotlight, but I’m also not convinced that giving us a Thanos origin story and relying on that Marvel superhero shorthand to fill in the gaps was the most efficient way.

Perhaps the easiest way to reconcile this is to understand that Infinity War doesn’t want to have multiple profound heroes, but rather have one profound thing happen to all of its heroes.

Avengers: Infinity War is the most comic book movie that Marvel has ever created

The best and worst thing about Infinity War is that it’s a comic book movie.

Comic book artists aren’t bound by visual effects budgets, so they’re allowed to give us priceless imaginations on paper: new worlds on every page, mystifying beings, dazzling spacecraft, spellbinding powers, and megaton fights. Infinity War is the closest iteration of this limitless power that we’ve seen onscreen.

Midway through, I lost count of the planets and galaxies visited, each one terrifyingly beautiful in its own way. There’s a breath-stopping visit to a deserted ghost city of a planet, so evocative you can almost smell the sulfur in the air and feel the temperature drop when it comes on the screen.

And the faces of Thanos’s Black Order , his cabal of henchmen, are fearsome and distinct, offering both scintillating powers and copious nightmare fuel. Their fights with the Avengers are the film’s highlights, and a couple of them truly feel like significant threats to Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.

The problem with flexing this sort of expansive world building is that it requires so much jumping around the universe that the film feels like it’s spinning plates. That results in the compression I mentioned earlier, the feeling that some characters are around simply to remind you they exist. But it also, frustratingly, kneecaps what should be the MCU’s grandest fight scene, Infinity War ’s invasion of Wakanda.

It’s the largest-scale onscreen fight I can recall since the Battle of Helm’s Deep in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers . Our heroes, in a valiant last stand, are the only thing that stands between Thanos and universal destruction. And his generals have unleashed thousands of intergalactic hounds — what look to be a cross between snapping turtles and WWE wrestlers — upon Wakanda. Cap and Black Panther teaming up to hold the line is a strange mix of joy and stress. Seeing Okoye and Black Widow’s combat expertise in tandem is breathtaking. Same with Scarlet Witch unleashing her full powers.

Unfortunately, though, because there are multiple storylines going on at one time, we jump from Wakanda to outer space and another faction of Avengers doing their part to save the universe, or get thrust into Thor’s side quest to find a weapon strong enough to kill Thanos.

It’s frustrating that it’s so difficult to fully appreciate the fantastic work that went into orchestrating these massive spectacles when we’re constantly being jostled from place to place. Midway through, all these different settings and all these jumps begin to feel exhausting.

The same thing can happen in comic books. Some story arcs are better than others. And sometimes you’ll have to read through them all — even the most boring ones — to get the full crossover experience and make sure you didn’t miss anything.

But also as in comic books, there’s one absolute bombshell of a moment that grabs you by the neck and drives you back into the story. Infinity War boasts the most breathtaking, audacious moment in superhero movie history, one that rocketed through my brain and tore apart everything I thought I knew about the past 10 years of Marvel moviemaking. For the first time in a while, I can’t wait to see what happens next.

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Avengers: Infinity War review – colossal Marvel showdown revels in apocalyptic mayhem

Supersized set pieces, sharp one-liners and surprising deaths abound in the Russo brothers’ utterly confident comic-book movie mash-up

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N ot infinity perhaps, but a really, really big finity war. Colossal, cataclysmic, delirious, preposterous – and always surreally entertaining in the now well-established Marvel movie tradition. It’s a gigantic showdown between a force of cosmic wickedness and a chaotically assembled super-team of Marvel superheroes made more complicated by Doctor Strange’s tendency to multiclone himself in moments of battle stress.

There are some very unexpected family relationships that we had no idea about – potentially compromising unity in the face of encroaching evil. There are also some very surprising deaths – of which, of course, the less said the better. There are, moreover, some surprising omissions in the cast list. Or are there?

Avengers: Infinity War is a giant battle for which directors Anthony and Joe Russo have given us touches of JRR Tolkien’s Return of the King and JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The film delivers the sugar-rush of spectacle and some very amusing one-liners.

Whatever else it does, this Marvel movie shows its brand identity in the adroit management of tone. One moment it’s tragic, the next, it’s cracking wise. It’s absurd and yet persuades you of its overwhelming seriousness. And there are some amazing Saturday-morning-kids-show moments when you feel like cheering. Earth is being threatened by a massive malign hunk with a huge ridgey chin called Thanos, played by Josh Brolin. If he can gain ownership of all the talismanic infinity stones and place them in the holes in his custom-built gauntlet then he will have the ultimate power to destroy anything he wishes in the universe. And he has a chilling wish for mass slaughter of half the sentient beings in existence, ostensibly so that the other half will have enough food to eat – but really so they will bow down to him as the tyrant lord. Ranged against him, of course, are the good guys who come together not in a single phalanx but a constellation of improvised groupings, in which the alpha males have a tendency to bicker. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) is nettled by Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his supercilious air of intellectual superiority – and vice versa. Spider-Man (Tom Holland) shows up and annoys the hell out of them both with his millennial’s flair for pop culture references. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) finds himself having to do a ride-along with the Guardians of the Galaxy and Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is intimidated by Thor’s godlike machismo and finds himself trying to do the basso profundo voice. Vision (Paul Bettany) and Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) are tormented by the glowing stone in Vision’s blue head, and they’re agonised by the thought that self-destruction is the only way to keep it out of Thanos’s huge mitts. Their own situation brings them into contact with Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) – who prefers his non-super name now, not Captain America, and also the always frowning Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), together with the frankly traumatised Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo). Scenes and situations whoosh by like a bizarre and bizarrely exciting dream. A sudden trip to Wakanda, with its secret world of remedial hi-tech surgery, seems entirely plausible. T’Challa, or Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) greets the visitors with his habitual Shakespearean bearing and princely calm. Inevitably, there is a little confusion. Groups of superheroes clash and each thinks the other is on Thanos’s side. “What master do you serve?” shouts one, awkwardly. “You mean – like Jesus?” comes the exasperated reply. No. Thor is the only god around here and even he isn’t guaranteed a result. It’s all in the cosmic balance. In theory, all these superheroes crammed into one movie should trigger the law of diminishing returns and the Traveling Wilbury effect. And yet somehow in its pure uproariousness, it works. It’s just a supremely watchable film, utterly confident in its self-created malleable mythology. And confident also in the note of apocalyptic darkness.

I know it’s silly. And yet I can’t help looking forward to the next supersized episode of mayhem.

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Avengers: Infinity War is stunning, hilarious, and heartbreaking

Directors joe and anthony russo create a superhero movie where nobody is safe.

By Bryan Bishop

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The most definitive overarching issue with the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been the lack of stakes. Over the course of the saga’s previous 18 movies, MCU heroes have faced numerous world-ending threats, eking out victories by the skin of their teeth, only to have their worlds essentially return to normal in time for the next installment. The approach worked early, on a film-by-film basis, but when viewed as part of a 10-year narrative, it’s tended to weaken the broader franchise. There can be no drama without true risk, and in the MCU, audiences have learned that none of their favorites are ever really in harm’s way.

Directors Joe and Anthony Russo seem acutely aware of this issue with their latest entry, the massive, multi-film team-up Avengers: Infinity War . The long-awaited face-off between the Avengers and Thanos (Josh Brolin), the MCU’s ultimate big bad, is massively entertaining, deftly incorporating dozens of characters across multiple storylines with a kinetic flair. Its devotion to banter and one-liners makes it one of the funniest movies in the studio’s history, but it’s also a film where very bad things happen to good people. After years of movies where even the most mediocre heroes appeared to be invulnerable and indomitable, it’s an arresting jolt — and exactly the film the franchise needed.

After years of teasing Thanos’ upcoming arrival, Avengers: Infinity War wastes no time with stage-setting. It opens with Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) on the ship last seen at the end of Thor: Ragnarok , facing off against the big purple villain. Thanos is after a powerful crystal called an Infinity Stone, and he suspects Loki has one in the Tesseract — the glowing cube that served as a key plot device six years ago in The Avengers .

There are six Infinity Stones , the film explains: powerful crystals that originated in the Big Bang, and that represent aspects of existence and have related elemental powers. Some are spread across the universe, but half of them are on Earth, where they’ve played significant roles in past MCU movies. Thanos is trying to collect all of them, slotting them into a massive golden glove. If he acquires them all, he says, he’ll have the power to wipe out half the universe with a snap of his fingers.

It pays off years of emotional investment in ways that are often heart-wrenching.

The film tracks Thanos’ quest as he moves from stone to stone, while various superhero factions attempt to stop him. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), Spider-Man (Tom Holland), and Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) are attacked by several of Thanos’ henchman, who are eager to get the green Time Stone that Strange protects within the mystic Eye of Agamotto. Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany), who have gone into hiding to nurture their burgeoning romantic relationship, are attacked by minions seeking the Mind Stone that’s integrated within Vision’s brain. Along the way, the Guardians of the Galaxy team up with various heroes, a bearded Captain America (Chris Evans) comes out of hiding, and Black Panther’s home of Wakanda becomes ground zero for a central conflict. Nearly every character in the MCU is roped into the war, with Thanos swiftly establishing himself as an unprecedented threat on multiple fronts.

With so many characters in play, writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely ( Captain America: Civil War ) are faced with a remarkable challenge: giving every character a place in the story, without letting anyone other than Thanos dominate the larger narrative. The story crosscuts between four or five major story threads, much like Game of Thrones , Westworld , and other complicated serial narratives. It’s a testament to Markus and McFeely’s work that the film never feels crowded, even though it’s juggling such a massive number of movie stars. In fact, the film is able to give many characters their own meaningful story arcs throughout the film, with Tony Stark, Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), and the Vision / Scarlet Witch love story given particular focus. The result is a film that often feels surprisingly earnest and emotional. It pays off the emotional investment movie audiences have been making in these characters for years, sometimes in genuinely heart-wrenching ways.

The most outlandish-looking Marvel villain is also its most complex and layered one

Even with all of that, this film belongs to Josh Brolin’s Thanos. The prospect of a giant purple computer-generated bad guy has prompted some skepticism , but in context, the character is wonderfully effective. The visual effects undeniably capture the nuances of Brolin’s facial tics and mannerisms, allowing the actor to shine through all the CGI wizardry. It’s a good thing that it works so well, because Thanos is not the cardboard cutout villain that some previous Marvel bad guys have been. His master plan involves destroying half the universe, but in his own mind, his motivations are noble. He thinks he’s the hero of his story, and while nobody is going to agree with his tactics, his backstory does give his overall reasoning a perverse sort of logic. At several key moments in the film, Thanos nearly becomes a sympathetic character — even while he is doing truly horrific, unforgivable things. The biggest surprise of all may be that the most outlandish-looking Marvel villain is also its most complex and layered one, which simply wouldn’t be possible without the film’s synthesis of script, direction, performance, and visual effects.

The film’s sparkling sense of humor balances the weight of Thanos’ actions. Marvel’s films have always had a flair for comedy, but Infinity War turns the dial up further, maximizing the levity found in movies like Thor: Ragnarok and Guardians of the Galaxy . Pitting Star-Lord’s hyper-insecurity against Thor’s arrogant hyper-masculinity provides for some of the funniest moments in the entire MCU.

Doctor Strange and Tony Stark also play as comedic foils for each other, sparring over what might as well be the title for Most Arrogant Superhero On Earth. In a film that mixes so many different elements, it would be easy for many of these characters’ essential traits to fall by the wayside. But the Russo brothers don’t just preserve the characters’ innate sensibility. They’re actually able to incorporate the filmmaking sensibilities of the different franchises into their own tapestry. Sequences with Star-Lord, Rocket (Bradley Cooper), and Groot (Vin Diesel) feel like they’re from one of James Gunn’s Guardians films; Thor seems like he’s walked right off the set of Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok . The movie is a Marvel mixtape, combining the very best of everything that’s come before, but recontextualizing the individual parts to tell its own unique story.

The massive scale of the undertaking does have periodic downsides. The action sequences are mostly effective, but at times, there are so many characters being flung around like CG rag dolls that it can be hard to gauge what is happening to whom, in which order. And while every character does get a laugh, a heroic choice, or some other moment to shine, fans will no doubt be frustrated if their particular favorite hero isn’t foregrounded as much as other characters are. That’s simply the nature of the beast, however — it was inevitably going to happen with a project of this size. The fact that those concerns are fleeting, however, is a testament to what a massive storytelling achievement Infinity War is.

Audiences will be aghast at just how far The Avengers have fallen

The film can’t spread around its camera time in equal measure, but it does give all the characters an equal shot at despair. A decade of films have led up to Thanos, and Avengers: Infinity War delivers on that threat with a film that upends the entire fabric of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. No character is safe from the far-reaching implications of his actions, and it’s impressive to see just how dark Marvel is willing to go for this story. Even the biggest fan favorites are truly vulnerable, and the movie reinforces that idea — relentlessly, at times — as it sprints toward its final stunning moments. By the time the credits roll, audiences will no doubt be aghast at just how far the Avengers have fallen.

One problem, though, is that Infinity War leans so excessively toward darkness that it’s impossible to believe the studio won’t take back many of the things that happen onscreen. This is still the Disney-run Marvel universe, after all, and the popularity of some of its flagship characters all but guarantees that, no matter what happens during Avengers: Infinity War , much of it won’t be permanent. (In fact, in its final act, the film seems to tip its hand toward a Hail Mary solution that’s likely to come into play in the still-untitled Infinity War sequel .) But that’s the most minor of complaints. This is a comic book universe, after all, and the fact that Infinity War is able to embrace this darkness in the first place is a wonder. The only real crime is that audiences will have to wait until 2019 to see the conclusion.

Avengers: Infinity War opens on April 27th.

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• Avengers: Infinity War review: An adventure 10 years in the making

All your friends are here, and they’re fighting Thanos

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Every time I sit down to review a Marvel movie — and I’ve reviewed a lot of them — I ask myself the same question:

What do we expect from a Marvel movie these days?

Avengers: Infinity War is full of narrative challenges that would make a stand-alone film buckle. It groans under the weight of its cast , strains with the tension of holding four central plots aloft in nearly a dozen locations, flexes mightily between tones to fit the moods we associate with different Marvel subfranchises. Its strength is that we already know these characters, and that the movie is surrounded by a hype machine that has kept its central story — Thanos , the Infinity Stones , the Avengers — fresh in the audience’s minds. Infinity War was never intended to function outside the web of a franchise, so there’s little value in judging it separately.

What we expect from the directing duo, the Russo Brothers, and the screenwriting duo, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, isn’t so much that they reinvent the genre. (Although we wouldn’t say no, Marvel’s most recent films — Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther — being exemplary proof that there’s life left in the much fretted-over bones of the superhero trend .) What we really expect from Infinity War is to see some old friends — because a decade in, that’s what the Avengers are. We want to see them see each other, to watch them struggle against insurmountable odds, to feel their fear and hope as our own, and be transported by it.

By that metric, Avengers: Infinity War succeeds, with a confidence that is almost entirely earned.

Without getting into spoiler territory, Infinity War dives into its story without wasting time: Thanos, the shadowy alien figure who put the events of the first Avengers movie into motion , is coming. He’s after the six Infinity Stones, which are scattered across Earth and space , and it’s up to our heroes to stop him before he gets them all and attains an omnipotent power to warp reality to his dark will.

Infinity War has a lot to do, and even though the Russos have a decent track record of packing a movie full of characters but still giving them room to breathe ( Captain America: Civil War , for example), it might be better if you don’t walk in expecting the furtherance of anybody’s character arc in this one. Still, while the movie does flip all across the galaxy at a moment’s notice, it doesn’t flip too fast. It feels packed, but not rushed, delivering a story that’s surprisingly simple and straightforward, for all its threads — the Russos & Co. know exactly how much to bite off and chew.

True, the film does not have a particularly interesting structure. Narratively, it’s more of an inclined plane than an arc. But while I might not have been sure exactly when the third act began, I was thrilled by it all the same. There were really only a few moments where I was distracted from my viewing with the intrusive thought that this bit had really gone on too long or that Infinity War was building a moment that wasn’t earned.

The filmmakers gamely attempt to make an audience feel invested in Vision and Wanda, two characters whose development has happened almost entirely off-screen — not even Paul Bettany’s considerable puppy dog eyes could make me care about their relationship. Infinity War also does a lot of heavy lifting to turn Thanos into the compelling arch-nemesis that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been desperately trying to recreate since Loki’s post- Avengers semi-redemption. But in the end, no matter how many times you have him or one of his lackeys monologue about his motivations, he remains neither sympathetic nor even empathetic.

Overall, however, Infinity War lands the vast majority of the emotional beats it’s reaching for, which is why we’re here anyway. There are some tremendous surprises in store for viewers, including a wonderful cameo. The Russos play expertly in a sandbox that’s already chock full of castles built from 10 years of fan theories, speculation and even complete fiction about what might happen when Rocket Raccoon meets [SPOILER], or [SPOILER] meets Iron Man.

A decade into the franchise, what we expect from a Marvel movie is as informed by what’s come before it as anything else. It’s not just about the way that Marvel Studios has driven the evolution of the superhero genre in film, but in how it’s given us a set of characters and then consistently provided new adventures for them — for a full decade. There’s no way to do that without fostering an attachment between the audience and the story, and that attachment has evolved from a versatile foundation for larger stories to a narrative end in and of itself.

And that’s what we really expect from Avengers: Infinity War : We want to see the Avengers. We want to see them have a very big adventure. We want that adventure to be fun and sad and thrilling and hopeful, and to remind us why we like the Avengers. Above all, we want to leave the theater asking “what happens next?”

And Avengers: Infinity War , above everything else it does, will do that for you.

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• What Is Cinema?

Avengers: Infinity War Review: A Fine Salute to Those About to Die

By Richard Lawson

At long last, the Avengers seem to be getting somewhere. Since they first teamed up six years ago, I’ve yearned for their bright, rollicking exploits to take on some summative shape or ultimate purpose, something that really binds together not strictly just the Avengers films (of which the new Infinity War, opening April 24, is the third) but all the other disparate movies in their orbit. If we’re being asked to watch 19 movies in a series, with more to come, a sense of a grander arc would be nice. Finally, Infinity War provides that, assembling nearly all the heroes we’ve gone zooming after over the years for a defining adventure with actual life-or-death stakes.

Or, at least, the first half of one. The story will conclude next year with a part-two film, which gives Infinity War a slightly unsatisfying tang. Still, I appreciate the film’s move toward something concrete, inching us closer to a time when at least some of these stories will be complete. I don’t necessarily wish death upon any of these (largely resurrectable) gods and aliens and souped-up humans, but the faint sense of impending finality hanging in Infinity War ’s air is refreshing.

The guy helping nudge things toward a conclusion is Thanos, big and purple and from another world. We’ve met him fleetingly in the past, but now here he is front and center, a saturnine and surprisingly compelling villain given voice and lumbering body by Josh Brolin. Thanos has spent too much time on the wrong subreddit or something, and now lives by a pretty extreme philosophy that involves him trying to kill half of everything that’s alive in order to finally bring peace and balance to the universe. To accomplish that terrible end, he needs all six of the Infinity Stones—enchanted objects we’ve seen scattered throughout the other Marvel Studios films, vied for and contended with but only now proving more than MacGuffins.

A threat to the entire universe, made by a big guy whose magic rocks give him ultimate and near-invincible power, is sort of an all-hands-on-deck situation, so here comes everyone: Black Panther, Iron Man, Cappy, Gamora, teen Spider-Man, Thor, Loki, the raccoon, Groot, Bucky, the guy with the wings played by Anthony Mackie, the Hulk. All of them and more! It’s a vast ensemble, and though certain characters get more focus than others—Black Widow fans, manage your expectations—the film actually feels pretty thorough. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely —none strangers to the Avengers franchise—find clever groupings of characters and an equitable rhythm as the film shifts between narratives. They wrestle some kind of balance out of crossover chaos, doing an expert bit of crowd control.

The movie is a relentless clobberer, going fast and hard on action and exposition, managing a few pensive moments here and there, but mostly raging at full blare for its 150-minute run. That outsized aural and visual register is something we’ve grown accustomed to, in the Avengers films and others. But it plays just that much louder in Infinity War , the film towering over us (and the mid-spring cinematic landscape) with such sleek, assured dominance that one feels half cowed into awe and half sick about the corporate slavishness of it all. I cringed when my audience applauded the Marvel logo, and yet felt a frisson of true excitement when we gasped in pain and surprise at the (likely temporary) death of a beloved character. Infinity War is much like Thanos, terrifying and magnificent in its bigness, both unfeeling juggernaut and alluring giant ribboned with pathos.

There are moments of high drama in Infinity War —between father and daughter, brother and brother, mentor and protégé, lover and lover—that these actors, as deep in this series as we are, deliver on with teary intensity. And there’s a haunting final sequence that is as grave and, I daresay, almost poetic as anything the film series has done. One hopes that some of the more topical themes debated by the Avengers in the previous installments—particularly about their role in geopolitics and the security state—will be addressed at some point in the second film. It would be a little frustrating if all that half-baked discourse was just wiped out by a bad guy who’s bigger than politics. For now, though, the emotional takes persuasive precedence over the pseudo-intellectual.

Amidst all that heaviness, and the repetitive C.G.I. crash and clutter, Infinity War has some droll, inspired bits: Groot as a surly teen tree, a foppish alien henchman who rains down destruction with the flick of a spindly finger, a consistent patter of snappy one-liners that remain on the right side of the narrow arch/smug divide. The winning Marvel house style is both intact and evolved in Infinity War ’s maximalist pageant. I’m almost reluctant to say that the franchise’s central spirit survives under all the added mass, because I wouldn’t want to encourage them to go much further. Post-Thanos, the Avengers need not strip down to the lean musculature of something like Logan . But going much bigger—which the second part will likely do—risks achieving critical mass.

That said, Infinity War does find a clever, somber way to keep its successor’s proportions in check. It’s both arresting plot development and efficient solution; like so much in the Avengers series, Infinity War is really a feat of good management above anything else. As Marvel nears the end of this particular saga—or, at least, this particular lineup of actors—it’s a mild, partly begrudging thrill to see them pull it off. Insanely, exhaustingly we’ve two more side films to go—July’s Ant-Man and the Wasp and next March’s Captain Marvel —before Thanos’s last stand. (Presumably, he’ll take some big heroes with him.) But Infinity War is an intermittently rousing reminder that we’ll get there eventually. What lies beyond it, I’m sure we’ll know soon enough. For now, I’m enjoying Marvel’s version of denouement—excessive and, blessedly, inevitable.

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SPOILER ALERT: Do not read ahead if you want a completely spoiler-free experience going into “ Avengers: Infinity War .”

“Avengers: Infinity War,” a.k.a. “What If Marvel Threw a Superhero Party and Everyone Came?,” feels like a movie that the American Entertainment State had to get out of its system. It’s the 19th entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it’s the first to push to the wall, to the max, to the ultron the notion that the MCU really is a universe : a vast intermeshed thicket of comic-book icons, destined to be an army that’s greater (in theory, at least) than the sum of its parts. If, for decades, the metaphor for propulsive blockbuster filmmaking was the “ride,” then watching “Avengers: Infinity War” is like going to a theme park and taking three spins on every ride there.

Set in deep space, and in half a dozen lands (New York, Wakanda, Titan, Knowhere), the film presents a galactic battle for the fate of the universe that throws together the six original Avengers; the follow-up wave of Marvel superheroes who’ve only recently been given their own origin stories (Black Panther, Dr. Strange, the rebooted Spider-Man); the Guardians of the Galaxy; and a sprinkling of other figures who’ve been there on the fringes. (I had to scratch my head to remember what Vision’s powers are, but he remains the coolest shade of Revlon.) The movie is a knowingly gargantuan Marvel mashup, so jam-packed with embattled uber saviors that you may feel, at times, like all that’s missing is Dwayne Johnson, Jesus Christ, and the cast of the last two “Star Wars” films.

So is the movie a jumbled, top-heavy mess of cynical franchise overkill? Sort of like the bloated and chaotic “Avengers: Age of Ultron” taken to the second power? Far from it. It’s a sleekly witty action opera that’s at once overstuffed and bedazzling. The directors, Anthony and Joe Russo, working from a script by the crack team of Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (who wrote their two “Captain America” sequels), are far more stylish and exacting filmmakers than Joss Whedon, director of the first two “Avengers” films. “Infinity War” is a brashly entertaining jamboree, structured to show off each hero or heroine and give them just enough to do, and to update their mythologies without making it all feel like homework. At the same time, you may begin to lose hold of what made each of these characters, you know, special .

Early on, a donut-shaped alien spaceship lands in midtown Manhattan, allowing the effete Continental sadist Ebony Maw (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), who’s like a kick-ass version of the Ghost of Jacob Marley, to ring-lead some FX street mayhem. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), after trying and failing to match Ebony in wisecracks and firepower, gets sucked into the ship, and it’s up to Tony Stark ( Robert Downey Jr. ) to rescue him, with an assist from Spider-Man (Tom Holland), a pop-culture geek who wonders if he’s in the middle of an “Alien” film, and who Tony outfits with anti-gravity armor. Once Tony and Strange are thrown together, you can’t help but notice that both are imperious quipsters with matching goatees, and they razz each other exquisitely, the main difference being that Strange keeps forming those light circles that look like they’re made out of sparklers. Tony, of course, has his zippy metal power suits, but a number of the other characters do, too, including Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), who after the opening fight spends the entire film trying and failing to call forth his inner Hulk.

“Avengers: Infinity War” can make it feel like you’re at a birthday party where you get so many presents that you start to grow tired of opening them. But taken on its own piñata-of-fun terms, it’s sharp, fast-moving, and elegantly staged. It also has what any superhero movie worth its salt requires: a sense that there’s something at stake.

The urgency derives, in this case, from the film’s villain, Thanos, the malevolent Dark Lord of the wrecked planet Titan, played by Josh Brolin (in a supremely effective motion-capture performance) as a towering walking-statue purple demon with a chin sculpted like Abraham Lincoln’s beard, and a demeanor of soft-spoken Nietzschean intelligence. He’s like Hellboy, the Hulk, Darth Vader, and Oliver Stone rolled into one eloquent sociopath. Thanos’ master plan could hardly be simpler — and neither, despite its gushing river of characters, could the film’s storyline. Thanos is on a mission to gather all six of the Infinity Stones (candy-colored gems named for Mind, Soul, Time, Power, Space, and Reality), several of which are in the hands of our heroes (Vision, played by Paul Bettany, has one of them embedded in his forehead). If Thanos succeeds, it would allow him, in a mad instant, to destroy half the beings in the universe.

This seems like the most dastardly of plans, and is. Yet Thanos thinks of himself as a genocidal humanitarian (sort of like Chairman Mao). The universe’s resources are limited, and he intends to slice the population in half so that what remains of it can thrive. Brolin infuses Thanos with his slit-eyed manipulative glower, so that the evil in this movie never feels less than personal. It also feels like a force that might just require 20 superheroes to stop it.

At a few key moments, the war really does get personal, as when Thanos is reunited with Gamora ( Zoe Saldana ), the adoptive stepdaughter he rescued as a girl in the midst of wiping out her planet. She won’t give into him now, even when he’s got her android half-sister, Nebula (Karen Gillan), suspended and torturously stretched into her metallic body parts. Saldana, in a ripely emotional performance, plays Gamora like a raging refugee from an abusive home, and the resolution of her conflict with Thanos gives “Infinity War” the (rare) moving moment it needs.

Gamora’s fellow Guardians, meanwhile, are off doing what they do: saving the cosmos (to the tune of the Spinners’ “The Rubberband Man”), but never letting that endeavor get in the way of their ability to take the piss out of each other. The two Marvel franchises come crashing together — literally — when the bloody, barely sentient Thor ( Chris Hemsworth ) bumps into the windshield of the Guardians’ ship. There is much mooning over his muscles (Drax: “It’s like a pirate had a baby with an angel!”), which is funny, and so is the rivalrous back-and-forth between Thor and Star-Lord ( Chris Pratt ), who in contrast to the stentorian stud of Asgard has never seemed more of a dude . He feels like he’s got to lower his voice just to keep up with him.

The Guardians split into two factions, with Rocket ( Bradley Cooper ) and the sulky, video-game-playing adolescent Groot (Vin Diesel) heading off with Thor, who refers to Rocket as “the rabbit.” Then, just when you’re sure that the film has more than enough spinning subplots, along comes Steve Rogers, played by Chris Evans in a beard that, frankly, is less becoming to his role than the one sported by Thor. Hemsworth wears his facial hair as a sign of the character’s battered-but-unbowed soul, but in Evans’ case it looks as if it’s not just Rogers but the actor who has grown a bit depressed at the prospect of being Captain America. The team he’s leading — he’s got Black Widow ( Scarlett Johansson ) and War Machine (Don Cheadle) in tow — feels like the least exciting, and the most extraneous to the main action.

“Infinity War” brims with tensely spectacular combat sequences, even if the question of who’s going to win each one has that extravagantly arbitrary could-Mighty-Mouse-beat-up-Superman? quality. Luminous daggers get plunged into bodies, to no effect. Thor, after meeting with his weapons guru (Peter Dinklage, acting very Shakespeare) and bracing himself against the burning force of a star, gets a new super-hammer — an ax, actually — which is presented as an ultimate tool until it fails, at a crucial moment, to do what we think it’s going to do. (The weirdest thing about superhero movies is that they’re bombastically physical… and metaphysical. Which often doesn’t make sense.) The climax is set in Wakanda, where T’Challa ( Chadwick Boseman ) doesn’t have much to do besides orchestrate a battle against an army of squishy alien beasties. It isn’t until the arrival of Thanos that the sequence takes off not just visually but dramatically.

Of all the things that have ever happened in an MCU movie, there will be much chatter about the ending of “Infinity War.” It is dark and spooky and, in its way, chancy and shocking. Do any of our beloved characters die? Well, yes. But, in fact, the ending is so audacious that you realize it’s all an elaborate card trick. Despite what it shows us, these movies are rarely about more leading to less. Count on the sequel — due one year from now — to demonstrate that more, in the MCU, will lead only to more.

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Reviewed at AMC Empire, April 23, 2018. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 149 MIN.

• Production: A Walt Disney Studios release of a Marvel Studios production. Producer: Kevin Feige. Executive producers: Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso, Michael Grillo, Trinh Tran, Jon Favreau, James Gunn, Stan Lee.
• Crew: Directors: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo. Screenplay: Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely. Camera (color, widescreen): Trent Opaloch. Editors: Jeffrey Ford, Matthew Schmidt. Music: Alan Silvestri.
• With: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Josh Brolin, Chadwick Boseman, Mark Ruffalo, Zoe Saldana, Chris Evans, Chris Pratt, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dave Bautista, Don Cheadle, Tom Holland, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Scarlett Johansson, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Danai Gurira, Letitia Wright, Karen Gillan, Peter Dinklage, Bradley Cooper, Gwyneth Paltrow, Vin Diesel, Benicio del Toro.

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Avengers: Infinity War

Review by brian eggert april 27, 2018.

A landmark in the Marvel Cinematic Universe,  Avengers: Infinity War boasts around two-dozen superheroes converging in an epic-sized crossover the likes of which the comic book genre has never seen. Marvel Studios has loaded the eighteen preceding films with storylines, fanboy clues, subplots, and post-credits scenes leading to the events in this film, marking its arrival as a monumental and unprecedented event in blockbuster filmmaking. It makes the previous crossovers of  The Avengers   and  Avengers: Age of Ultron  seem quaint by comparison. After all, no other franchise in the history of cinema—not Star Wars , not  The Lord of the Rings , not  Indiana Jones , and certainly not the DCEU—has accomplished the consistent vision of scope and spectacle as Marvel’s president Kevin Feige and his team of talent have. And  Infinity War  is a rare commercial film that realizes, to its full potential, everything that works about franchise filmmaking and remains unique about the MCU, which is to say, it assembles the eighteen building blocks that came before into a culmination. Using the bonds and plot elements of earlier Marvel films,  Infinity War  puts every established storyline and character to use by unleashing emotion, action, humor, tragedy, romance, and shocks over the course of its breezy two-and-a-half-hour runtime. The audience is left drained, albeit thrilled, and as every great MCU title does, it leaves us hotly anticipating the next chapter.

Over the last decade, Marvel Studios has developed what other major Hollywood players can only try and almost never achieve. The MCU was founded on grandiose world-building, as it translates Marvel’s comic book interconnectedness into the motion picture realm with a clarity that weaves their stories and filmmakers together. They’re not exactly works of auteurism, but that they each feel connected is a feat not easily managed. In terms of their cohesiveness from one production to the next, the ever-expanding MCU has grown about ten sub-franchises that, while accessible as individual films, converge into their overarching Avengers label every few years. Everything in-between feels like a limb on a larger organism—to the extent that the MCU’s critics decry the material for its homogeneousness. Indeed, the same thing that makes the MCU unprecedented and appealing, its uniformity, remains the quality that many censure. But not since the Golden Age of Hollywood has a filmmaking assembly line delivered such a lovingly considered, consistently polished, and entertaining commercial product.

For better or worse, Marvel has changed the way studios make franchises and how people think of the moviegoing experience, so much so that what the films represent within the industry is sometimes a detriment to the quality of the films themselves. Often accused of dominating the marketplace and reducing Hollywood to nothing more than assaultive CGI superhero fare, the MCU films stand out due to their rarely undeviating vision. They cannot be thought of on the same wavelength as a traditional stand-alone film, nor should they be compared to their lesser imitators. Regardless of what they represent for the future of the film industry, they’re trying something different with their interwoven plots and, moreover, the expectation that viewers have been following along for the last decade, and most of us have. Surely this is why  Infinity War  comes with such a ridiculous degree of expectation, as Marvel’s considerable efforts to deliver films that compliment and interrelate to one another focalize here, more than previous crossovers. (Perhaps now is a good time to warn you: the remainder of this review considers the film in some detail. Readers should be aware that some of the major plot twists, deaths, and surprises will be addressed, and so it’s best read after your own viewing.)

The film picks up where last year’s hilarious and dazzling  Thor: Ragnarok   left off, with Asgardian refugees floating through space only to be confronted by a mysterious ship. That vessel, as it turns out, belonged to Thanos (performed through motion-capture by Josh Brolin), a purple, godlike villain, and easily the most compelling baddie in the MCU thus far. Hints at Thanos’ master plan have found their way into the MCU for years. He’s after the Infinity Stones, six all-powerful elemental gems (Mind, Soul, Space, Power, Time, and Reality) that, when combined on his golden “Gauntlet” glove, will allow him to control the universe at will. He hopes to create “balance” by culling half of all life, which will allow the other half to thrive. It’s the kind of plan that could only be conceived by a villain who sees himself as a hero. Under the impressive mo-cap effects, Brolin plays Thanos as a despotic character nonetheless saddened by suffering. Thanos later admits he watched the people on his home planet of Titan starve to death, leaving him alone and maddened by a desperate need to prevent such a thing from happening again—and his solution involves gathering the components of his Infinity Gauntlet to literally snap his fingers to achieve balance. It’s a deeply disturbing ambition but one that feels compelled by empathetic motivations, despite his tyrannical solution.

Infinity War  is instantly jaw-dropping, with unexpected deaths of beloved characters occurring even before the title appears onscreen. Many have speculated that Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor will meet their ends in this film, noting that the contracts between Marvel and Downey Jr., Evans, and Hemsworth have expired. Even so, the screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely never goes the obvious way of internet speculation, offering a constant churn of surprising developments, unexpected appearances, and profound moments of sacrifice. At the same time, the writers make use of every Easter egg and unanswered question from previous MCU entries here, such as “Whatever happened to Red Skull in Captain America: The First Avenger ?”   And as the film races from one action scene or MacGuffin chase to the next, it also slows down for several delicate character moments. There are genuine emotions and loss between Scarlet Witch and Vision, who have formed a subtle romance that faces almost certain destruction. Or take the charged scenes between Gamora and Thanos, her stepfather—it’s a heartbreaking dynamic in which a traumatized child recognizes her father is evil, yet she cannot help but feel something for the cruel parental figure.

In the final scenes, Thanos’ plan comes to pass, and half the population of the universe dissolves like scorched remains lost in the wind. The faces of heroes we love disappear into dust before our eyes. Watching Peter Parker cling to Tony Stark and suddenly digress into a terrified child out of a horrible fear of death may be the most haunting moment of the film. But the level of death onscreen during this sequence must be met with some suspicion, as Marvel Studios has already planned sequels to  Spider-Man: Homecoming   and  Guardians of the Galaxy   in 2019 and 2020 respectively. Surely, in true comic book tradition, the departed will be resurrected somehow (at least, that’s the hope). Maybe there’s a clue when Dr. Strange uses his Time gem to assess the millions of potential futures before their altercation with Thanos, and then later, after he forfeits the Time gem to save Tony Stark, assures Tony that “this is the only way.” Maybe the solution resides in the post-credits stinger and its allusion to next year’s  Captain Marvel . Whatever the answer, audiences must know that everyone who dies in  Infinity War  may not remain dead, but waiting to find out how and who comes back in the next Avengers  crossover, due next May, will make for a long year.

Adopting a cliffhanger ending reminiscent of  The Empire Strikes Back , except with even graver stakes,  Infinity War  is an impressive and daring entry in the MCU. Although, it seems to have been engineered to work for audiences familiar with the preceding films in the MCU; all others may have trouble putting the pieces together or absorbing the emotional and plot-centric shorthand present throughout the film. This is  Infinity War ‘s most impressive characteristic and its downfall, at least for the uninitiated few. (And really, this film isn’t for the unfamiliar.) Most remarkable is how well the Russos juggle the concurrent storylines, characters from every other MCU film, and a complex central plot, but make the result feel effortless. Never does this entry lose the viewer to third act fatigue or CGI blindness, which itself is something of an accomplishment. It’s all rather miraculous. Fans waiting for Thanos’ imposing presence onscreen will not be disappointed, nor will the way  Infinity War  uses him to achieve the most engaging MCU villain and film in a long while—an entry that will go down in history as a risk-taker in the superhero genre.

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‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Review: A Decade of Marvel Movies Collide in One Epic Showdown After Another

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This is not a spoiler: “ Avengers: Infinity War ” contains the most dramatic cliffhanger of any major blockbuster since “The Empire Strikes Back,” and everything leading up to it is a marathon. After 18 movies and 10 years of Marvel superheroes battling through overlapping plots, sibling directors Anthony and Joe Russo unite nearly every single character for a series of epic showdowns and one giant, universe-shattering threat. It’s a lot more cohesive than “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” and the sprawling, busy ensemble often feels like every Marvel movie engaged in overlapping conversation, like a slow-zoom from the Robert Altman playbook laced with CGI. As a virtuoso juggling act, “Infinity War” has no real parallel in popular culture; as a movie, it’s an impressive montage of greatest hits until the gut punch of a finale.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has become a busy place since “Iron Man” first launched his suit in 2008, as the stream of faces in the opening logo alone make clear. The Avengers and their ilk have preempted so many threats that “Infinity War,” the first of two “Avengers” movies released a year apart to bring the current arc to a close, confronts visible pressure to up the ante more than ever before. “This is it!” shouts one hero, briefed on the threat at hand. About that threat, it’s “the fate of the universe,” and in case you were wondering, someone later asserts, “We’re in the end game now.”

And they really are. Alien warlord Thanos (Josh Brolin, a hulkish monstrosity buried under wrinkly purple CGI) has been gathering the reality-governing Infinity Stones over the course of several movies, plugging them into his shiny gold glove and gaining more powerful as he continues along a grim genocidal quest. He’s closer than ever before, and “Infinity War” charts the galaxy-spanning efforts of nearly every Marvel hero to stop him from unleashing a terrible holocaust, even as they seem to be moving in too many directions at once. Fortunately, this is more feature than bug. With so many heroes crowding the plot, Thanos uses the chaos to his advantage, and always seems to be one step ahead of his frantic foes.

The resulting spectacle channels the best and worst attributes of Marvel’s movies. It’s a fascinating hodgepodge of circumstances designed to move the story forward with dramatic results while resolving it at the same time. “Avengers: Infinity War” is jumbled but never messy, speeding forward in fits and starts but plenty of calculation. In our cluttered information age, when online fan theories threaten to ruin every plot twist, “Infinity War” shows a marked determination to speed ahead of audience expectations; it’s so fast-paced that no single viewer could possibly anticipate the next move, even as individual sequences reek of familiarity.

The ubiquitous end-of-days vibe is a common trope in corporate-mandated storytelling. From “Star Wars” to “The Matrix,” sprawling franchises require that every narrative strand coalesce into a big finale with a threat centered around potential extinction. (The D.C. universe has its own variation on apocalyptic menace of “Infinity War” with the multi-part “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” which will almost certainly find its way to movie form one day.) However familiar, “Infinity War” does well by this tradition by consolidating so many endearing characters into one fast-paced package.

Even the simplest plot details involve a crowd of characters. As the movie begins, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has been cast off his ship by Thanos, whose path of destruction attracts the Guardians of the Galaxy. Aboard the Guardians’ ship, Thor bonds with Rocket (Bradley Cooper), while news of Thanos’ scheme affects his estranged adopted daughter Gamora (Zoe Saldana) as he contemplates facing off with the monster despite the misgivings of Peter Quill (Chris Pratt). Meanwhile, in New York, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) meets Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and learns about Thanos’ developing powers just as a few of his minions land at the center of the city for a big battle. Queens teen Spider-Man (Tom Holland) spots the mess and joins the action, while a helpless Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) stands nearby and fails to conjure his inner Hulk.

Somewhere in the middle of all this mania, Tony, aka Iron Man, brings Banner up to speed on the plot of “Captain America: Civil War,” in which Iron Man and Captain America (Chris Evans) disagree about the future of the Avengers and split off into factions. “You broke up?” Banner asks. “Like a band?” (His incredulousness at the busy MCU provides a recurring punchline. Later: “There’s an Ant Man and a Spider-Man?”) Yes, the Avengers broke up, and anyone expecting a cozy reunion shouldn’t get carried away. The title of “Avengers: Infinity War” is a misnomer; we’ll see what happens in the 2019 release, but this entry’s less invested in tidying up loose ends than setting all of them ablaze in Thanos’ mad sprint to find the final stone.

Other scene-stealers come and go. Scarlet Witch (Elisabeth Olsen) does her part to defend her lover, cyborg Vision (Paul Bethany), who derives his intelligence in part from the Infinity Stone affixed to his forehead. Just as she’s gearing up for a showdown with two shadowy goons in an alleyway, here comes Captain America, joined by Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson, underutilized as usual). Somehow, they all find their way to Wakanda, where Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and his kingdom of warriors are prepared for a “Braveheart”-like showdown with more Thanos baddies from another world.

“Avengers: Infinity War” careens through an astonishing number of locations, from New York City to space to Scotland to the distant cosmic marketplace known as Knowhere. The scale is almost as menacing as Thanos himself, but the Russos manage to streamline the plot by ensuring that individual scenes have their own internal arcs. Characters constantly ram into each other, firing lasers and guns and webbing and stone; sometimes, they philosophize about their stakes, share affectionate banter, or argue about plans. The movie often resembles a big screen variation on the binge-viewing experience, as it leap-frogs from one new set piece to the next. (Alan Silvestri’s horns are always there to sweeten the transition with a soothing “bum bum BUM .”)

They’re all essentially fighting for one big goal — stop Thanos before it’s too late — and he’s such a complex villain that the movie rarely loses focus. Brolin gives the monstrous entity an air of eerie melancholy; he’s not a chuckling lunatic so much as an intellectually corrupt tyrant, and it’s not off-base to interpret his steady rise to power as a kind of Trumpian metaphor. He’s been there all along, the obvious loser in every story, and all of sudden he’s more powerful than anyone anticipated. Superheroes have always epitomized the anxieties of their age, with its uncertainty over who has the upper hand, “Infinity War” is the apotheosis of this trend.

Still, much of the movie feels like a routine. It takes a full hour to funnel through various Marvel regulars, and then the battles just keep coming, with one fresh hook to avoid redundancy: Some familiar faces actually bite the dust. As the body count rises to jarring effect, a few of these morbid twists arrive from unexpected directions that show the mark of expert storytellers working with a vast canvas of possibilities. At worst, it’s a sadistic and sometimes lazy form of trickery designed to keep viewers off-balance. (Thank god for snarky Quill, who moans, “Why does somebody always have to die in this scenario?”)

The actors do what they can with tidbits of exchanges at their disposal as the movie flips through the channels. Downey gives Stark a renewed gravitas, which he’s earned after 10 years of playboy posturing, while Hemsworth and Pratt deliver the movie’s comedic highlight by flexing their masculinity at each other in a white dude stare-off for the ages. Black Panther’s team gets far less screen time than one would expect in the wake of his standalone hit, but this character’s cultural weight already feels too good for the rest of this enterprise.

As it turns out, the most complex arc belongs to Saldana’s green-skinned Gamora, who faces off with Thanos in a bleak scenario that generates more emotion than many Marvel movies combined. But the core of the movie is Brolin’s Thanos. This polished visual achievement echoes the sophistication of his dark goals, particularly in scenes in which the space surrounding him emanate a reddish hue, as if he’s carrying the Gates of Hell on his back.

“Infinity War” moves so fast and runs so long (over two and a half hours) it seems intent on exhausting even the most committed of viewers. But while the movie forces audiences to submit to so many cataclysmic events, the directors manage to direct the cascading mayhem to a unique kind of cliffhanger. As it turns out, Thanos’ refusal to give up reflects Marvel’s own multi-year ambition, with the movie concluding on such a jarring note it demands people remain interested in the years of movies scheduled to open over the next decade.

Hopefully, they’re worth the effort, because Marvel has developed an unprecedented degree of confidence about its ability to hold audiences’ attention. Consider the post-credits scene. Viewers must sit through an overwhelming list of locations, drivers, executive assistants, and accounting departments for a few brief minutes of additional material. This time, the epilogue suggests that no matter how dire the scenario circumstances of the next chapter, the show must go on.

“Avengers: Infinity War” opens April 27, 2018.

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Avengers: Infinity War Review

27 Apr 2018

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Avengers: Infinity War

Marvel has raised the pressure for itself on Infinity War , widely touting it as the endgame of three phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and promising earth-shattering – or at least, judging by the trailer, moon-shattering – consequences to this two-part story, which will finish with next year’s untitled Avengers 4 . It would be hard for any film to live up to the level of sky-high hype that has resulted, and to satisfy the fans of every single one of these characters. Miraculously, this smashes right through your expectations and delivers shock after shock.

The film opens without the traditional Marvel fanfare, instead throwing itself into full-throated operatic drama. The opening minutes are designed to jolt you out of any complacency you may have felt about Thanos’ effectiveness, or the threat posed even by his minions in the Black Order. Ebony Maw (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) and Proxima Midnight (Carrie Coon) and the rest make themselves instantly hissable. They may look like Lord Of The Rings rejects, and they boast little in the way of redeeming qualities, but that’s all to the good. They are big, they are powerful enough to test the Avengers independent of their boss, and that’s about all we need to know.

Brace for noble self-sacrifice, senseless tragedy and straight-up murder.

Thanos, meanwhile, gets monologuing from minute one, and it’s to Josh Brolin ’s credit that he is never less than compelling, whether speaking or letting his actions speak for him. Thanos is mad, and the solution he sees to the galaxy’s ills both evil and ineffective, but he has a thought process that (sort of) makes sense, and his commitment to his cause is so absolute that it is almost admirable. Almost.

Standing against him is a team that is physically fractured, scattered across the galaxy between the remnants of the Avengers, the refugee Asgardians and the Guardians of the Galaxy. The plot’s machinations result in unlikely combinations of Avengers meeting, bickering and, usually, working together semi-effectively. The addition of the Guardians of the Galaxy happens smoothly – which is to say that there is fighting, flirting, bonding over heavy weaponry and the steady erosion of Peter Quill’s ( Chris Pratt ) ego. Speaking of egos, the titanic clash between Iron Man ( Robert Downey Jr ) and Dr Strange ( Benedict Cumberbatch ) is a delight, especially given spice by the addition of the naïve, entirely good Peter Parker ( Tom Holland ). The combinations of heroes working together feels both inevitable and unexpected, and the sheer charisma of the cast means that whatever scene or planet we cut to, there’s someone there to care about.

Everyone is tested. Hulk ( Mark Ruffalo ) comes up against obstacles he can’t smash, and Steve Rogers ( Chris Evans ) — relatively underused — has to reckon with his own personal worst-case scenario. Thanos’ genius is to repeatedly use our heroes’ mutual ties against them. Thanos is willing to sacrifice half the universe to achieve his ends, but he knows that others are not so determined. Over and over again, the film tries to force one character to make concessions to save a life, and over and over again they try to live up to Vision’s claim that “We don’t trade lives, Captain”. They may not, but Joe and Anthony Russo, evil genius screenwriters Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus, and producer Kevin Feige, have no such mercy.

Brace, then, for noble self-sacrifice, senseless tragedy and straight-up murder. The good news is that it’s also really, really funny. Tony Stark is briefly reduced to speechlessness. Thor gives an account of his family history that is accurate and also hilarious. Groot ( Vin Diesel ), Rocket ( Bradley Cooper ) and Drax ( Dave Bautista ) continue to leave a trail of much-needed laughs, without ever quite distracting from the danger they all face.

The film dances nimbly across the cosmos from one group to the next, turning the screws on each group, shattering them and pulling them back together in new combinations. With all these different strands, you might expect to see the gears move to keep this intricate plot humming, as in Age Of Ultron and Civil War . But this time the Russos achieve the impossible. Not only did they bring all these disparate characters and stories together, but they made it look effortless. And the ending laughs in the face of carbonite when it comes to raising the stakes for next time. “It’s not overselling it to say that the fate of the universe is at stake,” says one character, early on in Infinity War . If the universe he meant was the Marvel one, there’s no need to worry. We couldn’t tear ourselves away now if we wanted to.

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Film Review: “Avengers: Infinity War”

The movie is split into three different subplots which simultaneously force our heroes’ paths to cross and separate them into small groups spread throughout the galaxy. While some of our heroes try to find and kill Thanos before he collects all of the infinity stones in space, others protect and attempt to destroy the ones on Earth before Thanos’ henchmen can find them. Finally, Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Groot (Vin Diesel), and Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) set out to forge a new weapon that can kill Thanos.

• Scarlett Johansson
• sebastian stan
• Terry Notary
• Tom Hiddleston
• Tom Holland
• Tom Vaughan-Lawlor
• Zoe Saldana

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Avengers: infinity war, common sense media reviewers.

Intense violence, strong messages in shocking Marvel epic.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Heroism, courage, self-sacrifice are front and cen

Motivations and actions are unusually believable f

Frequent, intense, massively destructive comic boo

One scene is implied to be taking place after sex

Not constant, but a couple uses of "s--t," plus wo

Tony uses an ancient AT&T flip phone. Verbal r

Parents need to know that Avengers: Infinity War is the most intense of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films so far, due to the villain's genocidal quest and the grave consequences for some well-known characters. It has plenty of humor and lighter moments, but it ultimately goes to places darker than in any…

Positive Messages

Heroism, courage, self-sacrifice are front and center in most Marvel movies, but with stakes feeling even greater than usual here, they really stand out -- along with teamwork, of course. Several characters face ultimate test; most pass. Several make extremely difficult decisions while acting out of love. The crisis unifies the heroes instantly, reuniting factions. All that said, violence still the core problem-solving method, and Thanos' mission of "mercy" involves genocide.

Positive Role Models

Motivations and actions are unusually believable for the genre. Characters can be selfish and sarcastic but also frequently make sacrifices and act to protect each other and in others' best interests. The Avengers are increasingly diverse (welcome back, Black Panther!); there are many strong female characters, including a powerful villain. Women make their own decisions and fight as hard and as bravely as the men. And Shuri may be the smartest. The youngest hero, teenage Spider-Man, is also brave and very clever. Thanos and his minions believe they're bringing salvation and mercy to the universe, but their method -- genocide -- is untenable.

Violence & Scariness

Frequent, intense, massively destructive comic book-style action violence, as well as brutal beatings, impalings, stabbings, and sudden smashings/crushings. Characters tortured. Violence is generally bloodless, but consequences feel real; the emotional impact is greater. Some deaths of well-known characters appear final, which will likely upset younger viewers. Also a scene of genocide, though actual murders aren't graphically or clearly shown. A flashback includes a scared child hiding with her mother from bad guys; the child is saved, but everyone she knows is killed.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

One scene is implied to be taking place after sex (one character gets out of bed, while the other remains there). Loving kisses between couples. Talk of love; flirting.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Not constant, but a couple uses of "s--t," plus words including "ass," "a--hole," "douche bag," "nut sack," "dammit," "d--khole," "hell," "crap," "bastard," "jerk," "sucks," "stupid," "screwed," "God" (as an exclamation). Two suggested but incomplete uses of "f--k": One character says "chill the F out," and there's a cut off use of "motherf----r."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Tony uses an ancient AT&T flip phone. Verbal reference to Starbucks. Film is tied in to the vast merchandising/licensing efforts surrounding Marvel Comics.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Avengers: Infinity War is the most intense of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films so far, due to the villain's genocidal quest and the grave consequences for some well-known characters. It has plenty of humor and lighter moments, but it ultimately goes to places darker than in any previous Marvel Cinematic Universe entry. Also, it requires more knowledge of things that have happened in previous Marvel movies than other Avengers films have; it's the meeting point of several franchises and storylines. Violence is the biggest issue; it's stepped up even by MCU standards, with some torture and several impalings and crushings in addition to the usual smashed buildings, giant fights, and blasted spaceships. Thanos ( Josh Brolin ) is by far the most powerful nemesis the Avengers have faced, which the filmmakers establish right away with his brutal beatdown of one of the mightiest Avengers. The core plot element is mass murder on a universal scale, which might be a little much for younger viewers. Frankly, things get pretty grim: Key characters die, and the villains are much scarier than most comic book baddies. The gore level isn't higher; it's really the emotional impact that's different. There's also some strong language (including "s--t," "a--hole," "dammit," and several colorful insults), but sex isn't a factor beyond a few loving kisses. As always, teamwork and courage are core messages as the Avengers (including Robert Downey, Jr. 's Iron Man, Chris Evans ' Captain America, Chris Hemsworth 's Thor, and Scarlett Johansson 's Black Widow), other MCU heroes (including Chadwick Boseman 's Black Panther, Tom Holland 's Spider-Man, and Benedict Cumberbatch 's Doctor Strange), and the Guardians of the Galaxy (including Chris Pratt 's Star-Lord and Zoe Saldana 's Gamora) come together to defend humanity -- and the universe. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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• Parents say (175)
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Based on 175 parent reviews

A historic piece of film history

What's the story.

In AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, Thanos ( Josh Brolin ), whose efforts to acquire powerful cosmic gems called "Infinity Stones" have been important elements in previous Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movies, marches toward his goal of eliminating half of all life in the universe (he believes it's the only way to stop beings from using up all of the universe's resources). Lining up to stop him are almost all of the big-screen Marvel heroes, including Avengers Iron Man ( Robert Downey, Jr. ), Captain America/Steve Rogers ( Chris Evans ), Thor ( Chris Hemsworth ), Black Widow ( Scarlett Johansson ), and others; plus Spider-Man ( Tom Holland ), Black Panther ( Chadwick Boseman ), Doctor Strange ( Benedict Cumberbatch ), and the Guardians of the Galaxy, led by Star-Lord ( Chris Pratt ) and Gamora ( Zoe Saldana ). The sprawling epic takes place on multiple continents and multiple planets as Thanos and his terrifying accomplices stop at nothing to find the stones and take them by whatever means are necessary. It all leads up to a massive climactic battle with shocking consequences.

Is It Any Good?

This is the most intense, complex, and stirring Marvel Cinematic Universe film yet -- though the sheer number of characters and storylines make it a bit confusing for anyone who's not a hard-core fan. Avengers: Infinity War is also the grimmest MCU movie so far, with consequences unlike any that have come before in this massive franchise. Much of the talk about the film will center on those events (no more details here, to avoid spoilers), but there's more to it than that. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely were already responsible for two of the best MCU entries to date, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War . With Avengers: Infinity War , they continue to respect viewers' intelligence while giving their characters deep motivations and presenting knockout action scenes. It's as lean as epics get; none of its nearly two-and-a-half-hour running time feels wasted. While the many characters and intersecting plots may confuse casual viewers -- the filmmakers assume audiences are familiar with all that's come before -- for fans, it's one mind-blowing moment after another, starting with a jaw-dropping fight in the first minutes. Plus, Infinity War is also one of the funniest MCU movies yet, relying on character-based humor rather than some of the wacky flights of fancy of, say, the also excellent Thor: Ragnarok .

The performances benefit from the strong script, no-nonsense direction, and the growth the actors have experienced in their roles over many years. It's fun to watch two of the MCU's biggest egomaniacs, Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark and Cumberbatch's Stephen Strange, bump up against each other -- and then for Pratt's off-kilter Star-Lord to crash into the mix. Relationships are deepened, and it's a huge relief to see the Avengers working together again after the events of Civil War . Thanos, as voiced by Brolin and brilliantly animated by the VFX team, is perhaps the most frightening villain ever in a comic book film (including Heath Ledger's iconic Joker in The Dark Knight ) -- largely because he's so thoroughly convinced that he's actually a good guy who's willing to make hard choices and impossible sacrifices in the universe's best interests. Without spoiling anything, the film's dire consequences feel almost Game of Thrones -like, with well-known characters defeated as never before. Some kids will likely be upset by that. But keep in mind that this is a comic book world (so things aren't always what they seem), and -- in the meantime -- appreciate the fact that the overall effect gives Infinity War the highest stakes and biggest wow factor of the MCU so far.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in Avengers: Infinity War . How does it compare to the other Avengers movies? Is there a difference in the impact between hand-to-hand combat and catastrophic, buildings-collapsing type of explosions? Was the movie scarier than previous MCU entries? If so, why?

What are the movie's messages about teamwork and courage ? What happened when characters didn't work together as planned? Why is teamwork an important character strength ? Which teammates in Avengers: Infinity War were particularly effective? What strategies did they use to contribute to their team?

How does the movie explore the idea/theme of sacrifice? Are there different kinds of sacrifice in the movie? What role does it play in the movie? What impact does it have on the characters?

Why is it important for superheroes to be diverse? Do you think the Marvel Cinematic Universe offers strong examples of both racial and gender diversity? Has that changed over the films' history?

Captain America: Civil War left the Avengers split into factions. What's changed since then, at the start of this movie, and what happens when a larger threat arises? What does that say about what's most important to the characters?

Movie Details

• In theaters : April 27, 2018
• On DVD or streaming : August 14, 2018
• Cast : Robert Downey Jr. , Chris Pratt , Chris Hemsworth , Zoe Saldana , Tom Holland , Josh Brolin
• Directors : Anthony Russo , Joe Russo
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Black actors, Latino actors
• Studio : Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Topics : Superheroes , Adventures , Space and Aliens
• Character Strengths : Courage , Teamwork
• Run time : 156 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action throughout, language and some crude references
• Awards : Common Sense Selection , Kids' Choice Award
• Last updated : May 6, 2024

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AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR is an ambitiously solemn superhero epic | Film Review

Say what you like about Avengers: Infinity War but nobody can deny one thing: it is breaking new cinematic ground. For decades there have been sequels. For decades there have been franchises. For decades we have seen continuing universes on both the big and small screens, sometimes overlapping, develop characters and storylines. Marvel Studios differ in their approach.

This is the first time anyone has, over a ten-year period, created and structured a cinematic franchise in the narrative style of a ‘season’ of television.

This is something I have discussed when talking about the Marvel Cinematic Universe before because it has cast a shadow over the mainstream cinematic landscape which is likely to stay for years, perhaps even decades, to come. Kevin Feige, producer supremo, has been the constant here; ever since 2008’s Iron Man turned Robert Downey. Jr from disgraced character actor into the biggest movie star in the world, Infinity War has been the goal.

While undoubtedly tides have changed, production realities have emerged, and details have altered, Marvel have been working to a decade-long plan to unite the Avengers against Thanos, the Mad Titan, and his plan to wipe out half the universe with the combined Infinity Stones.

The MCU really has been structured like a season of television, if you break it down.

Iron Man does serve as a pilot episode, establishing a tone which has been largely consistent over, to date, 19 films. By the time the untitled second part of what is Infinity War ’s two-part story arrives, two more films within the MCU will have increased the number to 22. That is one of the historical numbers networks used to develop long-running seasons of TV shows, aside from 24 or even 26 during the 1980’s & 1990’s. The numbers have steadily decreased as production values have increased – prestige TV often now doesn’t exceed 13 episode seasons, but for years many shows had 22 episodes in their season. Some still do.

If we look at the MCU in this framework, it is worth analysing key points which fit within the template. The Incredible Hulk is your difficult second episode, having to build on elements laid down in the pilot (in this case, the burgeoning ‘Avengers Initative’, which is your underlying ongoing story arc). Iron Man 2 and Thor both also have teething problems in how they approach the nascent MCU – at this stage it hasn’t quite found what by Infinity War will be an almost effortless blend of high-stakes, apocalyptic science-fiction gravitas and self-effacing, knockabout comedy. Captain America: The First Avenger feels like the first ‘standalone’ episode to get the mixture right after Iron Man , and therefore serves as a good lead-in for your first picture which really encapsulates what the MCU will be: Avengers Assemble .

As much as people will undoubtedly lose the plot (pun intended) over Infinity War , given just how ambitious the movie is, Avengers Assemble still remains the pinnacle of the MCU to date. Joss Whedon, though he later soured the milk a little with sequel Age of Ultron (the difficult middle-child), created a Star Wars for his generation with the first Avengers movie; a film which balanced world-shattering action with the comic, even slapstick, tone that was embedded into much of the MCU subsequently. While Infinity War directors Joe & Anthony Russo arguably have been the strongest overarching creative forces outside of Feige in the last five years, having helmed both The Winter Soldier & Civil War —two of Marvel’s best—it remains Whedon who put the mixture together, taking what Jon Favreau in Iron Man started to a new level.

Infinity War wouldn’t, and couldn’t, have existed without Avengers Assemble and how skilfully it weaved together these initial heroes we had been introduced to in the first five ‘episodes’. It understood everyone needed breathing room. It understood Thor works best when you play him for comedy (a lesson The Dark World forgot) and pair him with the Hulk (a lesson Ragnarok remembered). It understood Tony Stark was always heading for a tragic dramatic arc, and that Steve Rogers was the heart of the MCU. These are all factors which are built on by the Russo’s and writers Christopher Markus & Christopher McFeely in Infinity War . Even though there are over 20 characters in the mix, these essentials have remained.

Each Avengers movie broke up what became ‘Phases’ of the MCU, but this is just a cinematic word really for arcs within an ongoing season. Avengers Assemble concludes the establishment arc, of the world itself, and then builds on those elements; each of the main characters are given sequels which deepen and flesh out their world, while new corners of the MCU are introduced with films such as Guardians of the Galaxy or Ant-Man , which have to balance being origin stories while weaving into the texture of the ongoing, steadily building background story of the Infinity Stones. It has meant for years of films, years of storytelling, Thanos has imperceptibly always been there; we briefly saw him in Guardians , then in Age of Ultron , so his appearances have been scant until Infinity War , but we have always known we have been heading to this point.

It is why, if ever the MCU hit a bumpy road after a few of the weaker opening outings (indeed there’s an argument, had it started in this climate, it may never have survived The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man 2 ), it was probably in parts of Phase 3 following what can be described as the mid-season ‘turn’ in the season arc: Age of Ultron . Whedon proved while he understood the MCU from a tonal perspective, he wasn’t the man to balance the myriad amount of characters and storylines that were blooming into Infinity War . When you see how seamlessly the Russo’s manage this in Civil War , and then Infinity War , it puts Age of Ultron even more sharply into focus. It was also a film with a difficult job because it had to fracture that core relationship: Stark and Rogers.

The second half of the season has very much been about the defragmentation of the Avengers as a concept before Infinity War . It’s interesting just how quickly Marvel Studios seemed keen to deconstruct the world they had established in the comics and adapted for the screen; The Winter Soldier and TV show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. very quickly destroyed S.H.I.E.L.D. and revealed it to be an arm of villainous organisation H.Y.D.R.A; Age of Ultron helped usher in the Sokovia Accords which adapted the famous ‘Civil War’ comic arc and split the Avengers in two, after what Steve considered an abuse of power and mind by Tony in creating Ultron, and after revelations about Howard Stark’s death, their clash in Civil War seemed to end things for good.

Despite this, Marvel continued developing origin stories for key characters who would expand a universe which already had brevity. Doctor Strange did for time what Guardians had done for space, while the Marvel/Sony deal to port Spider-Man into the MCU gave us easily the strongest Peter Parker incarnation on screen yet in Homecoming . Black Panther , too, became a social and cinematic phenomenon, not to mention one of the finest origin stories Marvel have ever done, after T’Challa’s supporting introductory role in Civil War . You could even go as far as to say Ragnarok was a new origin story for Thor, completely reconceptualising the character by making him a comic lead rather than a serious one who just becomes comic when with the Avengers, and the result wasn’t just the best Thor film by far but one of Marvel’s strongest films to date.

Given over this ‘season’ the MCU has built and torn down an incredible amount in terms of character and storytelling, developing a universe which goes far beyond Earth into deep space and alternate dimensions, the fact the tone remains largely universal is really quite staggering. Marvel seem to also have understood how to allow interesting filmmakers the room to put their own stamp on this universe which still remaining true to the escapist, pop-cultural mockery of the whole thing, which didn’t really happen in earlier pictures such as The Dark World (probably the MCU’s nadir) or Edgar Wright’s involvement in Ant-Man . The Russo’s films, James Gunn’s Guardians pictures, Taika Waititi’s Ragnarok and Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther prove lessons have been learned here, too.

When you take all of these factors, Infinity War is quite an achievement. No franchise has built a world and story over 18 previous movies and only improved creatively, overall, while adding more and more characters, ideas and landscapes. Even Star Wars can’t rival the MCU for the ambition – it may now be approaching 11 films strong, all connected in terms of the same universe and mythology, but structurally they don’t function in the same respect. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has establishment, development, crisis and now resolution all in one, unified, connected overarching narrative. When you watch all 22 in this ‘season’, over three ‘Phases’, which you’ll be able to do this time next year, it will have been an unrivalled achievement.

This means that Infinity War isn’t quite the season ‘finale’. In conventional terms, it would historically have been the first part of a two-part, large-scale season finale which tied all of the season threads together – The X-Files Season 8 is a good example if you want a comparison. Between Infinity War and Avengers 4 , there will be Ant-Man and the Wasp & Captain Marvel (the latter of which may well lead into the next Avengers movie as Black Panther did with Infinity War ), so this places Infinity War as episode 19 in a 22 episode arc, even though it feels akin to a finale. Another analogy could be Game of Thrones ; that show is renowned for having a pre-finale ‘finale’ in which major, world-shattering events happen, before a finale ‘epilogue’. The MCU may well end up working in similar fashion for ‘Season 1’.

So when you examine Infinity War on these terms, it shouldn’t be judged as an ending. This is ‘Part 1’ in every single way. The entire movie is about establishment within the structure of a broad, conclusive storyline. It *does* serve as the end for a few long-running MCU characters (god bless you, Loki), but primarily it builds to one heck of a narrative challenge for Markus and McFeely to get themselves out of. Markus discussed the thinking behind this:

Two of the watch phrases at Marvel are “Spend it all now,” just use all your good ideas now because you’ll have more, and “Write yourself into a corner.” And we did both of those. Then it was like, “Okay, we’ve got to get out of the corner. We’ve used up all our ideas, so what do we do now?” (laughs)

What this speaks to is a confidence you feel rippling across Infinity War . This is a picture which is self-assured. It knows precisely what it is, who it’s for, and where it’s going. The writers and the Russo’s understand this is payoff they have been constructing the pieces of for years now, and this is very rare in a cinematic franchise. In many ways, you have to look at Marvel, still using the season analogy, as Feige being the ‘show-runner’. He’s not precisely an auteur show-runner like, say, Noah Hawley, but he perhaps functions like a Chris Carter; he steers the ship, he knows the key beats, he understand the texture of what they want to achieve, but he farms out many of the details to other, regular creatives behind the camera who bring it to life with their own style.

The Russo’s and both Christopher’s penning the script have created their own style over the course of several films, and they port it effortlessly into Infinity War . They have a remarkable ability to engage an enormous amount of characters and make them feel like they have worthy screen time, bar a few exceptions. Infinity War consequently does feel a little episodic as a result, particularly in the first half; a chunk of time may be with Iron Man, Dr Strange & Spidey, then we head off with the Guardians and Thor, before we’re back on Earth with Captain America, Black Widow, Vision etc… and they even sometimes feel like three movies playing out in one, but yet from a tonal perspective they all *connect*. This is a lot harder than it looks to make work.

It’s harder because Infinity War has to blend a multitude of genres and styles, particularly in putting Stark & Strange together for a lot of the picture. Those two could not be more different in terms of characterisation and style (though given their arrogance, maybe not to the degree they think…). Ragnarok turned Thor into much more of a cosmic, comedic character so he fits beautifully with the Guardians. Equally, Captain America and his more Earth-based team work well with T’Challa and Wakanda, but you are still talking about pictures and storylines which historically don’t occupy the same air in the MCU. Infinity War very quickly has to stitch them all together and not make them jar, and it does so incredibly well, mainly because of its secret weapon.

Now. Comedy is subjective. Infinity War is very very funny in many places but there’s a good chance this will only be the case if you’ve watched all 18 previous Marvel films and you are invested in these characters. For me, as one of those fans, I laughed. Repeatedly. Whether it’s Thor referring to Rocket Raccoon as ‘rabbit’ frequently; Peter Quill’s attempt at masculine posturing in trying to measure up to Thor; Drax’s continued deadpan weirdness etc… the Russo’s pack Infinity War with jokes and comic asides which break up the tension and prevent the whole thing descending into arch ridiculousness, which it so easily could have been. This is, after all, about a giant space alien using a magic glove to wipe out the universe.

Which brings us neatly to Thanos, because he’s the other reason Infinity War works. There might well be no other villain in recent cinematic history who has suffered the weight of expectation like this guy. Ever since we first glimpsed him in Avengers Assemble ’s post-credits sequence, we have known this is the ‘big bad’ (to use another TV season term) of the MCU. Surely he could never measure up? Well, luckily, Marvel doesn’t really have a great track record with bad guys. This is where they differ from DC, who arguably have a much stronger rogue’s gallery. Marvel’s strength is in just how many heroes it has, and how many shades of grey they can cast among them. The MCU hasn’t yet had a truly astounding villain. It’s telling probably the best MCU bad guy is Kilgrave from Netflix’s Jessica Jones , a comparatively small corner of the saga compared to Infinity War .

Thanos, therefore, has space to manoeuvre and place himself as the signature villain for this franchise, and by and large he does so. There is a theatrical silliness to the guy, don’t get me wrong; he is a CGI creation with, as Star Lord jokes, a chin like a “nut sack”, and he is fairly one-dimensional when it comes to his goals and motivations. In some ways, he feels like a less nuanced version of The Dark Knight Rises ’ Bane; a physically imposing villain capable of beating the strongest heroes up easily (he smacks the Hulk down in the first 10 minutes) but one with a philosophical approach to balance and universal resources. Bane wanted revolution. Thanos wants order through genocidal chaos. It’s a simple, if terrifying, motivation.

What makes him a touch more interesting is the dynamic with Guardians’ Gamora, and it means the Guardians play a bigger role when it comes to emotional stakes than perhaps anyone else on the side of the heroes in Infinity War . Gamora is, of course, one of Thanos’ ‘daughters’, but here we get the backstory of a child stolen from her mother after her people are wiped out as part of Thanos’ ‘sacred’ mission to balance the universe in order to ‘save’ populations from the self-destruction of his people on Titan. She is his one tether to humanity still left, his weakness; much like Talia al-Ghul was Bane’s emotional weakness. Through Gamora, we therefore see Thanos given some development in a manner you may not quite expect. He is, in some ways, a surprise.

This focus does mean a few of our beloved characters suffer. Captain America & Black Widow in particular, as legacy members of this franchise, get little to do but show up, ‘kick names and take ass’ (another great comic moment). There isn’t even any sign of Hawkeye. When you see how Infinity War ends, however, it becomes clear this is likely a narrative, creative choice based on the fact this is merely the first part of the story. McFeely has suggested as much:

There are 23 characters, and they don’t all have an equal amount of screen time, right? We did our best to give them arcs to some degree, but some will have much bigger arcs in the next movie. And some with big arcs here will have smaller arcs in the next movie. That’s just sort of the balance.

Infinity War , therefore, is all about balance, in many different respects. Thanos’ universe-ending plan, the structure of storylines and character arcs across the film, and the choice of which characters to focus on and which to save for the next movie. Balance and tone, both of which, for a film with such ambition and size, are remarkable in how well they are executed.  

What interests me about Infinity War is its longevity. For fans, there is a euphoria about Infinity War right now. This is a decade of storytelling with an incredible amount of audience investment. We have seen the MCU move from a superhero series into a naturally evolving science-fiction franchise, and Infinity War ’s cosmic, heavily space-based scope underscores how they have fused together these styles and genres in a fascinating way. Distance, however, will be the barometer for whether Infinity War can truly work as a satisfying film in its own right, or in the long-term be considered a truly great part of the MCU lexicon.

For now, that euphoria is a wonderful feeling, particularly in how it feels like Feige & the Russo’s have stuck the first part of the landing. Subsequent watches will add more feelings and context but, regardless, this is going to be one hell of a year waiting for how the MCU gets out of where it’s ended up, and what it will look like when the dust settles.

DIRECTORS: Joe & Anthony Russo

WRITERS: Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely

CAST: Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pratt, Chadwick Boseman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Holland, Josh Brolin

STUDIO/DISTRIBUTOR: Marvel Studios

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Published by A J. Black

Author of books: Myth-Building in Modern Media / Star Trek, History and Us | Writer of words on film/TV/culture | Rotten Tomatoes approved critic: Twitter: @ajblackwriter | Podcast chief: @wmadethis | Occasionally go outside. View all posts by A J. Black

4 thoughts on “AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR is an ambitiously solemn superhero epic | Film Review”

You’ve hit the nail on the head here – it’s the first part of a two part finale that is tying up a lot of narrative threads that have been building for the last decade. The pay-off and juggling works well and I love that they don’t even both with much exposition and just plough through the story with pace. If you’re watching this then you’ve watched the previous films already so I appreciate they never bothered trying to catch people up. There’s no time!

I’m fascinated by the choice of characters that were left behind by Thanos. We’ve got all the original Avengers from the first film but also Rhodes, Rocket, Baku and Okoye (who is now by far my favourite MCU character and stole Black Panther). It gives the season finale a strong sense of closure and potentially allows Cap to get a decent chunk of development. Especially as I think the core story of the second half will again be Steve and Tony’s approaches to fighting Thanos. I was expecting either Stark or Steve to bite it in this one, but when they never shared a scene I knew they’d stay for the finale.

You make a great point there about Steve & Tony needing a final scene together, I absolutely agree and it hadn’t entirely occurred to me before. Agree with your thoughts on this – and about Okoye, who is awesome. I suspect they’ll use her as much as they can.

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Infinity war 2 should involve more characters. At least that can be their break through

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Irrespective of your opinion on the superhero film genre, you cannot deny that &lsquo;Avengers: Infinity War&rsquo; is an ambitious undertaking &ndash; the biggest of its kind, making it a significant event in film history. Marvel Studios took a decade to meticulously plan this mammoth showdown of all their fictional heroes together for the first time on screen. All the superheroes get their moments to shine, and while some naturally take predominance over the others, no role feels minor at any point. Christopher Markus &amp; Stephen McFeely&rsquo;s efforts need special mention for putting together the most crucial and challenging element in a film of this magnitude &ndash; the screenplay. From the film&rsquo;s opening moments, their goal to create a clear and coherent narrative is evident. The Russo Brothers take this material and enhance it to bring out some fantastic performances, along with the large-scale action one has come to expect from the MCU. Keeping this balance is not only tricky but also essential to maintain audience interest over a period of two and a half hours. There&rsquo;s barely a dull scene; in fact, MCU&rsquo;s trademark humour is intact and paired with several gut-wrenching moments that will be hard to forget once the credits roll.<br/>The consequences of this entry on the MCU are tremendous, all due to the actions of the one single antagonist they have been building since &lsquo;The Avengers&rsquo; in 2012. Josh Brolin had a high bar to meet, and his Thanos smashes all expectations with conviction. He is multi-dimensional with a looming presence to justify all his screen time. Facing him are the superheroes who will take you by surprise on multiple occasions. It&rsquo;s a big team effort with every actor swinging for the fences.

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Avengers: Infinity War Movie Review

Too many characters in the movie slows it down to a ponderous pace and scatters the narrative far and wide

The villain in the ‘Avengers’ series is totally stoned. While you might have thought that space, time, mass and gravity were the keys to the reality of the universe, Thanos, the despot of the Cosmos, needs six infinity stones to impose his interpretation of an ordered world – the space stone, the reality stone, the power stone, the mind stone, the time stone, and the soul stone. Once he has all of them, he will have the power to express his political thinking, which is nothing but fascist eugenics, born of his experience of his home moon, Titan, which, apparently, was destroyed by over-population. His idea is that half the population of every celestial body in the universe must be destroyed – without discrimination in social or financial status – in order that the survivors have a sustainable and comfortable living.

Thanos (Josh Brolin), the anti-hero of ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ is more arresting a character than all the superheroes put together. The film is about him travelling in his space ship to faraway planets like ‘Earth’ collecting these stones. He already possesses the power and the space stones, which makes him infinitely powerful; more so, it turns out, than the combined might of the ‘Avengers’ and ’The Guardians of the Galaxy’, whom he has to fight for the rest.

Before the first battle, we cut to a lazy scene in New York City where Tony Stark/ Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) is having a lighthearted discussion with his fiancée, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), about dreams, and how they can reflect reality. Apparently, he has dreamt about having children with her. At which poignant point in the conversation, the couple is rudely interrupted by Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) who informs Tony Stark of real and present danger approaching Earth.

This is a terribly crowded movie, with disparate characters like the boy wonder, Peter Parker/ Spiderman (Tom Holland), protégé of Tony Stark, joining the Avengers, and then the whole gang meeting up with other familiar teams in space. Groot (Van Diesel) and Rocket (Bradley Cooper) of the ‘Guardians’ become crucial members. Strangely, despite being referred to as a ‘rabbit’ several times, Rocket, who is a genetically engineered raccoon, does not object pathologically, like he is wont to do in previous films.

Too many characters in the movie slows it down to a ponderous pace and scatters the narrative far and wide. Ironically, this is the sort of over population that Thanos is so worried about in the first place. The result is that by default, as it were, we focus on the man in question. He is actually presented as human, even as a family man with several adoptive children. At one stage Thanos mourns, with tears streaming down his cheeks, for the loss of a daughter. Even though we know he has actually sacrificed his child for the possession of an infinity stone, it is presented as a conflict within his soul.

But by the end we are convinced that the politics of eugenics is just a ruse for the politics of an ‘Avengers’ sequel. Surely fascism will not be celebrated in the Galaxy. The proof will arrive in your theatre by next year.

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Sean Bean's National Treasure Character Fate Gets Ambiguous Update From Director

20 actors who've played more than one star wars character, top gun 3's best story would mean abandoning the franchise's original premise, avengers: infinity war delivers an exciting culmination of the mcu, though it's overstuffed and suffers from certain typical marvel movie problems..

Avengers: Infinity War   sets out to accomplish a feat never previously attempted in Hollywood: bring together all the heroes of a sprawling superhero universe in a cohesive narrative while delivering an event that justifies 10 years and 18 movies worth of build up. There is an unprecedented amount of hype surrounding the latest installment in Marvel Studios' Marvel Cinematic Universe, but an unprecedented level of expectations as well. The question of Avengers: Infinity War was whether Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige and directors Anthony and Joe Russo could meet or exceed those expectations.  Avengers: Infinity War delivers an exciting culmination of the MCU, though it's overstuffed and suffers from certain typical Marvel movie problems.

In Avengers: Infinity War , screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely set about the difficult task of including all the major superheroes of the franchise by splitting them into teams. As Thanos (Josh Brolin), the Mad Titan with ambitions of killing half the universe in order to bring balance, searches for the Infinity Stones that will complete his Infinity Gauntlet, all the heroes work to prevent him from achieving his goal. For Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), that means protecting the Time Stone, even as he butts heads with Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.), though they have help from Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Tom Holland). Meanwhile, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) comes across the Guardians of the Galaxy - Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista), Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper), Groot (Vin Diesel), and Mantis (Pom Klementieff) - and they work together on their own plans to stop Thanos.

Back on earth, those left of the Avengers rally around Vision (Paul Bettany) in order to protect the Mind Stone, with everyone converging on Wakanda to receive the help of T'Challa/Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), Shuri (Letitia Wright), the Dora Milaje lead by Okoye (Danai Gurira) and the Jabari army led by M'Baku (Winston Duke). In a stand against Thanos and his Black Order, Bruce Banner/Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Falcon (Anthony Mackie), War Machine (Don Cheadle), and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) battle the Titan's hoards of Outriders. But even with all the might of the Avengers, it's unclear if it will be enough to defeat Thanos.

The task of balancing so many characters, in addition to developing Thanos beyond his brief appearances in previous films, is nearly impossible. With so many characters set to share the screen in Avengers: Infinity War , there are bound to be those who unfortunately fall by the wayside in order for others to have complete narrative arcs in the film. Markus and McFeely focus predominantly on certain heroes based on which characters serve the story of Thanos' villainy the most. And for the Mad Titan's part, Infinity War offers a valiant effort to develop his character so as not to fall into the underdeveloped Marvel villain trap. However, with so much else going on and so many other characters sharing the screen, Thanos still fails to be a fully developed and sympathetic antagonist. As for the rest of the ensemble cast, the writers made sure even those who don't receive their own full narrative arcs, their presence is felt - either through standout lines of dialogue or cool action beats.

While Avengers: Infinity War attempts to balance so many characters and give them compelling narratives, very few of the emotional beats stick their landing. This is partly due to the movie being crammed full with too much going on for the pacing to allow much time to process any major emotional development before moving on. Further, with Infinity War jumping around between different storylines involving different groupings of characters, the shift in location and tone can be jarring. In fact, there is a moment that's meant to be particularly poignant and emotional, with big sweeping music to mark its significance, but it's followed shortly by a change of scenery and a joke that undercuts any emotional response the movie was aiming to achieve. Since viewers aren't given time to process certain developments in Infinity War before moving on to the next story beat, it's difficult to feel the weight of those moments.

The other reason certain emotional beats don't work is due to a lack of character development. If viewers don't feel connected to a character because of a lack of development, it's difficult to have a response to emotional beats in their story arc. However, Avengers: Infinity War does benefit from the character development achieved in previous films, assuming viewers know about previously established relationships between characters and building off those relationships. That said, when a number of major emotional moments in Infinity War  are based entirely on character development established in previous movies, it sometimes comes off as cheap and unearned. This is especially the case when Infinity War has to move on to another story or character beat in order to keep up the film's brisk pace and wrap up in a reasonable amount of time.

With all that said, there is still plenty to enjoy about Avengers: Infinity War  and fans who have stuck with the MCU for 10 years will find that it's another solid entry in the franchise. Of course, Infinity War  suffers from many of the typical Marvel movie problems, with a villain that isn't quite as well developed as he could be (especially in contrast to Black Panther's Killmonger) as well as CGI that is, at times, genuinely bad. But, the latest Avengers movie balances out these lackluster aspects with certain really cool action beats - placed amid larger action set pieces that aren't really groundbreaking - and plenty of humor so as to create an overall fun experience.

For the most part, the Russo brothers and Marvel Studios delivered on their promise to bring the disparate corners of film franchise together for a battle against Thanos, all while staying true to the characters who made the MCU so popular. Coming back to the question of whether Avengers: Infinity War  lives up to the hype and anticipation, the movie doesn't exceed expectations even though it does meet those expectations. What happens when a movie that many are hoping to exceed expectations only manages to meet those expectations - even if those expectations mark a massive achievement for a Hollywood franchise? Well, in the case of Avengers: Infinity War , we get a solidly entertaining event film that still may leave viewers wanting more, even if they're unsure what more the writers and directors could have done. Thankfully, Marvel Studios, the Russos, and Markus and McFeely will be back next year with Avengers 4 to bring the first three phases of the MCU truly to completion.

Avengers: Infinity War  is now playing in U.S. theaters nationwide. It runs 149 minutes and is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action throughout, language and some crude references.

Want to talk about Infinity War without spoiling the Avengers movie for others? Head on over to our Avengers: Infinity War spoilers discussion .

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Home — Essay Samples — Entertainment — The Avengers — “Avengers: Endgame”: Movie Review

"Avengers: Endgame": Movie Review

• Categories: Movie Review The Avengers

About this sample

Words: 758 |

Published: Aug 6, 2021

Words: 758 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Works Cited

• Markus, C., & McFeely, S. (Writers), & Russo, A., & Russo, J. (Directors). (2019). Avengers: Endgame [Film]. Marvel Studios.
• The Avengers (Motion Picture). (2012). Marvel Studios.
• Avengers: Age of Ultron (Motion Picture). (2015). Marvel Studios.
• Guardians of the Galaxy (Motion Picture). (2014). Marvel Studios.
• Captain America: The First Avenger (Motion Picture). (2011). Marvel Studios.
• Smith, M. D. (2014). The Marvel Studios Phenomenon: Inside a Transmedia Universe. Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Gray, J., & Johnson, D. (Eds.). (2020). The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom. Routledge.
• Mathijs, E., & Pomerance, M. (Eds.). (2015). The Routledge Companion to Film and Popular Culture. Routledge.
• Stein, L. C. (2015). Millennial Avengers and the New Hollywood. In M. D. Denson, L. Eckel, & A. Tolkach (Eds.), Avengers Assemble!: Critical Perspectives on the Marvel Cinematic Universe (pp. 49-62). McFarland.
• Dittmer, J. (2013). Captain America and the Nationalist Superhero : Metaphors, Narratives, and Geopolitics. Temple University Press.

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The Greatest Line in Infinity War Was Pure Improv: 2 Avengers Stars Were “Still workshopping it” Even When the Cameras Rolled

B efore the Marvel Cinematic Universe met its downfall, it was one of the best superhero franchises that knew how to feature a gripping storyline with high stakes, neatly integrated with humor that was loved by audiences of different ages. The textbook example of this virtue would be Avengers: Infinity War. T he 2018  film became an MCU favorite and gave one of the best blockbuster experiences to its fans .

Even though the fate of the universe was at stake, and the lives of the superheroes were in grave danger, as Thanos wanted the Soul Stone from Vision, the superheroes could not ditch the humor. One of the most iconic scenes is the final battle scene, where Thor and Captain America praise each other for replicating each other’s style, believe it or not, was an improv as they were keen on trying different things.

The Greatest Avengers: Infinity War Line Was a Result of Pure Improv

Nowadays, Marvel has ruined the friendly banter between the characters and has become a joke in itself, majorly because it undermines the drama of a story. However, before the Marvel Cinematic Universe was at its peak, the scriptwriters as well as the actors knew what they were doing.

Throughout the film, there are instances of some bizarre dialogues, like the one where Rocket Racoon asks The Winter Solider the price for his gun as well as his mechanical limb. But the best of them all was when Captain America and Thor bumped into each other, as Thanos attacked Wakanda for the Soul Stone.

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The two heroes would bump into each other and while fighting the Thanos’ army , they would assess each other’s styles . Both heroes are rocking each other’s past looks with Thor getting a clean-cut trim and The First Avenger sporting a rugged look with long locks and beard.

According to reports from Entertainment Weekly , both actors were “ still workshopping it as they go back in front of the cameras. “ Chris Evans suggested the idea as he said, “ I’ll be like, ‘ Short hair now? Good choice .’ ” Followed by Chris Hemsworth saying , “ And I’ll go, ‘ Yours too. The beard. Very ­rugged.’”

While they were initially not sure that the scene would find a place in the final cut, it turns out the Russo brothers enjoyed the friendly banter between the two heroes and decided to include it in the final version of the film .

Avengers: Infinity War Directors Explains The Reason For Marvel’s Lack of Success After Endgame

Followed by Avengers: Infinity War was Avengers: Endgame which was a massive hit at the blockbuster because as per reports from The Numbers , the film earned a whopping $2.7 billion at the worldwide box office. However, after the 2019 film, everything went downhill for the MCU as their films could not please the audience anymore.

As a result, the term ‘ superhero fatigue ‘ became quite popular since it referred to Marvel’s downfall. The Russo Brothers were present at the Sands: International Film Festival where GamesRadar+ asked their opinion on why Marvel is having a difficult time at the box office. Joe Russo said,

I think it’s a reflection of the current state of everything. It’s difficult right now, it’s an interesting time. I think we’re in a transitional period and people don’t know quite yet how they’re going to receive stories moving forward, or what kinds of stories they’re going to want.

Joe Russo further elaborated his philosophy on how Marvel Studios’ current problems boil down to one major issue, that is, the changes in how people absorb media. He explained,

There’s a big generational divide about how you consume media. Meanwhile the new generation are ‘ I want it now, I want to process it no w’, then moving onto the next thing, which they process whilst doing two other things at the same time. You know, it’s a very different moment in time than it’s ever been. And so I think everyone, including Marvel, is experiencing the same thing, this transition. And I think that really is probably what’s at play more than anything else.

Only time will tell if the films that we know and love survive in a fast-paced world, as new short content and reels have emerged that share a ton of information in a limited time.

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Avengers: Infinity War can be streamed on Disney+.