Avengers: Infinity War – review

Finally it is here, the culmination of 19 previous Marvel Studios movies and a decade in time, Infinity War at last gives us all the heroes together, the Avengers, Guardians Of The Galaxy, Spider-Man, Dr Strange, they are all here and all needed to fight Thanos. He is finally collecting the infinity stones and he has a gauntlet to put them in, with this he can do anything and may possibly destroy everything.

Without spoilers, more than anything Avengers: Infinity War has managed to get such a level of hype that even I had to go and watch on opening weekend. While there is a lot to enjoy in the 2.5hr run time, I can’t believe that everybody is so in love with it, pretty much for the same reason that it has put me off. Lets break it down;

The good. There is nothing quite like a superhero team up, it really is the stuff  that dreams are made of, a comic book made real. This is always a delight. Also the unexpected team ups, continuing from the successful re-branding of Thor in Ragnarok. The combo of Thor and Rocket Raccoon works particularly well, both funny and emotional scenes working well. Scarlet Witch also gets a power up, but still isn’t as powerful (or crazy) as her comic book counterpart. The other MVP is Dr Strange, he was very good and Cumberbatch makes good use of his screentime.

There are plenty of call backs and in jokes, so actually being involved and watching the past Marvel films over 10 films does make you feel involved. There isn’t much story, there just can’t be and nobody was expecting any really, there are too man characters to juggle and setting up action scenes is pretty much all the audience expects.  The backstory and character insights are in movies 1-18. Massive kudos to directors, the Russo Brothers for making it actually work, be fun and keep moving between different groups without being confusing.

The bad. So many characters mean that your favourite might not get a lot to do. The team based in Wakanda gets particularly shortchanged. A main character definitely gets fridged (comic book terminology) and Peter Parker gets an extra 10 seconds more that anyone else, to emotionally manipulate the audience. The usual problem of Marvel films is that the villain isn’t very good but Infinity War highlights the other problem, Marvel can’t do romance very well either. The main couples used to drive the story are Vision and Scarlet Witch and Peter Quill and Gamora, both of which are underdeveloped and don’t really engage the audience enough or reflect different dynamics to make you care.

The Ugly. I have finally, finally realised that Marvel movies are never going to change the status-quo. No matter how much stuff happens in the movie, it will always be back to about the same thing by the end or beginning of the next movie. For example no matter how much you liked Black Panther and thought it was doing something different, he still fought a mirror image bad guy at the end of his movie.  There is nothing that happens in Infinity War that cannot be reversed in the next Avengers film and most definitely will be reversed (and most likely 80-90% will be reversed in time).  This factor makes me lose interest and a little fait in Marvel, yet the general consensus is the opposite. I don’t get it. Why am I the only one who feels unhappy about this?

In short, a fun, engaging, action packed superhero film, that is a clever culmination of 10 years worth of franchise and the true finale to phase one, but ultimately shows that you can make 10 years worth of movies that make billions of dollars yet tell the same story over and over again and no one complains.