Avengers: Infin­i­ty War

It’s strange to think that there now exists a gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple who nev­er knew the cul­tur­al land­scape before super­heroes dom­i­nat­ed it. Born into – or hav­ing grown up in – a world where every year a raft of com­ic book movies hit the mul­ti­plex come what may, younger view­ers can cer­tain­ly watch the likes of Howard the Duck or the 1996 Fan­tas­tic Four movie. But try­ing to explain to them the sig­nif­i­cance of the shad­ow caped cru­saders have cast over mod­ern cin­e­ma is a lit­tle like artic­u­lat­ing what the world looked like before Star Wars.

Ulti­mate­ly, you can nev­er repli­cate the feel­ing that an audi­ence expe­ri­ences when they col­lec­tive­ly wit­ness their first cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non. When it comes to Disney’s Mar­vel mono­lith, we would be remiss to describe it as any­thing oth­er than that.

In a two-part spec­ta­cle referred to as ​“the most ambi­tious crossover event of all time”, Dis­ney has slammed their hand down on the table, reveal­ing a Roy­al Flush. All the key play­ers from their sta­ble of super prop­er­ties are there, geared up to face Josh Brolin’s pur­ple meanie Thanos in a fight for the fate of the uni­verse. Despite look­ing like the love child of Bruce Willis and Ronald McDonald’s side­kick Gri­mace, there real­ly is some­thing quite men­ac­ing about him, best sur­mised as this: he nev­er los­es his shit. Calm­ness is so much more unset­tling than blind rage.

Thanos is a geno­ci­dal prophet with a sin­gu­lar goal: retrieve the jew­els – sor­ry, Infin­i­ty Stones – which will enable him to cleanse the uni­verse of its pain (read, wipe out half of the pop­u­la­tion), and start anew. This mega-vil­lain solves the age-old Mar­vel bad­dy prob­lem, being a com­plex, mea­sured (and often sad) neme­sis, more com­pelling than any of his pre­de­ces­sors. He’s the result of many failed exper­i­ments by Mar­vel, and a nec­es­sary – believ­able – foil to the might of the super­hero super­group assem­bled centre-stage.

The plucky Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy are the only line of defence, and despite hav­ing gone their sep­a­rate ways fol­low­ing the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron and Cap­tain Amer­i­ca: Civ­il War, the band’s back togeth­er to play the hits, with a few new faces sad­dling up for the ride. That’s real­ly all that can be said about Avengers: Infin­i­ty War plot-wise with­out giv­ing the game away, but the Rus­so broth­ers have heav­i­ly implied that the stakes are high­er than ever in this Mar­vel out­ing, and not every­one will be get­ting out alive. They weren’t kidding.

Back in 1914, Arthur Quiller-Couch sug­gest­ed it was nec­es­sary to ​“mur­der your dar­lings” for the greater good of your cre­ative work. Such a prin­ci­ple applies to a film like Avengers: Infin­i­ty War, which is the end result of a decade of film­mak­ing (and the 19^th Mar­vel movie out of the gate). In a world where audi­ences are used to see­ing the impos­si­ble made pos­si­ble, and even more used to see­ing the good guys always save the day and the bad guys always slink away defeat­ed, the stakes need to be high, and the sac­ri­fices need to feel like they mat­ter. This is the dark­est place that Mar­vel has ever dared to take its fran­chise, and although it’s nowhere near as bleak as Christo­pher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, it’s cer­tain­ly not afraid to be more adven­tur­ous and more challenging.

This is only pos­si­ble due to the ground­work pre­vi­ous­ly laid by the stu­dio – their most recent prop­er­ties (Thor: Rag­narok and Black Pan­ther) suc­ceed­ed because they felt like con­fi­dent, com­pe­tent exper­i­ments in com­bin­ing Mar­vel lore with vision­ary direc­tion. There’s a sense with Infin­i­ty War that the stu­dio has begun to final­ly under­stand and embrace their own mate­r­i­al, indulging both the light and the dark, the weird and the nor­mal, which has enabled their com­ic books to suc­ceed for 79 years – Infin­i­ty War is the bold, brash, often hilar­i­ous, some­times heart­break­ing result of a decade-long under­tak­ing. There will be blood and, more than like­ly, there will be tears from legions of younger view­ers who aren’t yet old enough to appre­ci­ate the real­i­ty that all our heroes are dead and our ene­mies are in power.

Which is not to say that Infin­i­ty War is a per­fect con­struc­tion. Not by any means. With an A‑list ros­ter packed to the rafters and plen­ty of skip­ping around between var­i­ous sub­plots, col­lat­er­al dam­age is inevitable. Per­haps the char­ac­ter-screen time ratio will be addressed bet­ter when Infin­i­ty War: Part 2 hits cin­e­mas in 2019, but this half real­ly is Civ­il War on steroids, land­ing us in the thick of it from the open­ing cred­its and itch­ing for a fight even in its qui­eter moments. Marvel’s strug­gle to make fight scenes more than the cin­e­mat­ic equiv­a­lent of a child bash­ing their action fig­ures togeth­er does tend to pre­vail, though a few sequences are well-chore­o­graphed enough to ensure bore­dom isn’t ever a real threat.

Cru­cial­ly, Infin­i­ty War has the decen­cy to do its thing in an earnest, full-heart­ed man­ner. Even though the threat of obliv­ion is one the Avengers face every sum­mer, Infin­i­ty War man­ages to make it feel like it mat­ters. There’s some top-notch string work from com­pos­er Alan Sil­vestri, which adds some pleas­ing grav­i­tas to pro­ceed­ings, but the emo­tion­al integri­ty of the film ulti­mate­ly comes down to a groups of actors audi­ences have come to know and love.

Hav­ing spent a full 10 years con­struct­ing their palace from the ground up, there’s a sense of heroes grow­ing and chang­ing, hard­ened by unend­ing war and loss. From Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark and Chris Hemsworth’s Thor (bub­bling with a new­found matu­ri­ty after his third fran­chise out­ing) to Zoe Saldana’s Gamo­ra, the per­for­mances feel com­mit­ted. These are actors who care about their char­ac­ters, and cru­cial­ly, care about the peo­ple who care about them.

Infin­i­ty War isn’t going to con­vert the cyn­ics, but per­haps at this point, noth­ing can. It’s sur­pris­ing to find such poet­ic medi­a­tions in block­buster fare though – in a time where the Dooms­day Clock inch­es ever clos­er to mid­night, human­i­ty wants des­per­ate­ly to believe that every­thing will work out just fine, and this film pokes at the ques­tion no one wants to ask: what if it doesn’t? For the hard­core fans, it should feel like pay dirt – and not just as wel­come vin­di­ca­tion for every­one who sat through Thor: The Dark World and Age of Ultron. This is a lov­ing­ly-craft­ed action opera that leans ful­ly into the genre-bend­ing nature of the MCU, and hope­ful­ly a sign that Mar­vel is mov­ing for­ward, even with one eye look­ing fond­ly to the past.