Review: Avengers: Infinity War

A rather simple plot, really: Our continually assembled/reconfigured superhero team (this time featuring the stars of “The Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Black Panther”) take on the seemingly almighty Thanos (Josh Brolin), a completely power-obsessed giant of a being whose quest to capture all six horcruxes…er…infinity stones will see the end of the universe if successfully completed.

I’m not a Marvel fan, which means I like some of the films and not others. This 2018 all-star effort happens to be one of the good ones. Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo (directors of the best Marvel film to date “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”) it juggles all of its numerous moving parts quite well, and seeing The Avengers face real trouble that seems awfully difficult to overcome is the film’s strongest asset. By that I mostly mean that Josh Brolin and Thanos are pretty damn amazing here. I think it’s pretty stupid to send the audience into the film cold in the middle of the plot, a decision I never like films to take. It’s sloppy. However, since it introduces us to the immediately mighty supervillain Thanos, it does have two big benefits; 1) Obviously, Thanos is a terrific character well-played behind excellent CGI by Brolin, and 2) It gives off the impression that things are going to end very, very badly for our (super) heroes here. Giving the entire film a sense of impending doom and gloom and a genuine villainous threat is a nice change from what is otherwise a pretty predictable franchise. Here’s the one Marvel film so far offering up real danger, real suggestion that evil might just be too almighty this time for the good guys to win.

The filmmakers even manage to juggle an ever-growing list of characters in slightly better fashion than the first “Avengers” at the very least. It’s still not flawless on that front. I could’ve done without William Hurt and Don Cheadle turning up here, though and the lame excuses given for Ant-Man and Hawkeye sitting this one out didn’t really work for me. Also, as much as we all love him on “Game of Thrones”, Peter Dinklage’s Tyrion accent isn’t terribly convincing on that show and didn’t really need to be re-used here to play a stupidly super-sized character of no importance here. Why are we still bringing in new characters at this point? Killing off my favourite Marvel movie character 10 minutes into the film kinda pissed me off, though. I knew going in it was happening, and we definitely needed to lose characters at some point, but it still sucks a bit. The action is really good in this one, especially in the first half where the speed really is break-neck stuff. It stalls a bit in the middle, but not for such a long time that it affects the quality of the film overall.

Most of the cast are good company, but there are a few exceptions. Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark still continues to act annoyingly too cool for the room, whilst the actor looks completely over the whole thing. Benicio Del Toro’s Collector is still an idiot and an unwelcome inclusion that thankfully isn’t terribly prominent. However, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Dr. Strange is a welcome addition to The Avengers this time out, as are The Guardians of the Galaxy. Despite Downey’s rather disinterested performance, the relationship between Stark and fellow egotist Dr. Strange is an interesting one. Zoe Saldana has her best outing as Gamora to date, as her connection to the evil Thanos is quite important to the story here. Dave Bautista’s hulking idiot Drax and Chris Pratt’s self-deprecating idiot Quill/Star Lord are humour done right, without acting above it all like Iron Man. Drax in particular is the perfect undercurrent of humour without having the character or film lose sight of the very serious stakes set up here. Pratt’s Quill is an unlikeable dick here, which some people didn’t like. However, I didn’t think it was a bad thing. Someone’s gotta be the hero that gets petty and jealous and kinda fucks up the whole thing for The Avengers, and Peter Quill, being a giant tool, is a pretty good choice for that role. The character behaved perfectly consistently in my not especially uber-informed opinion. Pratt’s funny without being too RDJ-flippant. Chris Hemsworth is still getting to do comedy despite not having an especially good grasp of it, but he’s thankfully a bit more laidback without getting too goofy.

A well-done, action-packed superhero outing with a genuinely awesome villain, and a sense of gravitas and solemnity that separates it from the majority of the other MCU films. So, it works pretty well on multiple levels, even for a non die-hard fan like me. Scripted by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (who teamed up for all three “Captain America” films), this is one of the good ones, if still a bit unwieldy for my liking.

Rating: B-