Peter Quill: I’m gonna ask you this one time: where is Gamora?
Tony Stark: Yeah, I’ll do you one better. Who is Gamora?
Drax: I’ll do you one better. Why is Gamora?
If you have not seen Avengers: Infinity War yet I highly encourage that you back away from this review because there are spoilers ahead. You have been warned.
Summary: The Avengers and their allies continue to protect the world from threats too large for one hero to handle while a new threat appears from the shadows of space. Thanos, with the aid of his intergalactic army, have one goal: collect all six Infinity Stones. The Infinity Stones are artifacts of power that cannot be fathomed, and he wants to use them to twist all of reality to his will. Essentially, everything the Avengers have fought for have led up to this moment in time. They must protect the fate of the Earth and existence itself – even though it has never been more uncertain.
Review: The Marvel Cinematic Universe has never felt like more of a universe until this movie, which is in both good and bad ways. Infinity War is a narrative that juggles a myriad of characters and locations. The packed film includes an array of superheroes from the Avengers, to Spiderman, Black Panther, the Guardians of the Galaxy and more. To my surprise, they left out Hawkeye, Ant-Man, Valkryie, Nakia, and Everett Ross.
Thanos is by far the biggest villain we have encountered in a Marvel film. I was incredibly surprised to find that I not only liked this villain, but I also sympathized with him. I am not entirely sure why, but my guess is because he had to sacrifice Gamora, the person he loved the most, to be able to accomplish his goal of “saving the universe”. While Thanos is a good villain, he’s no Killmonger with his problematic but hard-earned racial politics. In my opinion, he is one notch below him.
Moving on with the review, I would like to highlight three problems I noticed in Infinity War.
Problem One: There are too many moving parts for one movie
I am in no way, shape, or form saying that this was a bad movie. I understand that the Avengers movie is all about the Avengers assembling and it makes sense to add a bunch of new heroes in the movie as the cast of them grow. But jumping around from Earth, to Space, to Wakanda, etc., became a bit of a clusterfuck and difficult to follow location wise. Just when the scene was going into more depth or something would happen the movie would shift gears and move to a different location with different characters. At times this became difficult (and annoying) to try to follow.
Problem Two: The movie should have ended before the ending with Thanos
I thought the most frustrating thing about Infinity War to me would be all the characters that died. It wasn’t. The most frustrating thing was how it ended. After collecting all six of the Infinity Stones, Thanos snaps his fingers and half of the universe’s population disintegrates meaning that he achieved the balance he wanted. After that we see a myriad of characters who we know can’t die, disintegrate before our eyes. It was incredibly irritating because the Guardians of the Galaxy have a third movie, a sequel to Spiderman: Homecoming is in the works, and there’s rumor of a Doctor Strange and a Black Panther sequel. Personally, I think Infinity War should have ended after Thor hit Thanos in the chest with his axe. Thanos could have said his line, “You should have aimed for the head.” Then it could have rolled to the credits. I understand that in a war there is loss, but it seemed meaningless because of the already confirmed movies that are coming out about some of the heroes that “died”.
Problem Three: Lack of backstory for Thanos prior to Infinity War
Don’t get me wrong, I thought Thanos was a great villain. However, I think Guardians of the Galaxy 3 should have been released before Infinity War. Who knows, maybe Guardians of the Galaxy 3 would have further developed Thanos’s backstory. We could have seen more of his relationship with Gamora and Nebula. It could have also introduced us to his plan earlier and see it develop across the movies.
What I liked about the movie:
There were a lot of things that I liked about the movie. I really liked seeing Vision and Scarlet Witch’s relationship brought to life on the screen. They were definitely the heard of Infinity War and seeing their relationship blossom more throughout the film made it even more devastating when Scarlet Witch had to be the one to destroy the Infinity Stone in Vision’s head. To make it even worse, Thanos brought him back to life so he could rip the stone out of his head and collect it.
Personally, I am a huge fan of the friendly neighborhood Spiderman. Therefore, I really enjoyed seeing him in this movie. His humor definitely provided comedic relief when it was needed and when he met Doctor Strange and said his line about using their made-up names was such a power move. I genuinely enjoyed seeing Peter Parker interact with Peter Quill as both make pop culture references (obviously Quill’s are a bit dated). I greatly appreciated seeing the father/son dynamic that Tony Stark and Peter Parker had as well. It has been in the works since Captain America: Civil War and it was nice to basically see it in full swing. It made it more heartbreaking to watch Peter disintegrate in Tony’s arms while he begged and apologized to Mr. Stark
I enjoyed that essentially picked up where Thor: Ragnorak left off and showed everyone on the (destroyed) ship. It showed that life does not hesitate to kick you while you’re down. Thor had already lost his home and continued to lose his people.
Overall, I highly encourage that you see this movie in theaters! It is a definitely a film that you will want to see in theaters and to see with other people. The reactions of those around me in the theater when major events took place made the film that much better.