Avengers: Infinity War Review!

This will be a non-spoiler review of the latest Avengers movie, Infinity War.

In 2012 we were introduced to the big bad of this cinematic universe in a post-credit scene. A giant purple alien with a weird chin. After his brief introduction his name, and mythology, started to arise in the films that followed. Sprinkled in between the next Avengers movie and Guardians of the Galaxy most prominently. Now, after six years of waiting fans who saw the first Avengers would finally see who Thanos is, and why he's the big bad of their universe. Thus was born the Infinity War.

One aspect that I thought was replicated well enough in Avengers: Age of Ultron that I thought was done remarkably here is the fact that this film in essence is an event. In comics, more often now than before, there are event story lines that make the whole universe clash, and here it feels less like an Avengers movie, which Age of Ultron is, and more like a movie that is coalescing its universe, something that Age of Ultron failed at. The story is big, grand, and it's taking every character and putting them into the same playground. Because of this there will be little in character development, but then again they didn't need development in this film. Being an event the purpose of this film is to show these characters come together and meeting for the first time or, in some instances, again.

The one character who does get a complete arc is the villain himself, Thanos. Unlike previous villains of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thanos is a huge player, and gets a lot of screen time. None of that feels wasted. If he is in the scene it is to show something about himself. In the opening scene it is to establish how powerful and threatening he is, in the middle of the movie you learn about his past and where his motivation is to the ending of the film that caps his character's journey beautifully. It's actually quite impressive how much work was done on his character, dialogue, and actions. It blew me away and solidified him as THE marvel villain, because deep down after the film you'll start to wonder...was he right?

Now just because this film has nearly every character in it, and the story doesn't really address a character arc to them, that doesn't mean they were wasted. In fact, some of these character scenes are just blissfully fun as new characters are meeting old characters for the first time. Early into the film you get to see Tony meeting Doctor Strange for the first time, and their personalities clash humorously. Thor gets to meet a character I didn't think I needed to see, but after their delightful dialogues between each other I now need a new buddy movie between him and that character.

Infinity War is incredibly impressive on many levels. The fact that they got all those stars to film this movie together, the fact that actual deaths do happen, that story threads from the end of every movie in the past three years are being picked up to the incredible motion capture performance from Josh Brolin. So many things had to be juggled to pull this movie off, and I have to admit that Marvel did it. This truly is a blockbuster epic.

I have very little complaints about this movie. My biggest one would be pacing. It's actually paced rather well, but so many important scenes are happening at the same time and all I kept wondering when watching this movie is "when can we go back to the last scene?" because they kept cutting back and forth between the three big through lines and each time it cut the tension and had to build it back up.

Other than that small detail, I absolutely loved this film and applaud everyone involved. I believe this is a very important film for this decade, especially in relation to blockbusters. It truly was a marvel to watch on the big screen, and all I can recommend is you see this on the biggest screen you can. It will be emotional. It will be epic.

A-