One hopes that some of the more topical themes debated by the Avengers in the previous installments-particularly about their role in geopolitics and the security state-will be addressed at some point in the second film.
AVENGERS INFINITY WAR SERIES
And there’s a haunting final sequence that is as grave and, I daresay, almost poetic as anything the film series has done. There are moments of high drama in Infinity War-between father and daughter, brother and brother, mentor and protégé, lover and lover-that these actors, as deep in this series as we are, deliver on with teary intensity. Infinity War is much like Thanos, terrifying and magnificent in its bigness, both unfeeling juggernaut and alluring giant ribboned with pathos. I cringed when my audience applauded the Marvel logo, and yet felt a frisson of true excitement when we gasped in pain and surprise at the (likely temporary) death of a beloved character.
But it plays just that much louder in Infinity War, the film towering over us (and the mid-spring cinematic landscape) with such sleek, assured dominance that one feels half cowed into awe and half sick about the corporate slavishness of it all. That outsized aural and visual register is something we’ve grown accustomed to, in the Avengers films and others.
AVENGERS INFINITY WAR MOVIE
The movie is a relentless clobberer, going fast and hard on action and exposition, managing a few pensive moments here and there, but mostly raging at full blare for its 150-minute run. To accomplish that terrible end, he needs all six of the Infinity Stones-enchanted objects we’ve seen scattered throughout the other Marvel Studios films, vied for and contended with but only now proving more than MacGuffins. Thanos has spent too much time on the wrong subreddit or something, and now lives by a pretty extreme philosophy that involves him trying to kill half of everything that’s alive in order to finally bring peace and balance to the universe. We’ve met him fleetingly in the past, but now here he is front and center, a saturnine and surprisingly compelling villain given voice and lumbering body by Josh Brolin. The guy helping nudge things toward a conclusion is Thanos, big and purple and from another world. I don’t necessarily wish death upon any of these (largely resurrectable) gods and aliens and souped-up humans, but the faint sense of impending finality hanging in Infinity War’s air is refreshing. Still, I appreciate the film’s move toward something concrete, inching us closer to a time when at least some of these stories will be complete. The story will conclude next year with a part-two film, which gives Infinity War a slightly unsatisfying tang. Finally, Infinity War provides that, assembling nearly all the heroes we’ve gone zooming after over the years for a defining adventure with actual life-or-death stakes. If we’re being asked to watch 19 movies in a series, with more to come, a sense of a grander arc would be nice. Since they first teamed up six years ago, I’ve yearned for their bright, rollicking exploits to take on some summative shape or ultimate purpose, something that really binds together not strictly just the Avengers films (of which the new Infinity War, opening April 24, is the third) but all the other disparate movies in their orbit. At long last, the Avengers seem to be getting somewhere.