It's one of those amazing things that happen once in a while, an Event, a cultural watershed, a work of consummate pop art that is so dense, so important, and so spectacular that it's hard to be critical. At least, it is for me. Fans of the franchise who watch the whole damn series every year multiple times will lose their minds over this movie. I know because I am one of those crazies.
In the (penultimate) culmination of each of the eighteen films in the Marvel Studios universe, Infinity War sees all the superheroes join together. Well, almost all (where the hell are Hawkeye and Ant-Man?). Essentially taking all the little tidbit scenes of Thanos as a launch pad, the film starts with a devastating look at the Big Bad in action. The mad purple titan (played by Josh Brolin) is a beast of a villain, intelligent and chilling and even sad, on par with Killmonger as one of the most interesting characters in the franchise. He seeks to destroy half the universe to save life from overpopulation, and he's one of the rare villains whose evil endgame isn't totally insane. He can actually make it happen, and he does.
Oops, spoiler alert.
While Thanos's arc is a riveting story -- especially after having been teased for so long -- the rest of the film feels a bit haphazard and slipshod. Don't get me wrong: It's all dazzling and funny, poignant and sad, action-packed and explosive. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo (of the last two Captain America films) do some damn amazing work here, and the writers have obviously worked hard to tie together so many various characters and plot strands into a more or less cohesive film. Simply graded on a scale of grandeur and epic proportions, Infinity War is one of the best franchise-based movies ever made.
Yet on its own, or from a non-fan perspective, I imagine it's a mess. It's all crazy action and bright colors and fast scene changes between characters who never see each other and planets you may or may not remember from other films. Even I had trouble making connections once or twice -- wait, those two guys don't know each other? What did we last see him/her doing? Why is so-and-so in this place at this time? -- and I'm about as hardcore a fan as we come. And that's just because the movie is so bloated, so full, and so confident in telling its own story. I suspect that watching the film on its own would be woefully unsatisfactory. It works as a result of its connections to all the other movies.
And that's why I love it. And feel a little weird about it.
Actually, my exact feelings can be summed up by the last scene of the film, which is a bitch of a cliffhanger. Stunning as it was in the moment, I couldn't help but feel disgusted. As if we weren't already going to pay to see any and all MCU movies already, you're going to insult us with a big-ass cliffhanger that forces us to come again? Really? I felt the same way at the end of the second Hobbit film. You're not making a television serial, dudes. Make a movie and call it good. Especially since the studio has already announced sequels for at least half the characters who dissolve into dust. We know the Guardians will be back (even though all of them "die"). We know T'Challa and Peter Parker will be back. It's almost certain Strange will be back. It just felt like a cheap way to titillate fans who don't know how franchise contracts work and don't follow any social media.
That said, DAMN, I need to see this movie again. And you do too.
IMDb: Avengers: Infinity War
No comments:
Post a Comment