The comic book genre gladly claimed its throne as our generation’s Western years ago. I don’t believe it’s gone completely kaput, but it’s worn me down. You might remember when I deemed Avengers: Age of Ultron, the predecessor to Avengers: Infinity War, a “corporate scheme of a sequel” in which “every brittle, joyless scene feels like the last.” It’s hyperbole for sure, though then again, Marvel Studios is one for excess.
For ten years, the company has poured billions into films of superhumanly fluctuating quality, some of which have been really good (Iron Man, Black Panther, Spider-Man: Homecoming) and some of which could have used some improvement (Avengers: Age of Ultron, Thor: The Dark World). That all the films are interconnected and share the same story “universe” — regardless of their individual worth — is both the franchise’s winning feature and its crutch. It’s one thing for Marvel to introduce several diverse, likable superheroes, but it’s another to rally them together. There’s a reason why movies don’t typically have ten major characters: too many of them can make a screenplay overly busy, confusing, and cramped.
I ramble on about this because the premise for “Infinity War” alone should have doomed the film from the start. By my count, it’s the nineteenth and most anticipated installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, gratuitously dependent on the events that predate it. It is the intersection, and culmination, of roughly ten story-lines and concerns the actions of — I’m abbreviating the list from the Wikipedia page — Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Captain America, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Star-Lord, Gamora, Black Widow, Black Panther, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Drax, Groot, and Rocket, with a handful of others snagging minor screen time. By joining forces, they must overcome a surly, purple-skinned space marauder by the name of Thanos, who plans to wipe out half of the universe to save it from, in his words, a shortage of resources. Seems a bit much to me — I mean, couldn’t recycling still work out?
For being listed as a family-friendly crowd-pleaser, “Infinity War” is obsessed with death; it’s the most morbid film that Marvel’s given us so far. Both its heroes and villains contemplate whether they should kill to get what they want — the only discernible difference between the two sides is that Thanos (Josh Brolin) will do it. I think that genocide is too sensitive of a nerve for a Hollywood action movie to touch at all, but either way, it’s used here as a glum, generic tool to convey the villain’s recklessness and insanity. Still, the script can’t decide on who Thanos really is. It’s exceptionally confusing when writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely try to humanize a mass murderer, as when Thanos realizes that he’s alienated himself from his daughter doing what he thinks is right. Is this moment supposed to be a tear-jerker? A bathroom break?
Ethics aside, a great movie villain isn’t made by just an intimidating look, or even inner conflict. A great movie villain is one who throws the hero, along with their values, into a psychological (and not necessarily physical) tailspin. Think of the brilliant scene in The Dark Knight when the Joker forces Batman to choose whether to save Rachel Dawes or Harvey Dent, Dawes symbolizing love and Dent symbolizing justice.
When Thanos isn’t slaughtering, he’s blandly sermonizing about slaughtering. He poses a threat to the Avengers solely because he’s tall. Unfortunately for us, this foe is not scary. Or interesting.
The Avengers themselves fare a tad better. Because there are too many of them to fit into one thread, they’re split up into a couple of separate sequences, each of which interferes with Thanos’ quest to collect all six infinity stones — little performance-enhancing crystals scattered across space — and become unstoppable. The stones are a clever storytelling device that quantifies the opponent’s progress and quickens the film’s narrative heartbeat. This is the compass that the audience must cling to; trying to keep track of the subplots is like stepping up to the batter’s box and watching eight different pitches head toward you.
Directors Joe and Anthony Russo try their best to polish up the transitions (there are many of them). The entertainment value that the film does have is mostly due to the hectic juxtaposition between scenes rather than the scenes themselves. The dialogue between our heroes, while performed with gusto, is really hit or miss here; Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey Jr.) and Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) find their tremendous egos clashing; Thor (Chris Hemsworth) discovers his rambunctious soulmate in Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper); Captain America (Chris Evans) and Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) share a heartwarming fondness for hand-to-hand combat.
These interactions, for the most part, are reserved for humorous quips or talk of ominous danger. The Avengers no longer appear to need growth, and if they do, they don’t experience any moral revelations in “Infinity War.” The script doesn’t allow them to; the many subplots compete for the spotlight, suffocating each other and adding to the noise. The action sequences are well-choreographed — albeit for the Russo brothers’ tendency to shake the camera too much — but except for last spring’s Black Panther, it’s been a while since Marvel has given us an emotional climax instead of a bleak catharsis of destruction.
I’ll let you see the ending for yourself (if you haven’t already heard it from everybody and their brother). Even for a cynic like me, the final minutes of “Infinity War” are unusually challenging and chilling for such a mainstream movie, even if I don’t completely understand them. An untitled Avengers 4 has been scheduled for release in early 2019, which takes a bit of the edge off the jarring cliffhanger that “Infinity War” leaves us with. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has always been terrified of losing an audience, and this somewhat enjoyable but restless film is further proof of it. And yet, with “Infinity War,” it seems like Marvel is at last preparing something that I thought the studio would never give into: a finale.
