There is a sense of relief that one has that Avengers: Infinity War proved to be a really good movie that doesn’t waste any of the goodwill built up over the past 10 years Marvel has been making movies. However, that sense of relief is not one that you’ll be focusing on once you leave the theater as the film aims, and succeeds, at leaving you emotionally wrecked by the end of its two-hour and a half run time.
Avengers: Infinity War is a movie that is both incredibly simple and the most complex blockbuster to grace the screen. The simple: A titan named Thanos is in possession of the Infinity Gauntlet and wants to collect all of the Infinity Stones, which would enable him to kill half the universe and rule it. The Avengers, both old and new (Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Chadwick Boseman, Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper, Don Cheadle, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Tom Holland, and Benedict Cumberbatch are the names on the poster), want to stop him from doing so. Now for the complex, the various heroes are scattered across the universe, don’t know of each other’s powers or Thanos’ abilities, don’t trust each other, and have to somehow battle against a man who has distinct advantages over them, while they are at their lowest point. Whew, it’s stressful just to think about the sheer weight of what the Avengers had to face and how they dealt with it. I won’t get into any plot details in this review, but my goodness, they dealt with a lot.
Which is probably why the movie, clocking in at two and a half hours, feels heavy and not in the best way. Because the movie has so many moving pieces and characters, Stephen Markus and Christopher McFeely have a Herculean job of trying to get us to care every second. They mostly succeed, but I do think that their script cuts around a bit too much, leading to a feeling of restlessness that seems opposite of the frenetic pace. However, once they have finally set all the pieces and really let the race to find the stones and save the universe, the movie sings. Anthony and Joe Russo are masters at staging movies and they really understood how to get the most out of the various team ups and action beats. They had a tremendous sandbox to play with (and destroy our feelings with) and they did just that.
One of the elements most fans are jazzed about is seeing these characters interact and the movie never goes out of its way to give us character moments or acting moments, but lets them develop naturally. Our theater lit up at how the characters worked together or didn’t. Best served by this version of storytelling are Zoe Saldana as Gamora, who maintains a unique emotional core with Thanos, and Chris Hemsworth as Thor, who delivers his finest outing in the MCU movies, maybe in his entire career. His character has gone through so much, and Hemsworth balances that strong emotional nuance, while also blending in the trademark humor we’ve now come to expect from the character.
Avengers: Infinity War is just a behemoth of a movie and one that will take you a while to recover from, given how emotionally taxing it is. But it is a worthy entry into the MCU and a great launching pad for the next 10 plus years.