*Originally written May 3rd, 2018*
Review:
Avengers: Infinity War had a lot to live up to. It's the culmination of an insane 18 films of hit-or-miss quality and 10 years of build up. I had my worries about Infinity War. Packing all these characters into such a huge film. Would it work? I wasn't sure. While it is far from perfect, this is a fun, effective, ambitious and surprisingly emotional epic that spells the beginning of the end for a decade worth of superhero films.
The structure is more in line with Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, while the characters never all meet up in one huge scene (And a couple are curiously absent), everyone has their moment to shine and a part to play. A lot of the team-ups were unexpected, but mostly work. It's hard to talk about without spoiling, which I will not do.
Marvel has always had a villain problem, 90% of them are bland and throwaway fodder just to fill the space of a bad without any real character. Thanos, on the other-hand is a completely different beast. Josh Brolin delivers an extremely developed and compelling villain. It's so rare that a villain comes along where you completely agree with his motivation and why he does what he does. Despite being the bad guy, he has genuine heart and emotion behind him, leading to a moment of surprisingly brutality that I didn't think the MCU had in it. It really helped that Brolin is given such a huge amount of screen-time, possibly more than the heroes themselves.
Much like the Guardians films, this is an extremely gorgeous film to look at, filled with mostly impressive CG (Aside from a couple of Thanos' throwaway goons). It's not just the CGI too, the cinematographer is top notch too, there's so many bright and beautiful locations, a far cry from the ugly and televisual Age of Ultron. Alan Silvestri's score was also fantastic. Again, scores are something the MCU seem to overlook, so it was great to hear a memorable orchestral score in a Marvel films.
Like I said, it's not all perfect though. A big problem I have had with the MCU is the lame humour and while there is quite a bit of eye-rollingly embarrassing comedy here, it's not as intrusive as it has been in the past. It's much more in line with Civil War, where they let moments of emotion breathe rather than throw in some stupid joke and remove any kind of tension. That said, there are some moments that are genuinely funny, it's not massively hilarious, but I do have to remember these kids films, despite how dark and mature Infinity War gets.
And Infinity War does get dark. A lot of people die, some long running, some not. While some of the deaths will be impossible for the MCU to commit to, it didn't make the ending scenes any less haunting or unsettling. There were one or two deaths that just got a collective shrug from me though, particularly the ones early on.
Infinity War really is a hard film to talk about, it's half a film, despite losing the "Part 1" in the title, this really feels like the first part of a film, and luckily we only have a year to see the resolution to the Empire Strikes Back style ending, but based on this, I'm sure it'll be worth the wait.
Superhero fatigue might be slowly kicking in, but Infinity War manages to be an ambitious and devastating entry into the now 19th film MCU that are slowly learning from their mistakes. I don't know what more I could have wanted from this film.
8/10 Dans
Avengers: Infinity War is out now in cinemas in the UK
Watch the trailer below:
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