Avengers: Infinity War (SPOILER-FREE Film Review)
2018 Marvel Studios
Directed by: Anthony and Joe Russo, Written by: Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, Starring: Everybody
Nicsperiment Score: 9/10
You see a lot of interesting divergences in reviews for Marvel films due to reviewers having such wildly divergent perspectives.
You have the film snob who couches every sentence with the idea that these are silly, artless films that adults should only treat as dessert after watching whatever indie flavor of the month is popular with people who go gaga over every indie flavor of the month. Huffington Post just wrote one of those.
You have people who are faintly aware of Marvel mythology, and who just can't quite remember the fine details of past Marvel films--even though they've apparently reviewed all of them--who want to make definitive statements, though these don't hold up to scrutiny. Check out half of the reviews that appeared on Rotten Tomatoes on Thursday.
Very similarly, you've got the zeitgeist reviewers who start writing ten minutes into the movie, just wanting to get their half-baked opinion out there first.
You've got the particular type of Marvel nerd who doesn't understand how movies work, complaining that every minor detail of the comic books hasn't made it to the screen. Check reddit.
You have fair, well-reasoned reviews, which are boring and don't prove my point, so let's act like those don't exist.
Then you have me. I haven't seen any Marvel movie on opening night, though I've eventually seen all but two. I've read far more comics published by Dark Horse and Vertigo than Marvel or DC. I think some of these Marvel movies are pretty damned good, and that some of them are pretty silly.
Avengers: Infinity War is objectively an incredible achievement. It is the culmination of 18 previous films. Eighteen! That is insane. A group of people, in varying styles, collectively created 18 films, some good, some great, and some inconsequential, and made them all fit together, despite disparate elements, into a whole that could be paid off in one film. This film, Avengers: Infinity War, involves almost every major character from all the previous films, many of whom have never interacted before, and jams them together in interesting an unexpected ways.
Miraculously, every single scene and character feels correct and a natural evolution of what has been shown in these previous films...and Infinity War is paced so well, no one outstays their welcome. Everyone gets their due, and in a movie with a million explosions and a billion fight scenes (slight exaggerations, I'll try to get a more accurate count the third time I watch it), the filmmakers have still found ways to fill the movie with character moments.
Also, the Infinity War somehow raises the stakes of the entire series to heretofore unimaginable levels, while concurrently being the funniest movie so far in the franchise. However, my favorite element is this:
Have you ever heard a film sequel be compared to The Empire Strikes Back, only to see a slightly dark movie where nothing of consequence happens, and the bad guy is soundly defeated upon viewing?
This ain't that kind of movie. Those The Empire Strikes Back comparisons that reviewers (of all the stripes I've mentioned before) are throwing out aren't just apt...they might not go far enough in communicating to the reader just how big this movie's balls are...after all, at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader still doesn't have what he wants.
Speaking of Darth Vader, much was made of the high quality of this year's previous Marvel antagonist, Black Panther's Killmonger. As Killmonger, Michael B Jordan turned in an incredible performance as a very believable and well-rounded villain. Infinity War's Thanos, as portrayed by Josh Brolin, is somehow better. His motivations are incredibly clear. His end goal is incredibly logical. His means of achieving his goal are devilishly clever. Brolin brings a certain amusement to Thanos' clear superiority over the film's protagonists, but also a determination, a weariness, and an emotional vulnerability that is completely unexpected. He is brilliant.
If you are a fan of Marvel films, you've already seen this, and are only reading my review to see how our opinions line up. If you are a casual Marvel fan, you need to see this. It is revelatory. If you think there can be no art in a Marvel Film and were planning to avoid this movie, here are several "Best Picture" Oscar winners that are soundly defeated by Avengers: Infinity War's quality:
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
Chicago (2002)
Crash (2005)
The Departed (2006)
Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
The Artist (2011)
Birdman (2014)
I love Avengers: Infinity War. It pays off the cinematic promises Marvel's been making for the last decade, and it has me feeling incredibly impatient for the final Avengers film, releasing in just a year.
Bring it on Marvel.
The sooner the better.
Comments
I have to say I was pleasantly, pleasantly surprised by this one. I still have a bad taste in my mouth after the cluster of inconsistent character actions and motivations that was Civil War. And while I know galactic genocide is a great motivator, it is fairly amusing how quickly they could hand wave that one away for what this movie needed to do.
But at any rate, this one gets back to letting the characters do what they do well--I thought the first Avengers was notable for how well it juggled all the character moments, but this one just dwarfs it. I'd also have to say they all sit quite well, with the slight antagonism between Stark and Strange working much better (and naturally) than Civil War's much more in your face stuff.
At about halfway through, I also realized how impressed I was with Thanos as a villain. He's just been a looming shadow for years and with how much this movie needed to do, it would have been far too easy for him to end up as the villain from the first Guardians (who was, after all, his kinda-sorta henchman). Instead, he is fully realized and fully terrible. That final shot, man... that's something.
I also liked your comparison of Thanos to Erik Killmonger, about the fascinating difference between the two that also makes them among some of the better villains to be seen in any movie.
And ugh, reviewers. Yes, Rotten Tomatoes is an aggregate, but seeing this one at 84% against Civil War's 91% still bugs the heck out of me. Matt Zoller-Seitz on the Ebert site said he liked it but was also wanting something... more? Like for the movie to do it with more "panache" was a line he used, and I'm struggling to know how it could have done it with any more, given everything noted above. Sure, it's fairly workmanlike for some of its visuals, but a lot of them work well, also (the fight between Hulk and Thanos was particularly excellent for its physicality). And yeah... Thanos again. His review seemed to suggest we don't get to feel things enough in this movie and I have to wonder if we watched the same thing.
Some of the opening carnage didn't hit as hard as it should (and was a bit disappointing, after Ragnarok), but after that, it does the job more than well. One character I had quipped about not minding dying (before I saw the film) actually got me wondering and saddened that he might when his time seemed to come.
It was a pleasure to read your thoughts. And as always, you're very much right until I disagree with you (and there are no disagreements here!). ;)
Man, the only reason I didn't give it a ten is because I got so emotionally wrapped up in the movie (even the second time), I'd rather give it some distance just to make sure I still like it as much later. I'll probably give it another view late in the summer, and if I still feel the same way...I'm gonna come back and bump up the score.
It seems like you and I are generally in agreement about these movies, and I felt incredibly burnt out after the character inconsistencies of Civil War, but between Thor: Ragnarok, Blank Panther, and this, Marvel has really gotten me back into the fold. It is crazy how they were able to so satisfyingly move past the Civil War stuff. Not having Steve and Tony interact yet was brilliant, and with all the heaviness, the two of them making up in the next movie is going to feel extremely cathartic.
I loved how subtle Stark and Strange's rivalry was handled...two really smart, egotistical dudes who can put it aside to do what's best. Also, Stark not overreacting when Starlord lost his cool in THAT scene was excellent, as Starlord exactly mirrored when Stark lost his cool at the end of Civil War (even down to the "I don't care"...nice callback!), nearly redeeming that alternate-universe-esque last stretch of Cap and Iron Man's interactions in Civil War. I guess at least Iron Man learned from it, and can understand why someone else would react that way.
Thanos was just perfect. The foresight to set him up so many movies ago paid off to an unfathomable degree here. He is everything he was promised to be. How the heck were they able to get a guy who wipes out the half the universe and murders his own daughter to be so sympathetic...I mean, when he said the word "everything" at the end of the movie, I think I lost it even more than that Spiderman part...you know the part.
I know I gave the movie a 9/10, but I have to admit, I can't think of a single flaw--I really think I am going to change the score. I also can't think of a movie that's made me feel this much lately, and this is after thinking I was done with this series. I agree, knowing that the Rotten Tomatoes score for this is lower than Civil War, though even on the most purely objective level, it is a greater film, is maddening. I do wonder if the reviews you mentioned...and really any that have to result to evidence-less and example-free nitpicking are only doing so because the authors are too embarrassed to say how good they think a film where a guy under the moniker Iron Man fights a big purple alien actually is...like it will kill their cool points. I have also read several reviews that feature rather baffling nitpicks. One bemoaned the Thor/Rocket/Groot subplot as not measuring up. I wonder, which part did they think hurt the film? The moving heart-to-heart between Rocket and Thor that allows Thor to process his grief, all while both characters act completely like themselves (Rocket's "Dead brother, huh? That can be annoying." made me do one of those really loud, quick, chuff laughs when the theater was completely silent. Awesome.) The fun, world-building scene where the trio meet the dwarf weapons-maker? The absolutely incredible scene where Thor takes the full energy of a sun, then Groot completes Stormbreaker by creating a handle out of his own arm. Really, which part of that dragged the film down? I'd love to know.
In a similar vein, I'm also bemused by how at one level, I can see why Tom Holland's Spider-man is a lot of fun and still be annoyed by him, since he got way too much air time in Cap's last movie and that we have seen far too many Spider-man reboots (I would have rather seen one of the new ones, like Miles Morales or even Spider-Gwen get a turn over Peter Parker's general storyline again). Oh, the baggage we bring to stories and characters.
I actually in general like Matt Zoller-Seitz as a reviewer, but I can't figure out how he's viewing the Marvel movies. He gave Thor:Ragnarok 3/4, but then in his review of Infinity War he called it one of two back-to-back hits. And from his review of Ragnarok, he liked things about it more than I did, and it really read as better than a 3, even if that's a decent score. So I really don't get any reviewer with these things. As much as I liked Ebert himself, his review of the first Thor still annoys me (he went on about what the Frost Giants could possibly eat on their frozen world, like he wouldn't have thought it a terrible directorial move to actually try to show that: what possible significance would that have to the narrative?).
It's always good to remember a review is just someone's opinion, but for how many movies these people see and how not hard to keep track of the Marvel universe as it is... they seem to be on a different wavelength sometimes. Zoller-Seitz went on about how Infinity War didn't have the emotional punch of things of earlier movies, like Ned Stark's death, and I actually had to think for a moment who and when that was, because I was spending that time in Civil War thinking more about how that couldn't possibly have been how it went down because Steve Rogers WOULD NOT LIE ABOUT THAT TO TONY and other related things. I'm not sure how he was so invested there and not as much for other moments here, like during the acquiring of the soul stone. Egads.
That "everything" line made me want to punch Thanos in the face, so that's interesting for different feelings at those moments too (though part of that desire comes from Thanos knowing what it cost him and being annoyed at him for that too. As Gamora said, "That's not mercy!").
And yeah, I loved the Thor/Rocket/Groot sequence. It was set up well before they left, they somehow managed to make it funny while still hitting on some truly raw emotion, and teenage Groot made you love him again after how angsty and teenager-y he was earlier on! The whole thing created a powerful arc, too, as the movie entering on Thor being completely beaten up by Thanos let you know how rough things were going to be, and made the ending work for some of its almost hope when Thor arrives on the battlefield.
I'll have to see it again and sit on it a bit as well to see where it settles, so I can appreciate your thinking on the ranking. We have one over on the poor professional reviewers there (besides not needing to watch things we don't feel like watching, heh).
Man, I'm gonna go paragraph by paragraph, and I feel an emotional outburst coming...
Ha. That's true. Of every group of people in the Marvel cinematic universe, few have been decimated like them. I imagine if Thor survives the next film, he will be going off to rebuild.
I agree that Spider-man has been rebooted too many times (more than anyone, I think), but also, in my opinion, this is the golden age of Spider-Man in that Tom Holland is far superior in his portrayal than anyone else who's done it. I say this as someone who has actively not liked Spider-Man since I was a kid--I think I prefer my superheroes to have a physicality that Spider-Man's never had (even though, technically, he is incredibly strong). Tobey Maguire, despite the fact that that second Raimi film is legit and the part on the elevated train where everyone wraps their arms around Peter when he is about to fall to his death makes me cry every time I see it, was just a little too whiney/emo for me. Andrew Garfield felt like a too-cool-for-school miscasting. This Holland kid brings the "Golly-gee, this is cool!" amazement to the role, but is believable when he's punching bad guys. I know I gave the caveat that I historically haven't even liked the character, but I feel like I know what the character is supposed to be, and this kid embodies it to the point that I actually like the character when he portrays him (er...that logic is faulty...sorry). I also feel like, due to cinematic success and the time that's elapsed in public consciousness since that first Raimi film, it's going to be pretty danged hard to get an audience to understand that someone other than Peter Parker can be Spider-Man. In fact, for most people, Peter Parker IS Spider-Man. I almost think it would be easier to do one of the non-Bruce Wayne Batmans, as plenty of Batman films have shown he is aging and looking to get out of the game, and there's always a ready replacement with Robin (ha, and there are multiple Robins, too. Comic books are nuts).
Ah, Zoller-Seitz is one of the people writing for Ebert's website now, right? I've read some of his reviews, though not on anything approaching a routine. Honestly, since Ebert died, I haven't found anyone whose opinion I respect enough to read regularly...I'll get to that more in a minute. Wait, I'll get to it now, because I see Simon Abrams is writing for that website now, too. Do you remember when I sent you that completely joyless review of the first episode of Cowboy Bebop, which took the coolest show of all time, and made it look boring and rote? That's the guy who wrote it! And he's writing for rogerebert.com? Wow. That's really sad. Before I looked at that, I was going to go into a rant about the general joylessness and mechanical nature of most of today's movie reviews, and now I see this guy is writing reviews for a website started by the guy who arguably wrote some of the most entertaining and honest reviews of all time.
The thing is, Roger Ebert made a living between his TV show and written work...and people aren't doing that anymore. Someone like Abrams, if he's only writing for a living, is having to freelance like a mad man at multiple publications just to scrape by. Hardly anywhere is paying one person an actual living wage to write any kind of artistic review anymore. I think part of that is the way media is being consumed, and part of it is...let's face it, you and I are just as qualified to write film reviews for a major publication as anyone aggregated by Rotten Tomatoes, and there are 10 million other people just as qualified. Maybe 1% of modern film critics today are indispensable. Shoot, most of these guys don't even have editors anymore. Things are just so different now. I think this has unfortunately resulted in the anonymous, group-think, joyless word-waste of modern film criticism. All this, and then the social media, "well that happened five minutes ago, what's happening now?" aspect means, to me at least, that a lot of reviews are written by someone writing disinterested notes through most of what they're watching, with most of their review written before they've even watched the subject of their review, so they can get that published and move onto the next thing.
To me, this shows up in many reviews as simply a huge lack of investment by the reviewer. The only time you see real enthusiasm is when something, generally smaller and independent, has been group-thinked into importance, in which case the reviewer is effusive in their praise, lest they be left out of the zeitgeist. This means that genre fare, the kind of stuff that us mere mortals go nuts over, and ironically, seems to hang around in cultural relevance far longer than many of these critically fawned over films that everyone immediately forgets as soon as the next one comes around (and my goodness, I say this as someone who lists Ingmar Bergman as his favorite filmmaker), gets treated with contempt, when it should be considered on the same level as everything else. I mean, and don't me wrong, I love Guillermo Del Toro, but your average joe who's seen Infinity War and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is going to be thinking about Spider-Man saying "I don't want to go" long after they've forgotten about whatever happens in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
And if I see another review saying, "How can you get emotional about that Spider-Man scene, when you know they are just going to bring him back?" Well, Tony doesn't know they are going to bring him back. Spider-Man, who is feeling all the effects of death, doesn't know he is going to be brought back. Tony dedicated the entirety of the last six years of his life to ensure that something like this doesn't happen. Now he has to powerlessly watch as his surrogate son, who he has repeatedly stated lies heavy on his conscience, dies in his arms? And you can't get emotional over that because Spider-Man will eventually be revived? How do you know that Tony himself won't die in the resuscitation? Why should that even matter? Why can't you just be in the moment? In the moment, the moment matters! It matters to Tony, and if you're invested in the film (and engaged by Downey Jr.'s performance), it matters to you.
And what the heck is Zoller-Seitz doing holding Infinity War up to Game of Thrones? The amount of cynicism in that last paragraph of his review makes me want to vomit onto his copy of Nausea. Maybe he should have watched the film with regular joes. Both of my theaters were filled with traumatized filmgoers, some yelling "No!", "What?!" or crying. How does he know that the stakes aren't real? He, like all of humanity, hasn't seen the second film yet. His James Bond reference is particularly ridiculous considering that "James Bond will Return" is at the end of every single one of those movies, and his Gen X reference points, Bambi's mom dying, Optimus Prime dying, betray that his heart froze over some time in the mid-80's and never thawed. I could apply his same logic to early Game of Thrones, and accuse the Ned Stark death of pandering to shock-reliance, and praise Infinity War for NOT doing that. The whole thing is brimming with so much post-modern comparative meaninglessness that I feel like someone needs to shake Zoller-Seitz and repeat, "Matt, it is okay to actually like things," until he breaks down into tears and admits he can't remember the last time he stated a personal feeling that he didn't completely overthink because he was overly worried about what other people would think about it.
I am actually worked up to the point that I'm fairly certain that I'm not even kidding. The reason Siskel and Ebert worked so well is that you got the feeling both were 100% invested in everything they watched, and that both were then confidently giving their 100% honest, personal opinion of the respective films without being concerned about what anyone else would think about it.
My personal favorite is their review of Baby's Day Out (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e1txr5XloM), where Siskel, without any embarrassment, praises the film for being a live action cartoon that children will enjoy. Conversely, Ebert essentially confesses that he hates the film because of a terrifying childhood memory of a film where Mickey Rooney was standing on a window ledge. Two strong personal opinions, completely opposite, but at least I legitimately know where the two of them are coming from, and that popular opinion isn't informing their own. That's what I want. Watch the movie with 100% of your focus, and then tell me what you really think.
Sorry. This is hitting a sore spot. Like really sore. I used to cut Ebert's reviews out of the newspaper. I'm feeling really get-off-my-lawnish about this. Those last few paragraphs were completely stream-of-consciousness.
STEVE ROGERS WOULD NOT LIE ABOUT THAT TO TONY!!!! I still can't get over it. "We don't trade lives. Except yours, Tony." Steve doesn't lie!
Ha, wanting to punch Thanos in the face is also a very visceral reaction! I think they accomplished their mission!
Yes! I mean, how awesome was Thor yelling "Bring me Thanos!" with Alan Silvestri's "Avenger's Theme" pumping in the background? That moment was entirely earned!
I'd love to give it a few months and then rank all these movies. I think I generally go for the ones that aim for the emotional aspect (probably why I liked Guardians II more than most).
Regarding Cap, yes, all our rage cannot even speak to how inconsistent all of that is. What would have made for a fascinating movie is for them to actually bring that knowledge forward at the beginning of the movie and for Cap to actually have to grapple with it. They so easily could have made it a moral quandary, with needs and expectations he needed to face for an old friend and a kinda sorta new friend that he has, after all, saved the world with twice. Instead, we just see a shallow, surface antagonism, and a governmental regulation plot that doesn't really do anything to enhance a quandary, but to merely draw an artificial line in the sand. Blech.
I read a ridiculous amount of reviews on the Ebert site, just because I like to know what is going on with movies, even if I'm not going to watch more than a tiny fraction of what is produced every year. As a rule, the reviewers on the site are pretty decent, and I like that they're not necessarily going to go with the trend of other reviewers (they've taken likings to movies other critics are panning, and look with nuance at movies everyone is raving about). But there are others like this where you really have to wonder... especially when he even seems to note he's nitpicking or not quite able to say why it doesn't satisfy.
Those last two things are always warning signs to me that I'm still needing to figure something out, or that maybe I'm having a reaction like Ebert did to Baby's Day Out. With the newest Spiderman, I know I'm mostly swayed by a bias that isn't really fair to the movie or the actor playing him.
At any rate, I do still like the Ebert site for seeming to not be entirely group-thinked or joyless, most of the time. I forget who there reviewed Zach Braff's Wish I Were Here, but they were much more fair with their criticisms of it than most (I still feel like it got a lot of hate for being Kickstarted... pretty much the majority of the negative comments I read about the movie from critics or viewers on IMDB, etc., cited that... which is a bias not reading the film fairly). Even then I think it was harder on it than it deserved (I still like it a lot, despite its slow beginning and a couple instances of "banging the drum" of a line or a theme too hard).
Until publications can operate more healthily than they do now, though, I think this is how a lot of reviews are going to be. Doesn't help that Facebook sucks all viewer traffic down the tubes, too: I know that's a huge problem for creators. They can't get a hit on their site no matter how much people are looking at it on another site. *sigh*