I was really excited to see the latest entry in the Cinematic Universe, especially since this is the big team event film with all my favorite, notable heroes! First of all, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the epic failures of Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, Thor, Thor: Dark World, The Incredible Hulk, and the OK-but-flawed Avengers: Age of Ultron, Doctor Strange, and Spider-Man: Homecoming. But I love these heroes and really wanna see the cinematic universe do well. With Avengers: Infinity War, while the result is enjoyable, it also could be better.
The good things about the film was that there was plenty of good chemistry between most of the cast and at least the filmmakers knew this time to feature a formidable threat in the form of the Infinity Gauntlet. That being said, Infinity War seldom delivers on any cohesive story. Now, I understand the producers plan on continuing the story in a sequel but you can't halt an entire universe of characters between now and the sequel's release, especially after the way this film ends! The film is marred by a very choppy story, a run-of-the-mill villain, some shoddy visual effects, and an overall haphazard execution. Now, before the fans of this universe complain, let me explain!
First up, there's the aspect of the CGI. It seems every fanboy of these films is overlooking the completely differing designs of main baddie Thanos. In the first film he appeared in (The Avengers), he looks more like his comic book counterpart, and in his next two appearances, you notice a transition happening, especially with his skin coloring. But by Infinity War, he's humanized way too much and his color takes on a much lighter shade of purple. I also didn't really believe his reasoning for wanting to wipe out half of civilization. I mean, come on, his motivation as expressed is merely that he's some grumpy old man who hates people and thinks the only way to balance out life is to wipe out half of all living beings! And how he appears at the end is one of those WTF!? moments.
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| The MANY different-colored CGI faces of Thanos! Make up your mind! |
Infinity War has too many deaths and somebody should tell the filmmakers this is supposed to have some fun in it! And even though common sense tells me there will be another film to address this issue, I'm going to ignore that and say it doesn't matter and this film should stand up on its own. For everything that Infinity War does well regarding tone and table setting for its characters, it's also forced to contend with an incredibly uneven central story. The film regularly grinds to a halt for forced exposition dumps, and while it's nowhere near as sloppy as Iron Man 3 or as aimless as Thor: The Dark World, it also feels overly stuffed with insignificant subplots to push the thin story forward in-between quippy dialogue and genuinely badass action. Even at a lean two-and-a-half hours, it still feels like Infinity War could've been shorter with some tighter writing and editing. What is laughable is not so much the quippy one-liners -- most of which don't stick -- but the film's attempt to throw in some humor, most of which didn't stick (Drax was the only funny one of the bunch). They should stick to just doing what they do: the melodramatic death and destruction -- even though I would love to see them add some actual humor; just make sure it works! I will say too that the destruction of cities was a bit much; they completely ravaged New York City! I mean, with all of those heroes and their powers, they should've kept the destruction to more of a minimum.
Infinity War focuses mainly on Thanos and Gamora (Zoe Saldana). I felt the additional characters are only there so there can be more spin-off movies. They really should've tried to focus more on the heroes! For instance, why didn't Hulk appear!? Instead of featuring one of the most powerful Avengers, the writers neutered Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) and made him resort to laughingly, clumsily pilot the Hulkbuster armor! Also, why and how does Spider-Man suddenly have "Spider Sense" when he didn't have it in Homecoming? And even though Doctor Strange possesses the time stone, which, in his own movie, he used to consistently go back in time in a loop to defeat the god-like entity Dormammu, overcoming his own death many, many times, he doesn't use that same power to simply rewind many, many tragic moments in this film to have a "do over!" I mean, even Thanos was able to use the stone right in this film! And maybe Ant-Man would've been a bigger help in this film than the writers thought as he could've shrunk so small, he could've shrunken and/or tampered with Thanos, the gauntlet and/or stones. And Peter Quill!? Star-Lord!?!? "When Quill learned that Thanos had killed Gamora, he was understandably devastated. As we’ve seen time and time again, Quill has never been particularly adept at dealing with his emotions in a healthy manner. It’s part of a pattern of ego-driven toxic masculinity that the MCU puts on display in many of its prominent heroes. And in that moment, Peter Quill made a choice. He made a choice not to be a hero, but to be selfish. To make himself feel better by unleashing his unbridled rage. And in doing so, he didn’t bring Gamora back. But he did kill Drax. And Mantis. And Groot. And countless others. Peter Quill didn’t pull the trigger, but he may as well have." Ugghh! Also, I didn't know this was Thanos: Infinity War; I thought it was AVENGERS: Infinity War! Most of the big names promoted in this film only had about roughly 10-15 minutes screen-time!
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| Remember this scene from the trailer that got you SO excited for the movie!? Yeah, that's not in the film! One of the characters isn't even in this scene! |
Overall, The visuals were just incredibly poor *cough* Thanos' chin and changing appearance *cough* and there was too much CGI. Don't get me wrong, not all films with much CGI are bad -- if the CGI is good, you can enjoy a movie; but if the effects are as bad as they are here, it just hurts. The plot wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either, and, to be honest, it's just the typical Bad-Guy-wants-to-achieve-his-own-form-of-galaxy-domination-and-gets-stopped-by-a-bunch-of-heroes storyline. Here's hoping the sequel does address many of the characters' paper-thin storylines, and gives them more screen time, as well as clearing up the downer of an ending.
*I actually did enjoy Avengers: Infinity War. I had a issues with it, and wrote a review as if those issues contributed to the entire downfall of the film's worth -- you know, like most critics do to DC films! Thanks to Nerdist for some of the contribution! Overall, the movie was good, but how it wraps up in the sequel will be the true test of its value!
