Avengers: Infinity War
- Score
- 9.99
The penultimate crossover film, a new standard!
An incredibly ambitious movie, the Russo brothers balance a multitude of characters and plots to complete an intricate anti-hero's journey.
By Tym Stevens
Everything comes from the source.
Firstly, from Marvel’s rival, DC.
Editor Julius Schwartz birthed the Silver Age of Comic Books in 1956, steadily canvasing a vast multiverse with epic annual team-up events around the Justice League up against cosmic Big Bads. Marvel’s co-architect Jack Kirby jumped ship to DC in 1971, unleashing the New Gods titles, empowered by The Source in their battle against the death totem, Darkseid.
Secondly, Jim Starlin.
His ‘70s comics work for Marvel recast the JLA and the New Gods as the Avengers and Captain Marvel against the deathgod Thanos, followed with his Infinity Gauntlet arcs in the early-‘90s sequels. Jonathan Hickman’s Infinity series (2013) expanded this with gothic intensity and cinematic framing.
Thirdly, Joss Whedon.
He blueprinted how to do team-epic superhero movies, and it would take four people to replace him.
As writer/director, Whedon melded three solo films into the anthemic symphony of The Avengers (2012), then upgraded it with the complexity and gravity of Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). The magic alchemy lies in balancing the macro with the micro, the character interplay and emotional arcs that carry the audience. Keep it clear, exciting, surprising, but most of all, felt.
Dual directors and writers followed him on a learning curve. The Russo brothers/Markus+McFeely (RM2) went lean and natural, grounding his scope with the political Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) and took wing with the sociopolitical Captain America: Civil War (2017), paving their path as his successors.
Fourthly then, RM2; it’s with this film that the students gain mastery.
Prologue is now pay-off. Serial storytelling has become the immersion norm, where comics maxi-series, telenovelas, and serial-arc TV shows tell bigger, deeper stories. Summing up 19 films into an unprecedented cinema cross-over finale, Infinity War resets the bar seamlessly assimilating five more franchises while still staying cohesive and fleet. The result is a beautiful myth to break your heart, a polytonal concerto you can tap your feet to, bracingly tough, giddily funny, testing faith and taking names.
Everything comes full circle; the revolution on the page are finally becoming the revolutions on the screen.
With them comes the same challenges. DC’s Justice League crossovers had crescendoed with the Crisis on Infinite Earths maxi-series (1986), in which every hero of all time fought to save the multiverse from ending. Staggering. Until both DC and Marvel cloned it as annual comics sales events every summer since for three more decades, turning the ultimate into the mundane. Plus, mega characters = more action beats, less characterization. Transitioning carefully in bringing this tradition to live-action, Infinity War makes all the right moves Whedon sourced: keep the structure clear, twist on exciting surprises, but most of all, make the viewer feel everything they’re seeing.
RM2 ultimately win here by balancing the complex and surreal at all times with soul.
The Avengers are weakened by the fissures of their Civil War. Gamora and Nebula come to the fore through their shared pain. Stark and Strange are mirrors, bristling egos over underlying compassion. Spidey, the everymug, is brash innocence. The Guardians are adolescence, Hulk is shellshock, and Thor is the storm. And Thanos is a smug zealot who mistakes his sociopathy for purity, another false king who can only triumph by theft.
But Wakanda is hope, the root of humanity seeding the future. Sow the ashes, start again.
Everything comes back from the source.