Finite Infinity

Marvel’s latest “biggest film ever” shows us what happens when the tent gets so big that the pole can no longer support it

(Obviously, spoilers abound but not just for Infinity War but possibly for Avengers 4 as well.)

The end is near. For half the universe. For most of Marvel Studios’ biggest stars and their characters. Just not for its cash cow…or so the studio would hope.

Last night Part 1 of Marvel’s two-part Thanos saga dropped and it’s as big as the Mad Titan himself. Clocking in at two and a half hours it is Marvel’s biggest MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) film yet and it needs every minute to tell its story. In fact it needed more but I’ll circle back to that later.

Short review: 9 out of 10. See it. I’m still digesting so I’m not sure where to put it in my top 5 MCU films just yet…though I don’t think it’s going to claim the crown from Civil War and maybe not the #2 spot from Winter Soldier either, for a multitude of reasons. But, by rights, it should have.

Longer review: This really is the culmination of everything Marvel has done to this point. It throws more than a few twists you won’t see coming and contains so many deep Marvel Easter Egg callbacks to the comics. It is the first MCU film where the villain is the protagonist and it succeeds at that, impressively so. If you haven’t seen every MCU film in the last three years, particularly Thor: Ragnarok, Civil War, and Black Panther, you are going to feel a little lost at times. You may feel overwhelmed at the vastness of the spectacle. This film could wind up pleasing fewer than expected. It’s not really for the casual fan and, unfortunately, it does a disservice to the hard core fan. The clifhanger ending is going to put some people out. When I saw the opening night premiere there was dead silence when the credits rolled. The audience didn’t know how to react. I heard more than one person grumble about having to wait a year to find out how this all resolves itself and not wanting to. I think we may have finally discovered the location of that line for how many characters can be satisfyingly juggled in a single film. And crossed it.

Basically, it comes down to a balancing act question. How long a film length is Marvel willing to tolerate and how much character exposition is it willing to sacrifice in order to adhere to it? With Infinity War we get at least one answer to that question: more than it should.

Marvel has always said this is really Thanos’ film and they are right about that. Thanos is the MCU’s most realized villain of all time and credit goes to screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely for finally giving us a fully developed Marvel baddie. Yes, I think he’s better than Killmonger who was too one dimensional for a character with real world issues to discuss. The film’s plot depended on Thanos not being a cardboard cutout. Most of the best scenes in the film involve Thanos. I think that’s probably the first time I’ve said something like that about a purely CGI character.

The running time question is one that has been bouncing around in my head since I saw the film. It is a complete film and yet it feels incomplete. It is long and yet it is not long enough. To get to the point: By making the film about Thanos, it no longer is about the Avengers. Nor is it about the Guardians of the Galaxy, albeit to a far lesser degree that one would have thought or expected going in to see this film.

The Guardians come out of this film more fully realized than most of the other characters not named Tony Stark or Stephen Strange. That’s an odd decision for a film with “Avengers” in the title. I’m not the first person to mention this but for a film that depended so much on the outcome of Civil War to position everyone both physically and mentally in this film, Infinity War runs away as fast as it can from that film’s plot points. And Ragnarok’s plot points. Even some of Age of Ultron’s plot points.

Looking for a tet a tet between Steve Rogers and Tony Stark? Bzzzzzzzt. Try door number 2. Want some gamma ray sparks to fly between Black Widow and Bruce Banner? Not your day, sir. How about a little understanding between Bucky Barnes and Stark? Not happening (and now probably not ever happening for reasons I will get into later).

We do get a scene with Thunderbolt Ross, incredibly still wanting to jail everyone despite the world being attacked from space, barking at Col Rhodes, with the latter electing to join Team Cap after Rogers tells Ross to basically stick the Accords up his ass. But that’s pretty much the end of the Civil War references aside from a couple of throwaway lines from Stark to Banner about the bust up and a couple of sentences explaining the absences of Clint Barton and Scott Lang (which, by the way, is the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard. Accepting house arrest? If they are so willing now to do that, then why bother throwing them in the clinker back in Civil War? This explanation made zero sense from a continuity standpoint).

And that’s really this film’s Achilles’ heel. There’s no way to tell this story without its already long running time. I can’t find a scene to cut out to make it shorter. They’re all needed. The flow is not great. Tens of minutes go by before we may return to any spot in the universe where the story’s action is taking place. Just to name one example, it takes a long time before we get back to Strange being kidnapped in the ship and when we did go back to it I was like, “Oh yeah…Strange is kidnapped. I nearly forgot.” I started having flashbacks to the good but very disjointed Return of the Jedi. But, as disjointed as this film can sometimes be, those scenes are all needed.

However, because they’re all needed, anything else seems to have gotten dropped in the name of running time and/or pacing. We know that there was at least one scene between Banner and Romanoff because a shot from it was in the first trailer released by Marvel. We know there were other scenes that got truncated and/or cut…like the Wakanda arrival scene where Falcon questions whether Barnes is ok or not now and Barnes delivers a great line that results in Sam Wilson reprising his “I hate you” line from Civil War.

Both would have been welcome additions in Infinity War because too many of the core Avengers characters in this film are relying on the good will (and memories) of the fans to tolerate their comparatively short shrifting in the character exposition department.

Steve Rogers is supposed to be the great inspirational leader. We don’t get that here. There is no rousing speech. This film expects fans to remember that’s what Steve is, just like it expects them to remember that Romanoff is more than just an assassin and has feelings, or that Barnes is still on the path to recovery, or that there’s a competing lovers dynamic between Barnes and Wilson like two girls going after the same guy (Rogers), or that Wilson is indirectly responsible for Rhodes’ current situation.

All of that is either glossed over or ignored completely. Unlike the Guardians who are given ample time to reacquaint the viewer with their Guardians-ness (as they interact with Thor and Stark/Strange/Parker), Infinity War treats most of the Avengers as one dimensional shadows of themselves and expects the viewer to fill in the rest based on their past MCU experiences.

That approach can only work for so long. I was willing to put up with it at first in the name of moving things along but by the end of the film I was silently screaming for more character development for the core of the Earth/Wakanda team.

It doesn’t kill the film. But it does prevent it from being the film it should have been. As does who Marvel chose to “kill off”…

Marvel topper Kevin Feige was adamant about how dark this film would be and that there would be death. And in Infinity War there is a lot of death. There should be a lot of death for a movie of this type so killing off many characters was a necessity. However, Marvel basically screwed the pooch when deciding who to off in Infinity War.

The elephant in the room with a movie of this type is that the the MCU is not a single movie a year proposition. It’s three per year. Marvel has been steadfast in not revealing the title of the second part of this saga which has become known as Avengers 4 in lieu of an official name. Marvel says it would be a spoiler to Infinity War to reveal it. I’ll accept this explanation at face value.

Marvel has also refused to announce any Phase 4 films after Phase 3 concludes with Avengers 4. I would assume that, like not naming the title for Avengers 4, this is to not spoil Infinity War or Avengers 4 because to announce films would shed a light on who ultimately lives and who dies.

But we already know Marvel intends to release Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and another Spider Man film, even though they may not be officially announced. Marvel can turn around a film that isn’t a big Avengers type film in a year from the start of serious production work. Both the Ant-Man and the Wasp and Captain Marvel films which precede Avengers 4 on the schedule will have been turned around and released in a year from the start of shooting. This means Marvel can get away with not announcing any films post Guardians 3 until after Avengers 4 is released…though the pre-planning for films will undoubtedly leak in some form before then.

Why does any of this matter? Because Marvel “killed off” Spider-Man and most of the Guardians in Infinity War. They were part of the group of the “vanished” which also included another character who all but certainly has another movie in the cards, Black Panther. In fact, the bulk of “the vanished” consists of characters who are key to the MCU’s immediate future while most of those who were left alive consisted of characters that all signs point to exiting the MCU in short order (save maybe Black Widow).

That’s the fundamental flaw with the plotting. They removed the wrong characters from the screen. It removed the ones we know have to come back for the MCU to continue. It removed some we know will absolutely come back.

In fact I would lay heavy odds that every character that Thanos “disappeared” will come back when he gets defeated (or someone gets their hands on the gauntlet to undo what Thanos did). The only characters I’m not sure about coming back are Loki, Heimdal, The Collector (who I presume is dead even though we never saw a body) and Gamora because they all died via other means.

Loki and Heimdal are probably done. I had already come to the conclusion that Loki would be offed before the movie even started playing. Given the way Marvel has de-Asgardified Thor in the last two of his films, neither Loki or Heimdal was really needed. I am wondering what the hell happened to Valkyrie given that Tessa Thompson was seen in Edinburgh while Infinity War was shooting but Valkyrie was not seen in Infinity War.

Gamora is a wildcard. I admit that I never saw her death coming (and I certainly never in a million years would have envisioned seeing The Red Skull again). I give Marvel props for taking things in that direction and daring to do her in. The problem with leaving Gamora dead is how much damage it inflicts on the Guardians as a cohesive group from a movie standpoint. Gamora really was the glue, the rock, that kept that group grounded on film. When you have crazy characters like Mantis, Drax, Rocket, Groot, and yes even Star-Lord, you need one character to ground them all. Gamora was that ground. It’s hard to see how you can have a functional Guardians 3 without her and yet we need to see some heroes stay dead for these deaths to have any meaning.

But her death may not, and probably won’t be, undone in Avengers 4. Unless Thanos has a change of heart and brings her back himself, which is something I can’t rule out given the suicidal character arc/path Markus and McFeely have chosen to put the Titan on (which I’ll get to in a second), I don’t see how reversing Gamora’s death in Avengers 4 works from a narrative arc standpoint. James Gunn might reverse her death in Guardians 3 where, stylistically, it makes a lot more sense to do so.

When I was making my prognostications for this film last month, I revealed my biggest worry about Thanos’ arc and the Infinity Stones…

Thanos needs all six to become omnipotent. Is he going to get all six? Probably not. If he did, he’d wipe out half the universe in an instant…thus removing the need for an Avengers 4 to begin with since they’d all be dead.

Of course clever writing, or unclever writing depending on how you look at it, could allow for something unexpected to happen…like have Thanos trap the Avengers back in time or in an alternate reality or something (thus explaining some of the uniform changes for at least part of Avengers 4). But why do that? Why give them a possible out? A way back to defeat Thanos? Just kill them and be done with it.

Then again, Marvel movie villains are not exactly known for their foolproof strategies.

Here is where Markus and McFeely threw out a clinker; Thanos succeeded and he succeeded in killing characters guaranteed to have another MCU film. Ergo, this gets all gets undone. Markus and McFeely let that cat out of the bag a full year before Avengers 4 comes out.

As long as Thanos didn’t have the full gauntlet he was defeatable. He no longer is. Nothing can stop him unless he himself has a role in his undoing. It’s a trap we have experienced before with the Jim Starlin Infinity Gauntlet/War comics…someone gets all the stones, achieves their version of Nirvana, and then self-sabotages it all and they get defeated.

While that worked in the comics the first time through, it’s not something I wanted to see happen here. But this is now the path we are all but certain to see play out in Avengers 4. Thanos will screw up and give the good guys, who even with Captain Marvel’s firepower added should not be able to defeat him with a full gauntlet, an opening to do just that.

It’s lazy writing because you build up your guy to be all powerful but you’ve boxed yourself into a corner since he can’t be defeated unless he screws up. I much prefer “the Star-Lord plan” where the team comes up with an ingenious way to take Thanos down while he’s fighting back with everything he’s got, and try to separate the gauntlet from him. Maybe it’s me but Star-Lord’s freaking out over Gamora’s death and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory rang hollow. Quill is smarter than that. He would have taken the gauntlet and then started bitch slapping Thanos all over Titan. What unfolded on screen seemed wrong for his character.

Some folks are going to be chewing over Dr. Strange just giving up the Time stone so easily when he swore up and down that he would let both Parker and Stark die first before giving it up. I have a theory about that.

Earlier in the film Strange used the stone to look at all possible outcomes of a confrontation with Thanos (14,000,000 plus outcomes). When pressed by Stark about how many they won he said, “One”. There was an immediate cut to another scene and that was the last we heard about it in the film. Some will take this scene at face value as a way to just make things look more bleak to the filmgoer. But I think there’s a hidden reason for that scene.

I’ll lay heavy odds that the one outcome where they won was predicated on Thanos getting all the stones…or at least the Time stone. This would explain why Strange was so adamant to Stark about having no other way with regard to giving it up. The stone revealed to Strange that if there was any possibility of ultimate victory he would have to give up the stone. All the available evidence seems to point to this being revealed in Avengers 4 as the reason he gave Thanos the stone.

Another thing we can bank on is Tony Stark’s BARF system from Civil War making an appearance in Avengers 4. Last year telephoto lens photos from the Avengers 4 set revealed the Avengers in earlier versions of their costumes circa the first Avengers film. At first the theory was that Thanos may have sent them back in time with the Time stone. But then eagle eyed people spotted the word “BARF” written on gizmos the actors were wearing. This was obviously a reference to Stark’s Binary Augmented Retro-Framing gizmo which, as Stark expained in Civil War, clears the hippocampus of traumatic memories.

Nobody understood why BARF would be used in Avengers 4 but Infinity War offers an answer. Banner can’t Hulk-up anymore. Hulk refuses to come out. So BARF is going to be used in the second film to release the Hulk again. This should put Stark and Rogers in the same room which is something this film denied us. There is hope yet.

One thing that probably won’t be revealed in Avengers 4, however, is any kind of resolution between Bucky Barnes and Tony Stark. We are all but certain to have all the “disappeared” people return in 4 including The Winter Soldier/White Wolf. But from a narrative standpoint it probably can’t happen until near the end after the fighting is over. There will be little time or reason for this to be touched upon at that point and given that Robert Downey Jr. is most likely done with the MCU after that, that means it will never be touched upon.

We may end up adding this subplot to the increasing list of dangling plots Marvel starts in one film and then just abandons for the rest of the MCU’s existence. It’s hard to buy in to the MCU concept as being legitimate when Marvel selectively carries only certain plot points forward and shitcans others down a black hole never to be seen again. Jane Foster. Nick Fury running Avengers HQ. Erik Selvig working at Avengers HQ. Sif. Valkyrie. Sharon Carter. And now Barnes and Stark. Maybe.

Perhaps I’m looking at Infinity War through too powerful a microscope? It is just a movie after all and most tent pole films you have to check at least parts of your brain at the door to fully enjoy them. But Infinity War in my view made some bad decisions at the very end which appear to have undercut the potential impact of Avengers 4. It was in every other way a very well done MCU film. One of the all time best. We must not lose sight of that. Whatever technical or stylistic/character errors I think the film may have committed, they aren’t severe enough to take the varnish off of the Russo brothers sterling record in the MCU. Some have wondered if the Russos’ (and Markus and McFeely’s) work with Infinity War sets up Avengers 4 with an impossible task it cannot hope to reach. It is a fear worth pondering. But I underestimated them heading in to Civil War. I won’t do it with regards to Avengers 4.

Other miscellaneous musings…

• Marvel’s dubious track record with regards to trailers being riddled with alternate takes or shots and/or dialogue missing from the final film is, unfortunately, still pristine. By this point it’s happened so frequently I’m convinced this is Marvel deliberately choosing to mindfuck the fans. The most grievous example this time is that final shot of a bunch of Avengers running/flying through the Wakanda jungle in slow motion…including the Hulk…which as we all know now was never intended to happen in the first place. That’s just cruel misdirection by Marvel. It’s one thing to digitally hide the true number of Infinity Stones on the gauntlet so as to not give away a plot point. I can see the need for that. But to include a character in a scene where that character never was going to be is just mean. I wonder how many millions Marvel squandered putting all these not-in-the-final-film clips together…including all the requisite CGI to cover over the green screens?
• I hope you noted the state of Thanos’ gauntlet after he snapped his fingers. That thing looked damaged and I don’t think that was just for show. This could mean the gauntlet no longer functions as intended which would, in theory, make him vulnerable. If he’s no longer omnipotent because the gauntlet is damaged, this could help Avengers 4 avoid going down that “Thanos has to screw up now to lose” path I talked about earlier. On the other hand, if the Gauntlet was indeed damaged then how do the “dissapeared” get brought back?
• Is it me or has Bruce Banner become much more of a goof since the first Avengers film? He seemed much more together in that first film. A little less so in Age of Ultron. He was a blithering idiot in Ragnarok. He’s less of one in Infinity War but hardly the same nerdy guy he originally was in that first film. He’s become a bit of a caricature of himself. I don’t care for the change really.
• Yeah, ok no Barton. He could have been used in the Wakanda battle but his character would have had almost no arc just like Rogers, Romanoff, Barnes, Wilson, T’Challa, and Rhodes. So why bother?
• The one thing working in favor of keeping Lang on the sidelines with that house arrest storyline is it makes it easy for Marvel to do Ant Man and The Wasp. In fact I think it is the primary reason Lang was sidelined in Infinity War.
• Captain Marvel better click when it comes out next year. Avengers 4 is going to depend on it.
• I hate to say it but I liked the Guardians better in Infinity War than I did in their last film together. Infinity War captured their characters’ essence better than Guardians 2 did in total. James Gunn has to atone for that second film which was a sophomore slump to be sure.