#FILMFRIDAYS: NOTES ON AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR
If no one else is going to do it…
Avengers: Infinity War opened in cinemas worldwide last weekend and Thanos seems to have taken over our minds, our pockets and the internet. After being teased in short cameos and post credit scenes, Infinity war properly introduces the big bad of the MCU and the result is catastrophic.
I also saw the film this past weekend and this post contains a collection of mental notes and observations that I made during and after the movie. Hopefully a more resolute review comes out of all this.
Spoilers Ahead. Obviously.
1. FIRST OF ALL WOW, WHAT THE ACTUAL ASGARDIAN-WAKANDAN-TERRESTIAL-GALACTICAL FUCK
motherf —
These niggas really pulled off this shit.
20+ major characters from 18 films released across the last decade condensed into just 160 minutes of run-time. That this movie is even watchable, much less enjoyable, is a feat on its own. The Infinity Gauntlet, the comic-book story that serves as the major influence for this film, spans a whole 6 issues and Thanos already has the stones before we even begin. Thanos Quest which chronicles how Big T copped the stones is another series. It seemed almost impossible that this was going to work. And some level, it kind of does. There is a sense of immeasurable scale that registers in your subconscious even before you enter the cinema. This is not just a summer blockbuster, it is THE pop culture event of the year and possibly the last decade.
2. SO ABOUT THAT FIRST SCENE…
Before the movie, the only reason most of my guys were hopeful about Thanos facing the avengers was because we had Thor and the Hulk. But then Big T almost beats Hulk to death and blows up Thor’s ship, our doubts are cleared at the very beginning. When Loki confidently says We have the Hulk, He was speaking for all of us. Thanos pummels Hulk into a coma but he also crushes our expectations too. And we are not talking blind-rage-smash Hulk, we are talking controlled-anger-through-Yoga Hulk, Years-of-Spartacus-level-training-in-combat Hulk and Thanos beats him so bad that he stays human for the rest of the film. That’s the superhero equivalent of PTSD.
Another reason why this first scene was important was because apart from introducing Thanos, it also sets the tone for the rest of the film. The MCU has always been fun over funerals with very few non-villainy deaths (Mary Poppins Guys, Mary Poppins). But with the news that some of our beloved characters would be meeting their end in this film, shit gets real. The film wastes no time by killing off Heimdall and Loki in the first scene. Although I felt Loki’s deserved a better death and was a cheap way to provide motivation for Thor’s subplot in the film.
3. THOR SON OF FUCKING ODIN
I loved Thor: Ragnarok when I saw it the first time. I thought it was funny and a refreshing take on the character but some parts didn’t hold up well after multiple viewings. By skipping emotional beats for comedic ones, it went from fun to bordering on silly. Thor lost everything, I mean everything and they just kept on cracking jokes. So I was really happy to see him given his proper treatment as a god in this film. Like this nigga rocks. He restarts a whole star. He gets a cool new hammer. He enters the battle of Wakanda and the cinema goes bananas. This film gives every character an average of just 6 minutes per screen time but Thor still manages to MVP his way through this shit. He should have gone for the head though, or even the fucking hand.
But he also hits the comedic notes right; his banter with the guardians was one of the funniest moments in the film and I feel we owe these moments to Ragnarok. I still think Ragnarok is a good character-driven movie and Taika Watiti’s proper handling of the Thor-Loki bromance is probably the reason why we are able to be properly invested in the Loki-dies-and-I-must-avenge-o-brother subplot. But when you put it side by side with the GOTG films which brilliantly balance the laughs with the tears(Mary Poppins Guys, Mary Poppins), it just doesn’t hold up.
3. AWW GAMORA
No, I don’t mean not the sad Tony-Umez-nollywood-ritual thing that Thanos did — even though that there was that cheap subtle character reversal where Gams goes from clear minded Thanos-must-die to crying at his fake death just so her demise could feel more emotional or some shit — I am talking about THE KISS!
One thing the MCU receives lots of praise for is how well the characters and group dynamics are well developed and this is most evident in the GOTG films. We watch these characters grow from a bunch of ragtag criminals to a real family that we can relate with. In GOTG2 (which is still the only film in the MCU to make me cry. Mary Poppins Guys, Mary Poppins), James Gunn sacrifices an entire plot to explore and establish these thematic elements of family and friendship that feel really organic (unlike the Fast and Furious films who stupidly think that repeating it several times makes it true).
Because of this natural chemistry, it makes sense to forego the Good-Asshole-Gets-The-Girl cliche for a more realistic relationship between Star-Asshole and Gamora. It had been teased in the two previous films but it finally pays off in a very beautiful and timely way. It is what makes the Bubble Gun Scene emotional, it is what makes Quill’s dumb fuckup on Titan understandable. Quill no longer wants to just engage in pelvic sorcery, He’s crazy in love and that’s fucking adorable.
On the other hand…
4. VISIONSCAPE AND SCARLET CRINGE
This was so annoying and distracting. I know it was suggested in the previous films but it was unclear and undeveloped. We were never really sure if it was a love thing or a schoolfather-schooldaughter thing and then boom they surprise us with some post-coital why-wonchu-stay-with-me ballad like we missed a memo.
Vision has been disappointing since his creation in Age of Ultron and has done nothing noteworthy since he wielded the mjolnir but most annoyingly he holds back one of the more powerful avengers in a love story that no one cares about. Which is sad because I feel his character was a very interesting one that could have been explored properly. This guy was so dead that he died twice. Bye Felicia.
5. THE WOMEN, THE WOMEN , THE WOMEN
There has been some criticism on the internet about the treatment of women in the film. While this is easy to dismiss this as ridiculous, it is important to note that the MCU does not have the best track record with female characters; It has taken the MCU 19 films to have a female character as a lead(Antman and the Wasp) and 20 to have female character lead her own film (Captain Marvel).
I don’t know but I can see where they are coming from. I mean Nebula is put through a rather unnecessary robot torture porn, Black Widow and Okoye have some great fight sequences and character moments but they could easily have edited out and stripd ewe it would have changed nothing. It can be argued that Gams and Scarlet witch were important to the story but the treatment of their characters don’t hold up too: unmotivated plot device for Thanos’ (a man) blood ritual and shitty distracting romance (with a man).
But to be fair, even the MVP moments by male characters don’t matter much, nothing matters much because Thanos fucking wins and because there is no character arc or depth(we will discuss this later) many other male characters are underutilized too.
In the end, whether it is a trash take or legit criticism, it clearly pales in comparison to the recently released Black Panther which was a watershed moment for minority representation and where women were given more central roles. Hopefully that Captain Marvel post credit scene and future release of her solo film is an indication of a more crucial role for women in the franchise.
6. IS TOM HOLLAND THE BEST SPIDERMAN?
Probably. He has been spectacular in all 3 films he has appeared in, both as web slinging Spiderman and nerdy, socially awkward 15-yr-old Peter Parker. But I think this fun, lovable version owes much of its success to the grounded work done in the previous versions. The writers revise or build on the elements from the previous iterations that we are familiar with and create a modern and positive character: they replace the tragedy of Uncle Ben with the benevolence of School-father Stark, they replace the perils of low-income survival with the awkwardness of high school crushes.
Tobey Maguire’s Spiderman seems like the only true contender with Sam Raimi’s trilogy providing us with the cruelly, unforgettable pathos in form of Uncle Ben’s Death and a realistic take on a superhero that has hardly been seen before.
But the Spiderman we love in the comics is also this fast-talking, pop-culture reference-spitting kid that we see in the MCU and his Father-son dynamic with Tony stark is an interesting setup that pays off spectacularly well in this film. Even though we know he is not actually ‘dead and gone’ , the ‘Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good’ scene at the end still feels very emotional. In that moment he is not the powerful Spiderman with an over-engineered suit, he is a 15-year-old Peter Parker afraid of dying. He is a teenager struggling to come to terms with his own mortality and that is just so relatable and heartbreaking.
7. THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
Yeah. I am talking about Big Purple Squidward. Thanos may be the big bad villain of the MCU but he is definitely the protagonist of this film as the story is told through his perspective. His mission is to obtain the infinity stones and wipe out half of the universe’s population and the Avengers have to stop him. (ugh so dark, it must be the DC universe)
Thanos dwarfs every other villain in the MCU in terms of scale and sheer power. It is also clear that the writers put some much effort into making him a complex, empathetic and compelling character. He is not just some boring, all-powerful titan. He is cold, calculated but also prone to vulnerability and occasionally shows mercy. He sees himself not as a sadistic, power-hungry villain but as an intergalactic messiah doing the greater good. He is simply the most powerful villain ever.
But is he the best Villain yet? I don’t think so.
I think Killmonger remains the gold standard when it comes to villainy in the MCU. And I am not talking about power, I am talking about characterization. There are similarities between the two of them: The actors who portray these characters do an excellent job and their underlying philosophies seem rooted in relatable ideologies but when held up much closely the differences become quite clear.
Thanos’ motives seem convincing but this is because of Josh Brolin’s excellent performance and not because this galactic genocide has any personal implications to the character or surviving species. There is a brief backstory that suggests the death of his planet as the trigger but it still does not explain why Thanos is carrying out his Malthusian experiment on a cosmic scale.
The overpopulation sentiment that supports Thanos’ motivation for balancing the universe with available resources has real-life connotations but it is still a shallow, armchair philosophy that ignores obvious behavioral context: People will always exploit people no matter the abundance of resources. It may take more time with less people, but it happens eventually. It is also why a less heinous alternative of doubling resources in place of halving population does not work either.
Killmonger, on the other hand, has a personal stake in his mission; He is not just some broken kid trying to avenge his father’s death and usurp the throne. He is also a black man that believes that Wakanda’s isolationist policies should be discarded to alleviate the plights of people of African descent around the world. Sure his methods are malevolent, but his motives are simultaneously personal and universal and transcend the screen into our current reality.
In the comics, Thanos is a power hungry sadist who kills half the population to impress the LOML and this is simple-minded but understandable because he actually has something to gain. Maybe there is some explanation waiting for us in the concluding installment, but for now Killmonger remains the villain to beat.
8. THE ENDING THAT SHOCKED THE WORLD
Yeah the reason why we can’t stop talking about this film. You know that crazy plan by Thanos to wipe out half of the universe? HE SUCCEEDS. Technically because this is just one part of a two part saga, it is more of a giant cliffhanger than a sad ending. Still the internet has been mourning the death of their beloved characters and for a moment I almost did too.
But c’mon who are we kidding?
The MCU is a money-making behemoth continuously churning out sequels upon sequels that gross bazillions of dollars. You don’t really expect me to feel sad for Peter Parker’s ‘Death’ when a Spiderman sequel set in London was announced just weeks before the release of Infinity War? or that Black Panther which made 1.3 billion dollars at the box office and already has its sequel in development dissolves into dust? I don’t think so.
That ending holds less emotional weight in light of these new announcements. The ending only makes me interested in seeing how the next film is resolved.
But yeah they got balls for even trying it.
9. SO IS IT GOOD? IS IT BAD? IS IT BOTH?
I don’t know yet. If I did, this would be a review. It is definitely so much fun, very funny, contains alot of great performances and is unlike anything I have ever seen. It seemed impossible to make a film with this amount of major characters but the result almost runs seamlessly.
It is obvious that for this to work the creators had to make some creative concessions. The characters in this film have no character arcs in the conventional sense. There is no internal change brought about by a central villain or discernible character development. There are character moments but they pay off because of character developments from the previous films. This leads to a lot of underutilized characters who have no motivation for this war other than it is in their nature to fight the bad guy.
Which brings me to one of the reasons why this film is hard to judge: In this era of serialized film-making, the MCU films are more like episodes of Atlanta where a character or a set of characters have standalone episodes and less like independent entities. So do I critique this as a individual piece of cinema or as part of a larger scheme of interconnected films? Because as a standalone film, it is incomplete, unsatisfying and feels like we were dumped into the third act of the first half of a two part film. But as the penultimate episode of a ‘season film’, It is an exciting culmination of years of character development and world building.
I don’t know. Maybe after repeated viewings, I will be able to come to terms with what it is but for know this is all what I think about the film. Do you agree? Do you disagree? Do you want to add maggi to this overcooked soup? Hit me up in the comments. I really want to know. Thanks.
