Avengers: Infinity War Review and Excessive Franchise Building

Avengers: Infinity War is directed by Anthony and Joe Russo and stars such a large and extravagant cast that it’s not even worth listing. It’s the third Avengers movie and the culmination of the past 10 years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It was teased as being a highly ambitious crossover and a movie on a scale larger than ever seen before, however, it ended up only serving to prove that more isn’t always better.

Since I have far more negatives to discuss, I’ll start with the positives and the few parts of this movie that I actually enjoyed. It was definitely fun to see a lot of familiar faces in one movie and the heroes’ interactions were often times highly entertaining. Similarly, the comedic relief in this movie was usually pretty funny and landed far more often than other Marvel films like Black Panther did, which was an aspect of that movie that I absolutely despised. For the most part, Infinity War was an entertaining spectacle that had enough action to satisfy fairly casual viewers and I definitely did find myself enjoying some of the fight scenes. It had its memorable moments as well and its fair share of quotable lines. Thor and the Guardians of the Galaxy were by far the best superheroes in this movie and the film would have been much better off with just them battling Thanos instead of adding the insane amount of other heroes. The tones established in both the guardians films and Thor: Ragnarok carried over into Infinity War and worked well with each other, more so than other teams in this movie. However, those are the few parts of the protagonists that I actually enjoyed. The villain, Thanos, was actually the best part of this entire movie and I was the most invested in his character arc. Josh Brolin did a phenomenal job playing this character and he had an extremely noteworthy performance. Thanos was a multidimensional villain that showed his weakness and emotions in ways that not many villains do in movies. As a viewer, I actually believed his motivations and was able to both sympathize and despise the character which I was impressed by. Overall, Thor and the Guardians were the best superheroes in this movie, yet Thanos as a villain surpassed all of the other characters. He was one of the few highlights of this movie for me and was an immensely memorable villain. However, besides those few parts, there was not much about this movie that I actually enjoyed.

Infinity War had so much wrong with it and the negatives far outweighed the meager positives. To start, this film proved that quality over quantity still stands true. Directors Anthony and Joe Russo did the best they could for Disney’s impossible task of jamming 10 years worth of superheroes into one film, but their best was still severely insufficient. Marvel made a cinematic universe that vastly exceeded even their lengthy 2 hour and 40 minute runtime and they were unable to realize that their franchise cannot be contained by just one movie. That is then why this entire film became a blatant setup for the next Avengers movie which constantly reminded the viewers that it is part 1 of 2. This movie’s oversaturation then spawned numerous other issues like pacing problems and a lack of focus with subplots. The pacing in Infinity War was downright terrible and it would be rushing through scenes one second and then dragging everything behind the next. Nothing about the pacing was even and it didn’t become consistent until the final act when the heroes started to meet up and were no longer in smaller, separated groups. These pacing issues were also caused by an excess of boring and uninteresting subplots that could not capture my attention. The directors didn’t know which heroes to focus on in this movie and they would have long spans of time before showing a character again and it got to the point where I was saying to myself “wait, I forgot that they were in this movie.” Although, as I was mentioning earlier, I thoroughly enjoyed Thor and the Guardians in this movie, and while Thor and Rocket Raccoon’s subplot seemed useless and had little to no payoff in the end, it was their interactions that kept it interesting. However, the other major teams had arcs that ranged from barely compelling to downright terrible.

The first major team I’ll discuss consists of Vision, Scarlet Witch, Captain America, Falcon, Black Panther, War Machine, and Black Widow. Vision and Scarlet Witch had some of the most poorly written and unbearable scenes together that I’ve ever seen in a Marvel movie, maybe even in any movie. I already hated Vision from the past few films yet Infinity War only made me despise him more. This film continued the forced romance between the two and it felt completely out of place and dragged the movie behind since it tonally did not fit. It was both awkward and tiresome and did nothing to move the story along. The rest of the characters that I mentioned from this group, however, weren’t as terrible as Vision and Scarlet Witch but that didn’t make them interesting. I didn’t care about anything they were doing and the entire time I was watching them on screen I was just waiting for the characters that I enjoyed more to come back on. The next major group was Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, and Iron Man and this was definitely more fun to watch than the previously mentioned group. However, them meeting at the beginning felt very forced and happened so quickly that it just seemed awkward. It was great to see them all on screen and I found them exciting to watch most of the time, but their subplot definitely did drag at times as well. Robert Downey Jr, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Tom Holland each gave memorable performances though and had scenes that were far more noteworthy than anything that took place during the screentime of Captain America and his team. Lastly, as I’ve already mentioned, Thor, the Guardians, and Thanos all had very remarkable arcs and were the most fun and engaging to watch on screen, but I only wish that they were given more screentime. That being said, Thanos did appear much more than I thought he would and I was always excited when he showed up.

Next, I want to talk about the dialogue and the action scenes, respectively, as I had very mixed opinions about each. The dialogue in this movie, while it did have some quotable lines, also had a large number of lines that were extremely poorly written and I found myself laughing more at awful lines than I did with actual comedic relief. I found the action scenes to be similarly inadequate. There were a few fight scenes that I found to be fairly competently directed, but there was one major action scene that extended throughout the majority of the final act that I found practically unbearable to watch. The Russos decided to favor abusing close up angles, jump cuts, and shaky camera work over well-done choreography. It made it hard to tell what was actually going on and seemed like the work of amateur directors, not well-experienced filmmakers taking on a large budget movie. Overall, the dialogue was pretty poorly written and the action scenes were not too well directed, which is a major letdown since the fight scenes were really the only thing this film had to go on. It wasn’t just the fights either, but I didn’t find anything intriguing in the directing throughout this entire movie and it lacked its own sense of style. There were only a few times where I actually enjoyed the way a scene or sequence was shot; the Russo’s seemed to not take any care in their shot selection at all.

Aside from the technical aspects like directing that I’ve discussed, this movie promised to be emotionally resonant and to be powerful and moving for the audience. I went into this film expecting them to fulfill this and I was left thoroughly disappointed. This movie had no emotional impact on me and was unable to make me care about any of the characters, especially when a character was killed. They would eliminate a hero or villain yet I would feel absolutely nothing. This movie lacks poignancy and due to both underdeveloped characters and directing style, was unable to affect me in any way. This was mostly caused by the recurring issue that I continue to mention of oversaturation. This film expects the audience to already be invested in these characters and doesn’t take any time to develop any of them. It’s hard to blame the writers and directors for no character development in this movie though since this has been a franchise 10 years in the making. However, even though I can’t fault them, it still works against them and their expectation that viewers enter the theater already emotionally invested only hurts the film.

Lastly, I want to vaguely cover my issues with the ending of this movie and why I found it insufferable. It relates to the last paragraph where I mentioned emotional resonance because the end tried to be extremely powerful and moving however it only fell flat. Infinity War’s ending tried to jump the shark yet all their announcements of sequels and numerous technologies and infinity stone powers mentioned in this movie contradict the finale. They filled this entire movie with ways to undo the supposedly moving ending which only removed any power that this final act could have had. It angered me as it treated the viewers as unintelligent and anyone could see that their actions will not be permanent. The finale may have looked good on screen, but it lacked any of the emotion that the directors tried to give it.

Avengers: Infinity War was a movie that only existed to set up Avengers 4 and didn’t have enough fun and entertainment to keep me invested for the entire 2 hour and 40 minute runtime. It felt tiring to watch and often dragged due to many dull subplots. It had a fantastic villain and a few interesting characters but that wasn’t enough to lift it above its many issues. Overall, Infinity War lacked any real focus and was a complete mess to watch which is why I rate it a 5/10.