AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR
(M, 149 mins) Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett
Argue all you want about the desirability or necessity of spending the world’s resources on $250 million movies.
I say, if you’re going to do it, at least get for your money something that not only delivers all the requisite bangs and thrills, but also has a bit of ngākau in its kaupapa.
And in Avengers: Infinity War we are looking at the culmination of what has been a very satisfyingly put together grand vision. Over the decade, Marvel head of studio Kevin Feige has – at the rate of nearly two wlms a year – delivered story arcs around a huge roll call of disparate characters. But with
Infinity War, even more than with the Age of Ultron and Civil War installments, several stories reach their dewnitive ends.
Well established characters do die in this wlm, and with a wnality that suggests they won’t be back.
The plot is one we know very well. Somewhere out there in the galaxy is a baddie so bad that maybe even the combined might and will of all our heroes won’t be enough to stop him. It’s actually not a million miles away from the story that underpinned the rival Justice League movie late last year.
But unlike that noisy and superwcial – mostly – mess, Infinity War takes the time to set up its themes, establish exactly how high the stakes are and then to draw out individual character arcs that are far more complex and well thought through than the interchangeable default we associate with the genre.
The baddie – Thanos (played by Josh Brolin, with support from many kilos of prosthetic putty and several billion pixels) – is a failed leader on a quest to save the universe from itself in his own unique way. By killing exactly one half of the population of every planet in it. To do this, he needs to wnd all six “Inwnity Stones”. Two of which are on Earth.
Put like that, I’ll grant you that Infinity War really does sound like exactly the reheated pile of nonsense it could have been. But put together with care, some truly inspired casting and a script that is about a thousand times better than it needed to be, this wlm just works on every level it swings at. Love or loathe the genre, when I see a wlm this ambitious actually hitting its targets and managing to stay human and accessible, I can’t help but be extraordinarily impressed.
The overwhelmingly dark and mournful tone of many of the wlm’s best scenes is leavened by some well-delivered laughs, to be sure. But this is a wlm that remembers and respects that it actually is a war wlm, with fear and loss always present.
Avengers: Infinity War is pretty much as good a superhero movie as I have ever seen. It raises the bar for spectacle – we expect that now – but it also makes us care. I’m looking forward to seeing it again.