Avengers: Infinity War (Spoilers)

I think it says something about the quality of film between Marvel and DC right now. I am still a DC fan to the death and will defend the DC cinematic universe, but it does say something that I can knock out an Avengers spoilers review in no time but a Justice League spoilers review still alludes me for a lot of reasons. Reasons I won't get into here.

That being said, this is going to be difficult. Not because there's nothing to say. There is A LOT to say. And that's the problem.

This spoiler review will give me an opportunity to delve a little deeper into the structure of the story and give full thoughts on a movie that I really liked, but know that there are flaws in.

The entire movies plot centers around Thanos getting the infinity stones to put into the infinity gauntlet with the purpose of exterminating half the life in the galaxy. The great part about this plan is that Thanos isn't doing it just because, he sees himself as the good guy and he sees his cause as noble. At first I thought this wasn't going to work, but boy does it.

I don't know if I was as sold on Thanos as a sympathetic villain as other people are. However, I do think Josh Brolin does give a great performance and he's definitely one of the more complex villains in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The movie starts where Thor Ragnarok ends as Thanos and his minions kill the remaining Asgardians looking for the Tesaract that holds the blue Infinity Stone, the Space stone. Thanos kills Loki and Heimdall, played by two actors that you could really see the relief in their eyes when they realized their contract was up and they didn't have to contractually obligated anymore to show up in these roles they both became a little too famous for. These deaths were expected and not really surprising.

From that point, the movie divides into four main storylines. The first is Thor. Thor knows the only

way to kill Thanos is to reforge a weapon like his lost hammer. He meets with the Guardians for a little bit but then takes Rocket and Groot to go meet Peter Dinklage and reforge an axe called Stormbreaker.

This doesn't get a whole lot of attention as Thor kind of falls back into his pre-Ragnarok style and isn't really as interesting. His riffing with Peter Quill in the beginning is fun, but besides the fact that Peter Dinklage showed up and everyone was surprised, this will probably end up being the slower part of the movie upon a second watch. The dialogue between Rocket and Thor is pretty good and they try and recreate the same bond that Rocket had with Yondu in Guardians 2. I don't know, for some reason Thor probably had the biggest motivation to want to kill Thanos and while he's able to get a huge blow on him at the end, it never feels really complete or compelling enough. I guess Taika Waititi is the only one who can write Thor as an intriguing character.

Side note... Where happened to Valkyrie?

Yeah, she was on the ship with Thor right before it got attacked by Thanos. I'm pretty sure there's a woman laying around the bodies as Thanos and his henchmen ask Thor and Loki for the teseract... I'm pretty sure Valkryie died...

But she's also a really popular female character from Thor Ragnarok so... good luck selling that one.

 Iron Man and Spider-man pursue the minions who capture Doctor Strange, trying to extract the time stone from him. Eventually the Guardians meet up with them after a misguided attempt at trying to kill Thanos just as he gets the reality stone, a sequence that is pretty awesome.

I will talk more about the Guardians later, especially Gamora, but overall this storyline is a lot of fun. You've got Peter in between Tony and Doctor Strange and their clash of egos. Then you throw in Starlord and a show down with Thanos that was really, REALLY awesome and depressing at the same time.

I personally think they downplayed Doctor Strange in this movie. In his origin movie they make him seem like he's the most powerful being in the entire Avengers crew and while I really liked Benedict Cumberbatch in this movie, Doctor Strange left a lot to be desired as far as ass kicking.

The other issue I have comes from Doctor Strange as a character.

It's made clear from the beginning that Strange's motivation comes from his mission to defend the time stone from forces exactly like Thanos. He even says early on that if he has to choose between Tony and Peter or the stone, he'll choose the stone. But then at the end it looks like Thanos is about to kill Tony and Strange gives him the time stone. I mean the whole reason they can't get it in the first place is because he puts a curse on it and he says, it's very hard to lift a dead man's curse. So Strange's sudden turn to wanting to save the life of Tony feels very odd. The two never really develop a friendship or anything. They don't really develop any kind of bond that would suggest Strange would give up his only mission to save him. It was just strange. In fact, this happens throughout the film with other characters and the only person who really understands the severity of Thanos getting these stones is Scarlet Witch. But I'll get to that.

The third story follows Vision and Scarlet Witch. They are together now suddenly and want to ditch everything and just be happy together. But Vision has the mind stone and of course Thanos wants it. The third story follows these two, getting support from the rest of the Avengers like Captain America, Black Widow, Bruce Banner having a weird inability to summon Hulk which is never really explained in this movie, and Black Panther, in order to remove the stone from Visions head without killing him and destroying the stone.

This is what I'm talking about when I say that some characters don't get as much attention as you think they would. Captain America kind of has a supporting role in this movie. Black Panther is a supporting character, Bruce Banner is very much a supporting character (especially since he inexplicably can't turn into Hulk the entire movie).

I was surprised how much attention and yet how much attention they didn't give to Scarlet Witch. In essence the second story is very much about her. And again, it comes down to sharing screen time. While Captain America was a supporting role, they still had to give him his badass scenes and Scarlet Witch, though she's more important in this movie, she never really gets the chance to develop as much as she could have.

Don't get me wrong, the final battle scene in Wakanda was great but it had a little bit of a Battle of Five Armies vibe. Characters that should have gotten more character development just have cool fight scene moments that make you say, "that was badass" but it doesn't build a character.

I think they really had an opportunity to build on Scarlet Witch and Vision, a relationship I had a little bit of a glimpse into, to create really great character development. I think Scarlet Witch is the only one who really understands the threat of Thanos and the infinity stones because she's the only one who actually goes all the way to prevent Thanos from obtaining the stone by killing Vision. The problem is their relationship just felt like the audience needed to fill in the blanks based on what we know happens in the comics.

I'm not saying it's bad, it just following the same stuff Marvel has been getting away with for years.

The point where the movie somewhat redeems itself in this category is the development of the character of Thanos. Especially in his relationship with Gamora.

Like I said in my non-spoiler review. The Guardians get a lot more attention in this movie than I originally thought they would have and a lot of that attention goes to Gamora.

Early on she is capture by Thanos because she knows where the Soul Stone is. Again, another example of people not totally understanding that if Thanos gets the Infinity Stones, bad things will happen. Thanos uses Nebula to get Gamora to tell him where it is and that leads to one of the best cameos in the entire movie.

Red Skull pops up! I don't have a lot of moments that I say, OH SHIT, out loud in a theater, but that was one of them. Unfortunately, it's not Hugo Weaving, but they did a great job at fooling me until the previous morning.

And then Thanos kills Gamora to obtain the Soul Stone and this becomes a real focal point to why Thanos is a great villain because you sympathize with him. He does care about Gamora, he does appear as a man trying to do the right thing. However, his motivations are warped and evil. He becomes one of the most ruthless villains out there. I have to re-watch Black Panther because right now its between Killmonger and Thanos and it's a difficult toss up.

And that brings us to the climax of the film, where Thanos gets all the Infinity Stones. And this is where the movie really sets itself apart because it finally feels like the franchise is at a point where it can start killing off people and boy do they kill off people.

In the end. Thanos wins. He snaps his fingers and half of the universe's population disappears into ash. Bucky, Gone. Black Panther, Gone, Spider-man, Gone. Scarlet Witch, Gone. Drax, Gone. Groot, Gone. Falcon, Gone. Starlord, Gone. Even at the end, Maria Hill, Gone. Nick Fury, Gone.

It is a powerful scene and its tough seeing all these loved characters disappear from existence. And at the end of it all, Thanos sits down, bruised and battered, but victorious...

Until the next movie that is.

And that's the part of this movie that I can't help but putting an asterisk on. I will give credit to this movie that there are some big characters that died that I don't think are coming back. Loki, Gamora, potentially Vision, I don't think these characters are going to come back because unlike the rest of the characters, they actually were killed. The others just disappeared into ash. And it was sad, but at the same time I couldn't help but have the thought in the back of my mind, especially at the end of the movie that all these characters are probably coming back. Put aside the business aspect of it and the fact that Tom Holland is expected to come back for another Spider-man sequel. Put aside the fact that Black Panther made Marvel a crap ton of money earlier this year and it would be financial suicide to kill of a beloved character right after he made them gang buster money last February.

The real reason these characters don't feel dead is because it was not built up correctly or gave them any kind of finality.

And that's the downfall of screen writing. For some mediums like Game of Thrones, you can kill a character suddenly and they probably didn't get any kind of finality, but it feels in line with the story. Other mediums require a build up to justify a death but it can be telegraphed early on thus losing the shock value.

Unfortunately, the Avengers falls into this second category. While you may say that death is sudden and there's not finality all the time in real life, the fact is, that doesn't apply to movie logic, especially in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The reason I think Loki, Gamora and Vision are dead is because their deaths meant something and could be seen as closure of their character. The people who disappeared into ash didn't feel final. I wanted them to, but they just didn't. On top of that all that the ending, while phenomenal, does not feel like the Avengers are done avenging their fallen comrades, makes me think that there is going to be some mumbo jumbo that they're able to finagle to bring back all the characters that still have movies and profits to be made for Marvel.

And that's the downside of nerd culture in the movie world. You get into the weeds with contracts and franchise building. I know they're planning a Black Panther sequel or Spider-man sequel because the internet is a vast and dark place and as much as you want to avoid spoilers, and as much as studios are trying to avoid spoilers by putting in scenes with Hulk that were not in the film, it's just something we live with in this day and age.

Now, I would love to be wrong. I would applaud Marvel if the next Avengers movie comes out this time next year and the movie ends and those characters who disappeared never come back. But that is not going to happen. Marvel doesn't have the stones!

The promising aspect of this movie is that it does suggest that Marvel is sunsetting some contracts and on top of killing off some important people in this movie, they probably will kill off some important people next time.

It's not a coincidence that of all the people that survived the dust apocalypse Thanos puts out, the core Avengers cast is all still alive. Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, Hulk, and Hawkeye (if he decides to show up for the next film), are all still alive and it will provide for a pretty awesome closing act for these characters.

I have no doubt that main characters that were set off to the side in this movie like Captain America, Black Widow, and Hulk will get bigger roles in the next film, probably to give them that finality that was lacking in this film to open up the opportunity for the new phase of the Avengers when they're gone.

And that's good. This franchise needs some change. I don't know what the next phase of Marvel looks like and I will probably end up doing another one of those State of Marvel posts sometime soon to do predictions, but this movie had a pretty great post credit scene to allude to the future.

I really hope Brie Larson just nails it as Captain Marvel and there can be a new face of The Avengers. That transition is hard to do because these are characters we've come to know and love. While the new phase of Avengers films will have great talent a lot of which will probably be resurrected from the dead sometime soon, the classic Avengers that debuted in 2010 will be very hard to top.

But as it stands right now, Avengers: Infinity War is a solid culminating chapter. It's not the final by any means, but it does provide a lay up for a solid conclusion. Is it a perfect movie? No, but I've taken a good retrospective on the MCU and I don't think they're perfect movies. What movie is? My issue comes with the factory built feeling of these movies and how they don't exactly create an environment for creative thought innovative ideas. They're great entertaining films, but they all feel like Marvel films. It's a brand at this point. Even Black Panther, as much as that movie is great, it feels like a Marvel movie.

And I think Marvel has seen that as a necessary evil for creating a franchise that people love. It doesn't exactly make me happy, but I guess you have to ask yourself, would you rather have a good movie that is shaped into a brand, or a bad movie that at least got creative liberty to do the movie they wanted to. I go back and forth.

Those are my in depth thoughts on Avenger: Infinity War. What did you think? This is the place for spoilers as I waited a couple of days to release this one so people had the chance to see the movie. Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks and I'll see you next time.