Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Hmm. This isn’t so much of a review as a general outpouring of thoughts.


Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!
Here be SPOILERS for Avengers: Infinity War!

Not sure if this is being classed as a part 1 (with part 2 after the Captain Marvel movie?) or if the concluding part of this will be called something different - kind of like The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi - but it’s definitely just the tip of the iceberg.

What we have here is an oddity; show fan-favourites and famous faces being killed off one by one, and then when you get to the end and the good guys lose (such a Hong-Kong-ending I love it), you have a quickish deletion of another 50%, as promised. However, anyone who knows anything about Marvel knows that half of these faces must be just Princess Bride-dead, not Game of Thrones-dead, as they need them for further instalments of their own franchises. Mentioning no names, but at least 2 of the ‘dead’ people are needed as they start shooting soon.

And then we come to Loki; he’s been dead many times before (not counting that time he was a horse), and there’s nothing you can do or say that will ever convince me he’s really actually dead. After all, he’s a frost giant underneath and I’m willing to bet he wouldn’t freeze the same way while floating through space as others might - and that’s even if he was ever in Thanos’ grasp anyway. He was off-screen for a suspiciously long time before he re-appeared and got into it with the mad Titan. He literally snaked his way in - something I expected - before then trying to stab him with a tiny knife. Really? This is the kind of stunt he pulled on Thor way back when in The Avengers (2012) - it’s what he does when he’s not very serious about killing someone. He didn’t mean to kill Thor back then, he meant to slow him down, and I don’t think he meant to kill Thanos here either. He let Thanos believe he had broken him before that; pretending he didn’t care about Thor so he could be tortured and the Tesseract would remain safe, and then giving up and handing him one of the Infinity Stones. He let Thanos believe he had bested him, he sneaked off, he came back with a tiny knife. But did he really? Or was he biding his time, learning what he could, trying to find a way to defeat Thanos not with weapons and a good fistfight but with what Thanos truly desires? Loki has always been one for manipulation, for arrogance and mischief - not boldly trying to save the day by knifing someone in the throat.

My money is on Loki cropping up again somewhere else entirely - but we’ll get to that.

Thor and the Asgardians - what’s left of them. Half of them wiped out, apparently - where are the other half? On the one half of the ship that wasn’t destroyed? Korg better be on that ship, wherever it's got to. Thor floats through space until he's picked up by the Guardians of the Galaxy, and then the real fun begins. I think we really needed the crew of the Milano to give the film some comic relief without being out of place or silly; if Thor: Ragnarok showed everyone how to do fun, action drama with a heart, then Guardians of the Galaxy paved the way for it with proper tarmac’d on-ramps and cat’s eyes lights for safety. Fitting, then, that Thor is thrown together with the crew until they come up with a plan. Rocket is awesome as usual, but even he has grown up a little since their solo adventures (although the in-jokes are still intact, to my delight).

Tony Stark - where do we begin. He’s the same as he always was, but obviously scarred from the first Avengers movie and things that have happened since - despite, or maybe because of, Civil War, he’s now feeling pretty responsible for everyone he works with. This includes wee Peter Parker (a perfect bit of casting given a good arc), for whom the bell will inevitably toll. Crushed and perhaps finally beaten down by the end scenes, I really hope Tony finds that little ball of spite, of vengeance, in the next film. He’s constantly being kicked up the arse by the writers and I hope he gets his day.

Speaking of Peter Parker, he once again defied everyone’s expectations of him and ploughed through it like a boss, and was only ‘defeated’ because he happened to be one of the indiscriminate 50% who had to he wiped out - he did nothing wrong, and if the odds had been different he would still have been standing right next to Tony. Isn’t it about time Tony realised ‘the kid’ can do more than he thinks he can? It’s like poor wee Peter is the Sam Winchester of the Avengers.

I’m pleased that Steve Rogers got significantly less screentime than other heavyweights like Tony Stark, Thor or Peter Quill and the gang; he was always the slightly bland, better-in-a-team character. It’s nice that’s he’s back, and of course he’s necessary, but overall he’s best in the background for me.

Which brings us to Thanos. I like that he’s not just a moustache-twirling bad guy, but someone with a plan and an order to his chaos. His idea to halve the population of the entire universe to help civilisation is not new or insane, but of course his execution could use some help. His slow take-down was planned and done well; he gets rid of anyone in his way, isn’t above a little illusion of his own, and in the end gets exactly what he wanted. Right at the end - is that what he talked about? Being able to sit and see the sun rise on a grateful universe? Where is he - back on a reformed, ‘saved’ Titan, with only a version of Gamora for company? And this ‘Gamora’ child who speaks to him at the end - very interesting. She seems to know his whole plan - either because he told her, or she told him. I wonder which one it is. And that brings me to: is that a version of Gamora as he wanted her, on his side in all things? Or is it a projection of the Soul Stone, that he could only get through sacrificing the real Gamora’s soul? Or - and this is my personal favourite - is it Loki? I mean, he could have been looking over Thanos’ shoulder since he ‘died' on the ship. He could have been watching, plotting, manoeuvring - and as soon as he knew what Thanos really wanted, he went about wondering how he could undo it. I mean, he always wanted to rule Asgard (and others), and now Asgard has been destroyed. With that gauntlet he could bring it back. Yes, that would mean he’s still vying with his adoptive brother for things, but he doesn’t seem to mind all that much any more. I think he rather enjoys it. So having Loki drop in and take this Gamora child’s place, wait for an opportune moment to snatch the gauntlet, use it to get Asgard back (and all those other people and whatevers) and possibly kill Thanos - why not?

Of course it's not going to go down like that. That would be too easy.

After all, back on Earth where there weren’t Avengers any more, Nick Fury had other plans. He obviously has Captain Marvel on speed dial, judging by the signal he sent out before he was deleted by Thanos. He must have known the universe was on standby - how did he get the intel? Who knows (not looking at you, Loki), but he did and immediately sent out a beeper for Captain Marvel. I guess we’ll have her movie next to fill everyone else in on who she is - and I’m hoping they’re going to use Kelly Sue DeConnick’s template of her character for the movie. I’m just going to assume she wasn’t the 50% of the universe who was wiped out by Thanos.

Dr Strange - he’s a shifty one. He made Thanos and everyone else fight to keep his Stone, and then when he saw Thanos about to kill Tony Stark, he gave it up. Why did he give up the one thing he said he wouldn’t the whole movie, for the bloke he patently doesn’t like? He says ‘it was the only way’ - to do what, Stephen? We’re all dying to know. It almost sounds like he has an idea of a plan, but he just hasn’t told anyone yet. Can he still exert some form of influence over the Stone, no matter where it is? Can he track it? Does he have some kind of connection to it? Only time will tell.

Now we come to endings. In the coming Return of the Jedi to this Empire Strikes Back, they will have to find a way to bring back all those characters who have franchises (I would have picked characters that didn’t, or weren’t too important in those franchises, so that their death could have been left like that - more emotional impact because you knew they weren’t coming back). On top of that, certain actors have not decided to return once this film is done. How do you ‘replace’ or distract from the missing characters? Maybe you don’t have to. After all, Captain America is just a title - and we know from comics that there have been a few Captain Americas, Steve Rogers being only the first. If Steve dies, you get Sam the Falcon as the new Captain, I’ll put money on it. What about Tony Stark? Sacrificing himself for everyone else has been his play since probably the second Iron Man movie, so seeing him taking one for the team wouldn’t be a stretch. Who would lead a new wave of Avengers after the dust clears and the Earth realises the monumental mistake they made in not letting them be Avengers for Infinity War? Little know fact: Colonel Carol Danvers has been known to lead, and in fact form, Avengers teams in comics (not to mention Alpha Flight, Marvel’s version of a weaponised DS9). Sorted.

A few final observations: I liked that people who hadn’t crossed in other films didn’t know each other in this one - the meeting of the Guardians and Tony Stark and friends was great - and I also like Dr Strange’s cloak. I’ve said it before many times and I’ll say it again - Alexander Siddig should have been Dr Strange. (You may know him from such performances as Ruben in Peaky Blinders, Dr Julian Bashir in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Ra’s al Ghul in Gotham.)

The whole film was well paced - they managed to hop, skip and jump between several subplots and splinter teams without losing much, and I think the way they put it all together was well done. My only thought was why they didn’t just use Dr Strange to teleport Wanda around destroying Stones as soon they got news that Thanos had one - she obviously has more power than most Avengers as she could destroy a Stone and keep Thanos at bay at the same time. Something tells me she’s going to be very important in the next film.

Well I think that’s everything. Overall verdict? 8.5/10 - good but long. Perhaps trying to fit so much in was ambitious. A blu ray with 15 mins of deleted scenes may have been better than a 2.5 hour movie. That said, I wouldn’t know which bits to lose.

All I can say is, bring on Captain Marvel and the next part, please.

Soopytwist.