Avengers: Infinity War

Rating: 9/10 (29 April 2018)

The beginning of the end, an imperfect, but certainly gratifying start for that final push.
An unprecedented cinematic journey ten years in the making and spanning the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Studios' "Avengers: Infinity War" brings to the screen the ultimate, deadliest showdown of all time. The Avengers and their Super Hero allies must be willing to sacrifice all in an attempt to defeat the powerful Thanos before his blitz of devastation and ruin puts an end to the universe.
So after seeing this film twice and now having a little bit of time to write this review, I'm able to spill the beans and finally get down pen to paper. If for some weird reason, anyone ends up reading this, there will be spoilers in here. I'm not going to focus on spoilers but they're going to end up being some of my main talking points. The reason I'm writing this so late is two-fold. One, I've been busy with my film shoot all weekend, despite finding time to watch this movie twice. Two, I've wanted to let my feelings and emotions settle down so that I could appropriately analyze this film and let the information soak in. Without further ado and years of anticipation, we have "Avengers: Infinity War".
One thing that I want to commend this film for is the writing and the insane, expectedly massive crew behind this film. With the list of credits alone, I would love to recognize everyone who put work into this film but there's just too many. For now, I want to give credit to the writers, along with the Russo brothers. It's a challenging task to write a story featuring one big name, but to feature a script with 70+ characters is absolutely insane. These are all the superheroes we've come to know and love with 10 years worth of story given to them. Here, we get to see them all collectively come together in one place and I can't even imagine how difficult it was to write something like this. It was amazing and they took on an ever so challenging task and I applaud them. Most people can recognize it, but most won't truly appreciate how difficult it is to write an ensemble of characters, especially one this big with a bunch of people we love and adore.
While we're on characters, everyone was fantastic! This film stars literally everyone and they did amazing. Some stand outs for me were Zoe Saldana's performance, as she gave a really powerful and emotional show as her character had strong connections to Thanos. I also thought this was the best I've seen of Chris Hemsworth, who went on his own little personal journey throughout the film. It's the most dimensional performance I've seen from him in any of the Marvel films total. Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans both captured their respective leadership roles perfectly. Tom Holland stole the scenes as Spider-Man, and even Dave Bautista was a really underrated element of this film. Every single person here came together collectively all the way down the line and delivered something fantastic. Each and every single person represented the character that they've been played or just acquired so well and honestly, not a single one faltered in my eyes.
Thanos, thankfully, is the best Marvel villain we've ever had on screen. When I say that, I mean the best. Not once in Marvel history have we had a villain this powerful and scary that could truly challenge our heroes. I mean, come on, Thor is a god. Captain America and Bucky are essential super soldiers. Iron Man, Doctor Strange, and the Hulk are some of the smartest and strongest people alive. The team has assassins in Black Widow, Gamora, and Nebula. They have the support of so many more powers and even the support of a "rabbit" and a tree. The fact that it literally felt like Thanos was physically unstoppable went such a long way. He even had a deep, emotional side to him. I felt like I really was able to jump on board with his intentions and he was a great antagonist, both physically and mentally. He's the scariest villain we've had so far and Marvel's notoriously weak villains will definitely be forgotten when it comes to naming the best one yet, Thanos.
One thing I really loved about this film was just the emotional scale that it achieved. This is 10 years worth of story and life coming together here and even though I'm not the biggest Marvel fan, I'm amazed at all they've been able to do. This franchise started in a cave with Tony Stark creating a dingy, ghetto suit. It's now turned into all of this and it was such a privilege to be able to watch this film. Seeing everything and everybody come together for one collective thing was so awe-inspiring in my eyes. For the ending, it may not be the most cemented outcome but one thing's for certain, it was emotional. Seeing Thanos snap his fingers and half of the world dissipating away was one of the most powerfully charged moments in Marvel history for me. Seeing our beloved characters whither away hit so many heart strings for me and while I have a theory of what happened, I don't want to get into that. I just want to talk about how effective it was to see our heroes literally transform into dust and the world being left in chaos. This is the "Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back" that the Russo's have wanted to make. The world is in distraught and literally, more than half our heroes are gone.
This film was also visually stunning. I didn't love all of the camera work and the styles that the Russo's went with, but it was visually impressive. The CGI was top notch, the heroes all looked fantastic, Thanos was extremely detailed, and the landscapes were beautiful. This movie looked gorgeous and I definitely think it's one of the better looking Marvel films. There were some shots and moments that are still linger in my mind and it's certainly a good reason to watch this film alone.
In terms of problems that I had, this really is a prototypical, big blockbuster. This film, at its core, is comprised of two things. One, it's a film heavily centered on an abundance of thrilling action scenes. And two, it's a movie with a bunch of exposition and dialogue in between everything. The film started out extremely strong and it ended with a ginormous bang, but it kind of dragged in the middle. Yeah there's some really great, witty dialogue throughout and even some really well written lines, but in the end it is just exposition. If we're not in a thrilling action scene, we're getting exposition. And I totally get it. In this kind of thing, you have to have exposition, but it doesn't stray from the fact that it drags just a bit. Even with that being said, this film feels short and every time I've watched it, the time just flies by.
In the end, I really can't wait to see where Marvel takes this next. I want to keep guessing and assuming but I trust the the Russo brothers have a plan and that they'll take the necessary risks and choices that this franchise needs to do. I loved my experience here and it certainly lived up to everything I wanted it to be. It's nowhere near perfect and it's got its issues, which is why I can't rate it perfectly, but it was an amazing experience that I'm grateful to have had and I think they did an amazing job with this.