A Herculean feat of Screenwriting and Directing

Rating: 8/10 (27 April 2018)

I'm not a big "fan" of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Just wanted to get that out of the way right here and now before people begin to question my allegiance or my bias of where I stand before I start this review.
As I have told many people, I do not blindly follow this series of films wherever they may go. I enjoy Marvel when they make GOOD films, just as I would any other studio, director, writer, etc.
In some cases, I find the MCU films to feel almost "cookie-cutter" when they are at their worst. The acting is fine, the action is fine, cinematography is typically 'safe' and doesn't break new ground as often as a series of this magnitude really should. No real risks are taken. I think of 'safe' when I think of many of their films, which isn't BAD, per-say, but I wish these films would be more risky in how they handle their material.
Try something new...Trying something daring...Try something DIFFERENT...
Well. My wishes were granted. In spades.
'Avengers: Infinity War' is not a perfect film. In fact, it's not even the best film in the MCU. However, it was absolutely EVERYTHING it was billing itself to be. It IS new. It IS daring. It IS different.
But let's un-pack that before I lose myself here. Because there's certainly A LOT to talk about...in NO SPOILER terms ;)
The tone of this film, without giving anything major away, is by far the bleakest of any of these films have dared to go. This storyline and these characters that they have been teasing for 10 years are now paying-off massively, as we are now seeing real consequence in this world that has been established. Your favorite characters are here, yes, but they ARE at-risk against a threat that isn't treated lightly. There isn't any awful Yo Mama jokes like in TLJ to dilute the drama and tone.
This is DARK, and the Russo Brothers do not let you off of that ride for you or the childrens' comfort level, which is precisely what I think this part of the story needed. The many comparisons I have seen to 'Empire Strikes Back' are not invalid, as its tone, manner, and even themes are extremely similar in more ways than one.
I can tell the Russo Brothers, fresh off of 'Winter Soldier' and 'Civil War', were allowed to make a film that resembles their film, and not a studio mandate. They make decisions that I KNOW will be extremely unpopular with a lot of people, but unlike a certain franchise tentpole, this film does it without self-destructing the reason we come for these films, which is intrinsically the characters and this massive, sprawling story.
Let's move on to that topic, The Characters. By far the strongest bone in this film's body is the characters and character interaction, as most Marvel films seem to excel at. After 10 years, we see all of these characters we've grown to love come-together and interact, and my goodness is it everything we have been waiting for. The dialogue here is sharp when it needs to be witty, is slow when we reach the emotional valleys, it can even reach heartwarming and heartbreaking at some points depending on what connection you have forged with these characters over the last few years.
A character I find particularly captivating in this film, however, is the antagonist itself. Thanos, believe it or not, is an extremely interesting character once we see him and learn what he's all about and capable of. This isn't another case of "big bad Marvel bad guy man". He is genuinely a character I find fascinating, which shows Marvel took notes as far as I'm concerned. If anyone's fear was that they would get him wrong after 6 years of building him up, consider those fears squashed. This is a Marvel VILLAIN, and I mean that in the best way possible.
To combine both prior points, hats off to screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely for managing to juggle all of these characters and such a massive story and manage to make it COHERENT. Under many other writers' watches, this likely would have been A MESS, but the way the story progressed and characters were incorporated was, for the most part, expertly done. Every character gets a moment of their own, the ones we truly care for get integral arcs over the film's massive run-time, and in the end we hardly feel that certain characters were left out of the proceedings. I wondered how they would manage all of these characters, and they managed to walk the tightrope without falling.
The score is also a welcome and noticeable addition, as the talents of composer Alan Silvestri ('Back to the Future', 'The Avengers', 'Predator') were brought back for this film. There are plenty of excellent pieces of music in the film, along with the Avengers theme itself (The only noticeable orchestral pieces these films really has ever had), and it is welcome to have excellent music in these films again after the disaster Brian Tyler and Danny Elfman presented to us in 'Age of Ultron'. The music only adds to the feel of the film, which is what good movie music should rightfully do.
Now, all of this considered, this film is NOT perfect. In fact, a couple glaring flaws made themselves apparent throughout the film, though they were moreso "Tiny cracks" than "Gaping holes", so to speak.
For starters, the action cinematography is actually shockingly bad in the early half of the film. At some points, I could barely tell what was even supposed to be happening. The fights in the early part of the film suffer from SCS, or should I say "Shaky Cam Syndrome", as we are over-stimulated and shown too much CG in these portions to process what we're supposed to be looking at. That said, the action cinematography does improve as the film moves along, so this isn't a problem that knocks-out the foundations of the film. However, the action early on is NOTICEABLY bad, which certainly hurts.
Editing at times was also rather choppy, as odd choices are made in some portions of the film that made me scratch my head. I can't name anything in particular, though most of my issues with the editing stemmed from odd transitions and segues that almost looked like "abandoned transitions", where an attempt was seemingly made to stitch two scenes together...and then proceeded to be hacked-and-slashed to trim 2 seconds off the run-time, for some odd reason.
And that's perhaps my only real issue with this film; the flow of the film. So much of it feels as if it's begging to be smoother, but instead there are sequences where it simply feels too long or too short in places. At some points, we will be on a plot thread, cut-away from it, and will not return to said thread until 20-25 minutes later. I genuinely feel that this sort of thing could have been fixed with a better editor, or simply a smoother-written story, though considering how already miraculous it is that this film managed to be coherent with how much it had to juggle, perhaps the odder pacing was only a by-product of trying to assemble all of this together.
But in the end, is this massive assemblage of Marvel films and characters a success? Is this the film that is worth all the hype of 10 years and an entire film franchise has been leading up to?
Yes.
'Infinity War' is a tremendously fun time at the cinemas. It is quite literally an 'Epic', sprawling across so many characters, universes, worlds, tones, etc. This film feels like an event, which it may very well be, and I can safely say the Russo Brothers and writers Markus and McFeely as well pulled off a miracle and made such a Herculean task of a film into something I think is a great summer blockbuster and a tremendous first part of what is sure to be a grand finale for this universe we've seen grow over a decade.
I may not be a huge Marvel fan, but this is certainly a GOOD film. In fact, I'd dare say a GREAT one.