Avengers: Infinity War

My Eternal Struggle with The Avengers and Film Criticism: The Real Infinity War I saw this at 4:00PM on a Wednesday. Suffice to say it did not have the same energy as the opening weekend crowds. It's been almost a week since I first saw this and since then I've been having a bit of a crisis. As I already discussed, I am deeply invested in this franchise and my first screening is one of my favorite theater experiences ever. I found it to be a mammoth epic that felt truly separate and that it was able to reach the full potential of the universe. And I still feel that way. About some parts. Since then, I've been doing a lot of reading, mostly here on this accursed website. The reviews for this movie range from slightly amusing all-caps 5-star meme hot takes to much too self-serious, over-articulate 1-star takedowns. But then there are some in the middle that raise some valid points. There is one prevalent point, however, that does not fall under that category: The complaint that the stakes aren't actually high because of the almost certainty that the characters who died will come back. First, this is a comic book adaptation. Marvel comic books feature a cast of characters several times the size of this film who all exist in countless multiverses and timelines. They die and come back. And they've been around for several decades. I understand the notion that one may be led to think "what's the point?" if nothing is going to stick. Well, it's not about the permanence, especially not when this franchise is at the height of its financial power. You'd have to be a child to complain about a company not discarding its most valuable property. What they've done instead is adapt the source material and turned these properties into flesh and blood characters, and after ten years, put them in about as much hot water as possible. But then I hear how Feige's already announced the lineup for movies starring characters who supposedly died in this one. That has nothing to do with this movie itself. That's on Disney. Pretend it's 2002 again. There's hardly any Internet chatter, certainly none that compares to today, and you walk out with no idea about what's going to happen next. All you can do is speculate. That's why I'd like to push most of the fault of this movie off the movie itself and onto the Internet, the money behind the MCU, and both blind cynicism and defensive hive-mind in general. Now, on my comparably peaceful screening of this on a Wednesday, there are still plenty of moments in this thing that absolutely kill. Cap's reveal, Thor's entrance in Wakanda, Tony and Stephen rounding the corner to reveal Maw’s arrival, pretty much all of Spider-Man, Wanda's trembling lip. There are a lot of incredibly movie moments in this and that's its main strength. I've seen plenty of complaints about how it feels rushed or that there's no exposition or time for character development. But that's what the first ten years were for. We've set it all up, now we get to watch them go. I love that it feels like there's no time, which is a recurring thing said (namely between Vision and Wanda) throughout. It does function like the season finale of an epic TV show, and while that's not the ideal format for a film, it works really well here. The other side of that is that is what no longer worked on my third time. It's much too jokey (pauses that were once filled with laughter now were filled with long awkward silences), the plot-driven dramatic stuff slogs big time, and it doesn't quite feel complete. Granted, while it's full of character detail, there isn't much growth or contemplation. The chunks felt dispirit this time, when there really was an opportunity to have it feel like a cohesive whole. The finale is still completely stunning, every bit of it, but I was very impatient for it to start this time. Thanos remains a great villain, although there are questions about why he doesn't do certain things sooner or more efficiently. I feel like I clearly understand him and he serves as a great foil to what the Avengers stand for in general ("We don't trade lives"). His relationship with Gamora and their falling out (no pun intended) later is probably the strongest emotional pull (Vision and Wanda a close second), and it gives him a humanity that has been sorely lacking. To make this film was an unbelievably impossible task, and the fact that it even resembles a movie, much less is as powerful as this, is a feat in and of itself. It balances a ton well, though it lacks the cohesion that something like "Ultron" has in handfuls. I'm ecstatic to see what they do with it next, and like I said before, I will not let the cynicism of the more refined film critics out there rob me of the joy I get from these, but I will also not blindly follow. It's a tough thing to balance. But balance costs everything, right? Lol jk. BONUS POINTS: Oh and you know how you kids say shit like “that snatched my wig” or whatever well I learned that Elizabeth’s orange hair was a wig and she had a baldcap in under it and ya know what, wig. NEGATIVE POINTS: The wording of my BONUS POINTS