Marvel raises the bar once again for the Superhero genre. Creating their greatest achievement yet. It’s perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
I laughed, I cried, I cheered. And that was all just in the first 10 minutes. I had to wait until Sunday night to finally see the much anticipated Avengers: Infinity War. Do you know how difficult it is to stay spoiler free from the biggest movie of the last decade? It’s extremely hard, I did my best to stay off social media, so when Sunday night rolled around I was ecstatic I was walking in spoiler free. So after a decade and 18 movies later, did Marvel hit a grand slam? Yes, yes they did. I’m not really sure where to start, this will be a spoiler free review, I’m going to write another piece about the future of the MCU and how I really thought about EVERYTHING that happens in Infinity War, but for now, here’s my review! Also just congratulations on this becoming the highest grossing movie ever domestically in a single weekend. It deserves it, this is bar none the best MCU movie ever made.
Boy did Marvel not hold back, from the very opening moments of the film, this felt like something epic. This review might be all over the place, because it will be extremely hard to write something spoiler free, which this will be! We are immediately introduced to Thanos (Josh Brolin) and his trusty side kicks – The Black Order. For sidekicks, the Black Order were pretty goddamn awesome I thought. Hats off to Tom Vaughn-Lawlor who played Ebony Maw, because if you tossed him into any other MCU movie, we could be talking about one of the best MCU villains here. Just so happens he was standing next to Thanos for the entire movie so it’s hard to really consider him truly great, because well Thanos climbed to the top of Mount Rushmore of comic book movie villains after this performance. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, it’s not like we have been waiting since 2012, when he first reared his big ugly purple head. Since then they have been building the MCU for this very moment. When everything finally comes together, crossovers you didn’t know you wanted, team ups we could have never imagined and more importantly the Avengers coming face to face with the Mad Titan Thanos. For the last 6 years all we have heard about is the 6 infinity stones and the unimaginable power they all contain. Put them all together and that person has the power to accomplish anything. Well Thanos is looking to round up all these stones and it’s up to our heroes to stop him. That’s almost the strongest part of the entire movie. It’s not an overly complicated plot, it’s simple. Thanos wants the stones, our heroes are trying to do everything and anything they can to stop him.
Thanos was such a terrific villain, we are coming off such a strong one with Killmonger in Black Panther, but Marvel stepped their game up even more with Thanos. What makes a truly memorable and great villain performance, is well, they need to have layers, and the character kind of needs to be flushed out throughout the movie. We get a ton of background and history about Thanos, we get to see inside his mind, what makes him tick and everything he truly loves. For being the most evil person in the entire universe, there are parts of the movie where you almost are rooting for him to get all the stones. Like if someone asks me, “Was Thanos a good villain?” Well, he’s unstoppable, terrifying, sadistic, at times polite and like i mentioned, in a few brief moments, sympathetic. He’s just not a power hungry mad man who has no sense or sense awareness to everything around him. He’s so much more complex than that, and you almost see where he’s coming from. He’s the most badass villain to ever show up in a comic book movie, and with that comes the fact he’s almost the most sympathetic villain to ever grace the big screen. So if you haven’t figured out by now, I really enjoyed Thanos, he makes the movie and I was glad that he got the most screen time out of any character in the entire movie. Frankly, us fans that have been waiting all this time for him to show up deserved it.
As for the rest of the team they all work so well together. Yes they all don’t have the most screen time, but if you love these characters and watching them, then you won’t care. The interactions between characters, like Rocket and Thor, Tony and Dr. Strange are all things I didn’t know I needed so badly in my life. The Russo Brothers picked the perfect little teams to divide into, and I think that was really important. If that doesn’t work, the whole movie doesn’t work. I thought Dr. Strange, Thor and Gamora were the MVP’s of our heroes. Thor has evolved into the best MCU character in my opinion and I can’t wait to see how he will keep evolving. The whole movie really flies by, they don’t really pussyfoot around at all. You’re in waist deep before you know it, and instantly the stakes are at an all time high. I saw a lot of people saying this was just another “funny MCU movie” and yes of course it’s funny. I’m happy this movie is funny, but when it wants to get down to the nitty gritty and be serious, it’s actually bone chilling serious. There are moments in this movie that I never saw coming, things that maybe I saw coming. Things I thought might happened, happened. Things that could happen, happened. A ton of available evidence and suspicion confirmed that, in the end that thing would happen. I WAS NOT PREPARED AT ALL TO WATCH THAT THING HAPPEN. This movie tugs on your heart strings and when the screen fades to black, you are gut punched. You are looking around searching for answers, you want to know what the hell just happened. I think that’s my favourite part about this whole thing. I have no idea where Marvel is going to take this thing. Well I have some thoughts and wild ideas, but I actually don’t really know the future direction of the MCU and for the first time in a long time, I am so intrigued about this whole thing.
Like I can’t even say much more, because all I want to do is talk about everything that happens within the movie. But I can’t, not here at least. What more do you want me to say? This is the movie of 2018, no other comic book movie will come close to making me feel what I felt during Infinity War. It’s damn near perfect, I can’t wait to watch it again. I saw it back to back nights, because I needed that in order to really process everything. Go see this movie, don’t be that weirdo that sits this one out. I will say this – It’s perfectly balanced as all things should be.
Check ya later
Nate’s Movie Tour Reviews – Avengers: Infinity War = 98/100
Absolutely agree. Thanos was way beyond any supervillain I’ve seen so far. So well written. My favorite Marvel movie now.
Thank you!! Glad you enjoyed him as much as I did!
Awesome review, also loved this movie.