Man, I screwed the pooch. It’s been what, two weeks since I saw Infinity War? In the meantime, it has been discussed to death, both with and without spoilers. Which is sad because it means probably that I can say nothing new, and anyway the only novel thing I had to say in the first place is kind of a spoiler.
But, here we go nonetheless, since I pathologically can’t just not review the things, I can only feel guilty about not reviewing them.
They have been calling this new Avengers movie the most ambitious crossover in history, ten years and eighteen movies deep. That’s not entirely right, because the first few movies leading up to the first Avengers did not foretell this. Not really. But as far as ambition goes, I cannot disagree. For the number of characters involved, none of them was ignored or given short shrift. (Not wholly true, as some characters were literally ignored by not being in the movie, but if they were in the movie, I mean.) And the pacing was great. In a world of modern action cinema where scenes cut every minute or two, this was divided into 10+ minute chapters focusing on the characters involved from start to resolution of a scenario (or at worst, start to nadir, with the next scene fully exploring resolution). It’s hard to remember that movies[1] used to work this way, instead of snippets of individual strands that only weave together at climax.
So, A++ for ambition and execution. I also liked the plot and most of the character beats, although I understand why some people did not. Basically, my point is: if you have invested in eighteen movies and a handful of optional TV series leading toward this movie, you should check it out. They stuck the landing.
Spoiler-esque observation as first comment.
[1] Again, action / genre movies. I understand that your snows falling on your cedars always kept to that path.
Despite releasing in goddamned April, instead of even the figleaf of the first weekend in May, this is the inaugural movie of the summer season. As such, it was shockingly dark. (I do not mean it was a dark movie; I leave that for you to decide. But it was undeniably dark for a summer popcorn action movie.)
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