“Avengers: Infinity War” Review

Hey True Believers! Seen that new Avengers movie yet? You know, the one that they’ve been teasing for years now?
Yes, the wait is finally over folks. Avengers: Infinity War is out in theaters at last! The culmination of everything in the MCU is here.

For those of you living under rocks for the past ten years, Infinity War has been long in the making. We’ve seen teases of it for many of the MCU movies, including small appearances in credit scenes by the film’s main villain, Thanos, in both previous Avengers movies, not to mention his small five-minute appearance in Guardians of the Galaxy.

Before I continue, I must warn you right now that, while I will try to keep spoilers out of this article, there will probably still be a few here and there in this article. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, and don’t want it ruined, stop reading this instant, watch the movie, and then come back.

Still here? Great! So yeah, let’s talk about this.

Set two years after the events of Captain America: Civil War, the Avengers must unite once more when Thanos arrives seeking the six Infinity Stones. If he gains all six stones, he will have the power to erase half the life in the entire universe. The Marvel heroes—the Avengers, Black Panther, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, and the Guardians of the Galaxy—must assemble once more to save the entire universe.

This film, the culmination of everything in the MCU to date, was a really bold and risky move from Marvel. Nothing like this movie has ever been released before. This movie was the first time characters from multiple different franchises within a universe meet and interact with each other.

And I’ve got to say, Marvel pulled it off.

First, there’s the massive amounts of characters that show up in the film. With the exceptions of heroes such as Hawkeye and Ant-Man, just about every single hero in the MCU that hasn’t died yet (RIP Quicksilver) makes an appearance to play their part in saving the universe. Plus a few villains show up, like Loki and the long predicted return of the Red Skull. While the fact that there are so many characters means that some of them were underused slightly, they still did a tremendous job in their roles, especially interacting with characters outside their franchise, such as Thor teaming up with Rocket Raccoon and Iron Man teaming up with Doctor Strange.

Then there’s the villain: Thanos. His inclusion into the MCU has been teased ever since the mid-credits scene for the first Avengers movie, where it’s revealed that he was the one behind Loki’s attack on New York, more than likely in a bid to get the Space Stone, hidden within the Tesseract, for his master plan: to erase half the life in the universe. But amazingly enough, Thanos’s motives are quite interesting. Apparently, his home planet, Titan, was suffering from overpopulation and a lack of resources. Thanos suggested to save resources, they should kill half the planet’s population. This caused him to be cast out, and eventually his planet was left in ruins. In the years leading up to Infinity War, he’s been lurking in the shadows, manipulating events to try to gain the stones, such as, as mentioned above, Loki’s attack on Earth. But after his lieutenants kept failing him time and time again, he finally decided to go after the stones himself.

Thanos isn’t like other Marvel villains seen in the MCU, who want to take over the world/universe. He wants to “save” the universe in his own way: killing trillions of people. But also, he does have emotions. In the past, we see villains that are unremorseful about certain actions that they take, such as Red Skull, Ultron, Ronan, and Ego. What Thanos is doing he feels is the only way to save the universe. He feels that it’s is destiny and mission to accomplish this. And to get one of the stones, he has to perform an action that brings him to tears.

We’ve also got pretty much the biggest battle in the MCU yet. The Avengers on Earth, led by Steve Rogers, travel to Wakanda to get the Mind Stone out of Vision’s head. But to by Shuri time to remove the stone without killing Vision, they must fight Thanos’s “children” and their army of alien creatures. The battle is long and intense, with deaths on all sides of the field.

Then there’s the plot of the movie. Before its release, MCU officials have said that the film is based off of 90s Heist films. And in a sense, it was. Thanos had to go to six different places—Xandar, the Asgardian Transport, Titan, a desolate planet, Knowhere, and Wakanda to get the stones away from their keepers—the Nova Corp, Loki, Doctor Strange, Red Skull, the Collector, and Vision. Which essentially is the definition of a heist film—in a smash and grab sort of sense with a lot of fighting, death, sacrifices, and Drax one-liners.

Overall, I give this movie a 9.9/10. Marvel Studios does it again with an amazing thrill ride that will leave audiences hungry for the upcoming Avengers 4 movie, which will wrap everything up and reach a conclusion that will change the face of the MCU forever.