When I first decided to write a spoiler free movie review about Marvel’s latest movie Avengers: Infinity War, I expected to start with the opening sentence “By the time the credits rolled onto the screen after watching Avengers: Infinity War, I had this feeling of emptiness, the feeling of needing to go back in time to unwatch what I just saw.”
However, upon watching the movie opening night, I knew I was going to have to take a different approach.
The story unfolds with Thanos, the villain to end all villains, on a quest to collect six infinity stones; six stones that, when all together, can inflict mass murder in the snap of a finger. Together, “Earth’s mightiest heroes” come together to fight against their greatest foe, and the outcome of the faceoff has never been more uncertain.
Marvel fans (including myself, a friend and my brother’s baseball team) poured into theaters to watch the movie a decade in the making, starting with “Iron Man” in 2008.
The journey of Avengers: Infinity War began shrouded in secrecy. Since the film was long awaited, Marvel kept the plot so secret that not even the cast knew it in its entirety. Marvel released only little clips of the trailer at a given time, adding to the suspense and need to see the latest film. Already having sold more presale tickets than the last seven Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movies combined, “Avengers: Infinity War” promised to be a film Marvel fans would never forget. Marvel’s intentions were most definitely confirmed, but maybe not in the way they had imagined.
The choppy scenes lacked harmony, which one would expect for a movie about a great team of superheroes coming together to fight the ultimate foe. While I understand that getting many popular actors together to film an approximately 180 minute film may be tough, I was rooting for at least one major scene where everyone comes together.
The humor of Avengers: Infinity War fell short in comparison to Marvel’s previous movies like Thor: Ragnarok. Even though there were a few quips here and there, I found myself less laughing and more catching myself with my mouth open in shock at what I just witnessed. The first death of a character in the movie felt anticlimactic, and it took me several minutes to process that this character was gone. Not only was his or her (no spoilers here) death done without the expected heartbreak displayed through other characters, but the other deaths felt that way, too. Without a big bang or heart crushing disparity I had previously braced myself to feel, the characters’ ultimate disappearance didn’t feel real.
As for the ending, my friend kept poking me and telling me to blink because all I could do was sit back and stare at the screen, trying to fully process and comprehend what I just witnessed. While the movie certainly crushed me in a million and one ways, I couldn’t help but feel a tad disappointed for the long anticipated movie.
As I mentioned earlier, I saw the movie with my younger brother’s baseball team and a friend and got two different opinions on the movie from those who had maybe seen one or two earlier movies and those who were die-hard fans. Those who truly didn’t know Marvel and the MCU, like my friend sitting next to me, found the movie to be okay. Throughout the movie, my friend would ask what was going on, who the characters were, why I would gasp when Thanos said something, why my eyes would begin to well up over a character that had been in the movie for two seconds. On the other hand, those who loved Marvel had an opinion similar to mine to some degree: the movie we had waited so long to see was good, but after the way the movie ended, we would need to see the next Avengers movie coming out May 2019.
All in all, I would definitely recommend seeing Avengers: Infinity War, but only if you have seen the previous Marvel movies. While the movie would still be enjoyable for those who haven’t, the inside jokes and excitement Marvel fans have when they see their characters on the screen would be lost.
As I write this, my brother’s 12-year-old friend looked over my laptop and said, “That movie was so bad! I mean, it was good, but the ending was so wrong!”
If you’re going to take anything from this article, take this: Watch the previous MCU movies before seeing “Avengers: Infinity War,” and take a pack of tissues and a Marvel fan with you to vent after watching.
