'Avengers: Infinity War' Review: A Decade of Marvel Movies Collide in One Epic Showdown After Another

The resulting spectacle channels the best and worst attributes of Marvel’s movies, with a fascinating hodgepodge of circumstances designed to move the story forward with dramatic results while resolving it at the same time. “Avengers: Infinity War” is jumbled but never messy, speeding forward with fits and starts but plenty of calculation. In our cluttered information age, when online fan theories threaten to ruin every plot twist, “Infinity War” shows a marked determination to speed ahead of audience expectations; it’s so fast-paced that no single viewer could possibly anticipate the next move, even as individual sequences reek of familiarity.

Marvel Studios

The ubiquitous end-of-days vibe is a common trope in corporate-mandated storytelling. From “Star Wars” to “The Matrix,” sprawling franchises require that every narrative strand coalesce into a big finale with a threat centered around potential extinction. (The D.C. universe has its own variation on the apocalyptic menace of “Infinity War” with the multi-part “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” which will almost certainly find its way to movie form one day.) However familiar, “Infinity War” does well by this tradition by consolidating so many endearing characters into one fast-paced package.

Even the simplest plot details conjure a dozen or so characters. As the movie begins, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has been cast off his ship by Thanos, whose path of destruction attracts the Guardians of the Galaxy. Aboard the Guardians’ ship, Thor bonds with Rocket (Bradley Cooper), while news of Thanos’ scheme affects his estranged adopted daughter Gamora (Zoe Saldana) as he contemplates facing off with the monster despite the misgivings of Peter Quill (Chris Pratt). Meanwhile, in New York, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) meets Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and learns about Thanos’ developing powers just as a few of his minions land at the center of the city for a big battle. Queens teen Spider-Man (Tom Holland) spots the mess and joins the action, while a helpless Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) stands nearby and fails to conjure his inner Hulk.

Somewhere in the middle of all this mania, Tony, aka Iron Man, brings Banner up to speed on the plot of “Captain America: Civil War,” in which Iron Man and Captain America (Chris Evans) disagree about the future of the Avengers and split off into factions. “You broke up?” Banner asks. “Like a band?” (His incredulous at the busy-ness of the movie provides a recurring punchline. Later: “There’s an Ant Man and a Spider-Man?”) Yes, the Avengers broke up, and anyone expect a cozy reunion shouldn’t get carried away. The title of “Avengers: Infinity War” is a misnomer; we’ll see what happens in the 2019 release, but this entry’s less invested in tidying up loose ends than setting all of them ablaze in Thanos’ mad sprint to find the final stone.

“Avengers: Infinity War” careens through an astonishing number of locations, from New York City to space to Scotland to the distant cosmic marketplace known as Knowhere. The scale is almost as menacing as Thanos himself, but the Russos manage to streamline the plot by ensuring that individual scenes have their own internal arcs. Characters constantly ram into each other, firing lasers and guns and webbing and stone; sometimes, they philosophize about their stakes, share affectionate banter, or argue about plans. The movie often resembles the binge-viewing experience, leap-frogging from one new set piece to the next. (Alan Silvestri’s horns are always there to sweeten the transition with a soothing “bum bum BUM.”)

Marvel Studios

They’re all essentially fighting for one big goal — stop Thanos before it’s too late — and he’s such a complex villain that the movie rarely loses focus. Brolin gives the monstrous entity an air of eerie melancholy; he’s not a chuckling lunatic so much as an intellectually corrupt dictator, and it’s not off-base to interpret his steady rise to power as a kind of Trumpian metaphor. He’s been there all along, the obvious loser in every story, and all of sudden he’s more powerful than anyone anticipated. Superheroes have always epitomized the anxieties of their age, with its uncertainty over who has the upper hand, “Infinity War” is the apotheosis of this trend.

Still, much of the movie feels like a routine. It takes a full hour to funnel through various Marvel regulars, and then the battles just keep coming, with one fresh hook to avoid redundancy: Some familiar faces actually bite the dust. As the body count rises to jarring effect, a few of these morbid twists arrive from unexpected directions that show the mark of expert storytellers working with a vast canvas of possibilities. At worst, it’s a sadistic and sometimes lazy form of trickery designed to keep viewers off-balance. (Thank god for snarky, pop culture-savvy Spider-Man, who remarks, “Why does somebody always have to die in this scenario?”)

“Infinity War” moves so fast and runs so long (over two and a half hours) it seems intent on exhausting even the most committed of viewers. But even as the movie forces audiences to submit to so many cataclysmic events, the directors manage to direct the cascading mayhem to a unique kind of cliffhanger. As it turns out, Thanos’ refusal to give up reflects Marvel’s own multi-year ambition, with the movie concluding on such a jarring note it demands people remain interested in the years of movies scheduled to open over the next decade. Hopefully, they’re worth the effort, because Marvel has developed an unprecedented degree of confidence about its ability to hold audiences’ attention. Consider the post-credits scene. Viewers must sit through a mesmerizing list of locations, drivers, executive assistants, and accounting departments for a few minutes of additional material. This time, the epilogue suggests that no matter how dire the scenario circumstances of the next chapter, the show will always go on.

Grade: B

“Avengers: Infinity War” opens April 27, 2018.

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