This is, as many have pointed out, one half of a story broken in two, but it feels like less than half somehow. well, it's hard to say exactly what's wrong here. If only the film were better modulated, or perhaps longer, or more elegantly shaped, or.
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In light of all this, it's inevitable (and in no way a spoiler to reveal here) that not every character makes it out alive, and that if you come away from the movie feeling bummed out and anxious rather than elated, that means "Infinity War" has done its job, just as " The Empire Strikes Back" and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One" did their jobs. The gambit works, mostly, because the story is an operatic tragedy that necessarily has to end with the heroes in a deep, dark place. The Russos swagger headfirst into melodrama here, more blatantly than in any previous Marvel film they've directed, though there are problems with their approach that I'll outline in a moment. The film's running time doesn't fly by, exactly, but it rarely seems to stall out, which is impressive when you consider how many of the movie's big scenes consist of people talking, sometimes emoting, in close-up. Plus all the characters from " Black Panther." And the ones from " Guardians of the Galaxy." And a few more Marvel characters who are new to this film.Ĭo-directors Joe and Anthony Russo, co-writers Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus, their small army of actors, and their hundreds of filmmaking collaborators have managed to get on the same page and stay on it. Once he's collected all six, Thanos will be able to achieve his dream of wiping out half the population of the universe in order to preserve its precious resources and restore "balance." The only thing standing in his way are the Avengers, led by Thor ( Chris Hemsworth), Hulk/Bruce Banner ( Mark Ruffalo), Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow ( Scarlett Johansson), Steve Rogers/Captain America ( Chris Evans) and the rest. The plot finds the intergalactic bad guy Thanos ( Josh Brolin) and his army of Green Goblin-looking warriors bouncing from star system to star system, torturing and killing various adversaries in order to gather six super-powerful Infinity Stones and embed them in Thanos' oversized glove. For a 160-minute epic that unifies a far-flung superhero universe that took a decade to build, packs 76 characters into one story, and has four to six plotlines cooking at any given time, "Avengers: Infinity War" hangs together pretty well.