MOVIE OF THE MONTH
AVENGERS INFINITY WAR
12A Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo
Hello and Welcome to a new feature on my blog where I review one film I have seen this month and talk about it. The Movie of the Month. This month's film is "Avengers Infinity War" the latest of the Marvel Studios franchise in the series of Marvel films.
The Story: Thanos who is an evil tyrant, wants to collect all of the six infinity stones which are immortal relics that have existed since the big bang. If Thanos gathers all the infinity stones together, the power of all six stones combined will allow him to wipe out half of the universe's population with the snap of his fingers. He has a special glove 'the infinity gaunlet' in which he uses to fit all of the stones and as such enable his powers. In order to stop him, a huge range of characters from the marvel universe and from different marvel movies that we've seen all must put aside their differences and come together in an attempt to try and stop him.
Movie Trailer
The first thing to say about Infinity War is every single thing about it, is absolutely enormous. From the size of its cast to the breath of the canvas upon which it's playing out, the size of the conflicts and the battles, the scope of what's at stake, and also to the length of it's running time and the projections of its box office.
It's directed by the Russos who I think, do a decent job of taking something of which you have such a vast expanse and drawing things in and making sure what you have all the way through is a story which audiences can follow, parts which you can connect with story elements that will make sense. The first thing to say is, there are two different responses to this film, one will be from people who are absolute mega Marvel fans who are truly invested in the Marvel universe and its characters. Now I've been vocal in the past that I'm not that much of a Marvel fan. In fact, I like to think of myself as more of a DC fan, but there will be some people who come to watch Infinity War having not seen all the previous Marvel films leading up to this, or people who may have only seen snippets but have got the actual gist of who these characters are and where they come from. Now it rather depends on you to decide whether or not this does or doesn't accommodate both kinds of audience.
I think one of the things which is both a strength and a weakness of Infinity War is that does play as far as I could see very strongly towards pleasing the fans. As much as I did love it, and really did enjoy it. I think what the fans like about it is that it takes the worlds it explores seriously, it takes the story seriously, there's lots of humor in it, mainly from the guardians of the galaxy but it's not humor shoved down your throat as in "this is funny, you will laugh at this" I like to laugh at things because they're funny, they naturally make me laugh. I also liked how we got some nice interplay between Iron Man and Spider-Man, and the banter between the Guardians of the Galaxy, playful bickering in between the action, and that sort of stuff can become a suttle ice breaker it sort of calms you down and relaxes you.
Moments that I particularly enjoyed and liked a lot were scenes between Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Doctor Strange. Those were the highlights of the film which I really liked. Of course, the character I liked the most throughout the whole film was Thanos, who I felt as a villain got his fair share of screen time, it's almost as if Infinity War gives off the impression that this is the story about the baddie and carry on watching to see if he succeeds. What makes Thanos an interesting villain for me is that he is not like your stereotypical bad guy who wants to blow things up and kill people, of course, he does do those things, but he as a character comes across to me as being this dictator who has sort of good intentions, but at the same time is a mass murderer and vindictive tyrant.
I did feel coming out of the film, as well as feeling a little bit shaken up by the events which happened in it, my friend who had come to see the film with me and myself both had different experiences of it. If think of a film like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two, or just films which divided audiences, what became clear is even though we thought the same things about the film, were interesting and admirable our emotional responses were quite different. I'm sure that main Marvel fans would have completely invested into it, and there are a few moments where people whooped, cheered, and gasped, and in some cases screamed and were properly emotionally engaged. And I know for a fact there were people in the cinema I was in watching it, doing the exact same thing, so it proves to be a film which works with its audience.
The friend who saw the film with me, when I asked what did he think, he liked it, but he didn't feel that much emotionally engaged with it as the majority of the audience was. As a result of that, he told me ended up seeing things which were a lot more problematic. And I think the thing that has to be said about when you're viewing this type of fantasy film, is that a lot of it is to do with where you're coming from in terms of your relationship to the characters and the franchise. That is a really big part of it. As part of extending the world and the franchise, it's done that job really well, It brings together an extraordinary number of elements into a film which is two and half hours long, I know to the core audience it didn't feel long, but for me watching it, I did feel that it was a bit lengthy and I'm not sure that it needed to be as long as it was.
There were two main points in the film which I found particularly interesting about the story which I thought about after having seen it.
One was the fact that Tony Stark and Steve Rogers (Iron Man, and Captain America) don't meet in this film. Which shows there are still after effect elements from Civil War that have affected the friendship between Captain America and Iron Man and probably won't resolve fully.
Two, Doctor Strange. There is a scene where Doctor Strange reviews all the hundreds of millions of possible outcomes that await them and out of all of them, there is only one outcome where they are able to beat to Thanos. I'm wondering if what happened was all part of Doctor Strange's visitation and that Iron Man must be a critical part of Thanos's downfall. Strange did say to Tony Stark and Spider-Man, "If it comes to protecting the stone or the both of you, I will let you die if it means protecting my time stone" and then he gives up the stone to save Tony's life, and when he died Strange said to Tony Stark "There was no other way". So I think in the one outcome Strange had foreseen that Thanos was defeated this has to be all part of that somehow.
I think overall, the visual effects are fantastic, there are some epic battle scenes throughout as well as great acting from a great cast, the sense of danger is perfectly apparent, the film takes risks that you don't expect, and for its core audience it delivers and it works.
I'm going to give Avengers Infinity War, Eight Infinity Gauntlets out of Ten.
