Fish and Cherries Productions

Summary: Several years after the Avengers first assembled to push back the Chitauri invasion, the worst possible scenario has come to pass — Thanos (Josh Brolin), the Mad Titan, has come to Earth. He seeks the Infinity Stones — six powerful gems that each control a core concept of the universe* — to wipe out half of all life from the universe. It just so happens that two of them reside on our blue marble of a planet. Of course, Earth has its share of mighty heroes**, who meet him and his lieutenants** head on to protect those Stones. Of course, Thanos has made some enemies in the cosmos, such as the Guardians of the Galaxy** (including his adopted daughter Gamora (Zoe Saldana)) who are hot on his trail. It is a conflict unlike the universe has ever seen as heroes come together on land and in space to fight for their very survival, the fate of the universe, and to become the Kevin Bacons of their own stories.

*The Infinity Stones are labeled as such — Space Stone, Mind Stone, Reality Stone, Mind Stone, Time Stone, and Soul Stone. Yes, they control those exact things.

**Okaaaaaaay, so you know how I listed off all the heroes and their identities in the Captain America: Civil War review because there were a bunch of characters? Well, Infinity War has even more characters, so let’s do once more with feeling.

Earth’s Heroes (Avengers and allies): Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), Hulk/Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), Black Widow/Natasha Romanov (Scarlett Johanssen), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America/Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), War Machine/James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), Falcon/Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olson), Vision (Paul Bettany), Black Panther/T’challa (Chadwick Boseman), Spider-Man/Peter Parker (Tom Holland), Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), Wong (Benedict Wong), White Wolf (formerly Winter Soldier)/Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Okoye (Danai Gurira), and Shuri (Letitia Wright).

Guardians of the Galaxy (and allies): Star Lord/Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), Gamora, Drax (Dave Bautista), Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper), Groot (Vin Diesel), Nebula (Karen Gillan), and Mantis (Pom Klementieff).

The Children of Thanos a.k.a. Thanos’ lieutenants: Proxima Midnight (Carrie Coon), Corvus Glaive (Michael James Shaw), Cull Obsidian (Terry Notary), and Ebony Maw (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor).

All right, that’s long enough. Let’s get to the review.

Review: Avengers: Infinity War is the culmination of ten years of carefully laid plot threads, so naturally its scope is huge. Thankfully, it’s also well put together and tons of fun… while also being an emotional roller coaster. This is quite possibly the saddest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe; it’s honestly hard to write about, both because it was so emotional for me and because I want to avoid spoilers as best I can. But I’ll tell you this: it was all worth it.

Let’s start with the big bad himself, Thanos, because the movies have been hyping him up since 2012. It’s interesting because the few appearances he made before Infinity War made him seem flat and lackluster, but this movie dashed all of those preconceptions and shot him into top tier villainy. Apart from being threatening and awesome, he also has an emotional weight and gravitas that sets him apart from other superhero antagonists. He’s like if Tommy Lee Jones’ character in No Country For Old Men had an existential crisis and turned to genocide. He’s also the first villain I’ve seen on screen (at least in a while) who experiences genuine heartbreak on his villainous path — not as a starting point or a catalyst, but on the way to achieving his goals. And let me tell you, you can feel it when it happens.

The whole movie feels like an event comic — a storyline that brings together most (if not all) of the characters and often has far-reaching consequences — from its scope to the epic action to most of the shots that looked like they could have been comic panels. The movie manages to balance all of the characters from the past Marvel films amazingly well, making sure they each have their moments to shine and making them all feel equally important. They even throw in some new characters too — Peter Dinklage plays Eitri, the king of the dwarves, which is ironic because these “dwarves” are three times taller than the mighty Thor (and yes, Peter gets an obligatory Game of Thrones reference). The only characters that don’t get quite as much development are the Children of Thanos; if you weren’t familiar with them in the comics (where they’re called the Black Order), you probably wouldn’t know their names or that two of them were a married couple. Still, they look threatening and provide great obstacles for our heroes, so they get the job done.

It’s hard to know what else to say because a lot of Infinity War’s power comes from seeing it spoiler-free. Just know that the gut-puncher scenes are really well done so you have a lot to look forward to. All I can say is that it’s another amazing entry into the franchise by the Russo brothers, who gave us the last two Captain America movies. If you’ve been paying attention to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this most certainly will blow you away. But while it is amazing, I assure you this movie will not leave you as it found you. And that, in my opinion, is a great way to celebrate ten years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Fun Tidbit: When Thor, Rocket, and Groot help Eitri forge a new hammer for Thor (long story, go watch Thor: Ragnarok), it is christened Stormbreaker. This is a reference a hammer of the same name forged for the alien temporary replacement Thor named Beta Ray Bill. Another fun fact: this isn’t the first reference to Beta Ray Bill, whose visage was on a tower of champions on Sakaar in Thor: Ragnarok.