Thor gives an account of his family history that is accurate and also hilarious. Tony Stark is briefly reduced to speechlessness. The good news is that it’s also really, really funny. They may not, but Joe and Anthony Russo, evil genius screenwriters Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus, and producer Kevin Feige, have no such mercy.īrace, then, for noble self-sacrifice, senseless tragedy and straight-up murder. Over and over again, the film tries to force one character to make concessions to save a life, and over and over again they try to live up to Vision’s claim that “We don’t trade lives, Captain”. Thanos is willing to sacrifice half the universe to achieve his ends, but he knows that others are not so determined. Thanos’ genius is to repeatedly use our heroes’ mutual ties against them. Hulk ( Mark Ruffalo) comes up against obstacles he can’t smash, and Steve Rogers ( Chris Evans) - relatively underused - has to reckon with his own personal worst-case scenario. The combinations of heroes working together feels both inevitable and unexpected, and the sheer charisma of the cast means that whatever scene or planet we cut to, there’s someone there to care about.Įveryone is tested. Speaking of egos, the titanic clash between Iron Man ( Robert Downey Jr) and Dr Strange ( Benedict Cumberbatch) is a delight, especially given spice by the addition of the naïve, entirely good Peter Parker ( Tom Holland). The addition of the Guardians of the Galaxy happens smoothly – which is to say that there is fighting, flirting, bonding over heavy weaponry and the steady erosion of Peter Quill’s ( Chris Pratt) ego.
The plot’s machinations result in unlikely combinations of Avengers meeting, bickering and, usually, working together semi-effectively. Standing against him is a team that is physically fractured, scattered across the galaxy between the remnants of the Avengers, the refugee Asgardians and the Guardians of the Galaxy. Thanos is mad, and the solution he sees to the galaxy’s ills both evil and ineffective, but he has a thought process that (sort of) makes sense, and his commitment to his cause is so absolute that it is almost admirable. Thanos, meanwhile, gets monologuing from minute one, and it’s to Josh Brolin’s credit that he is never less than compelling, whether speaking or letting his actions speak for him. They are big, they are powerful enough to test the Avengers independent of their boss, and that’s about all we need to know.īrace for noble self-sacrifice, senseless tragedy and straight-up murder. They may look like Lord Of The Rings rejects, and they boast little in the way of redeeming qualities, but that’s all to the good. Ebony Maw (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) and Proxima Midnight (Carrie Coon) and the rest make themselves instantly hissable. The opening minutes are designed to jolt you out of any complacency you may have felt about Thanos’ effectiveness, or the threat posed even by his minions in the Black Order. The film opens without the traditional Marvel fanfare, instead throwing itself into full-throated operatic drama.
Miraculously, this smashes right through your expectations and delivers shock after shock. It would be hard for any film to live up to the level of sky-high hype that has resulted, and to satisfy the fans of every single one of these characters.
Marvel has raised the pressure for itself on Infinity War, widely touting it as the endgame of three phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and promising earth-shattering – or at least, judging by the trailer, moon-shattering – consequences to this two-part story, which will finish with next year’s untitled Avengers 4.