acid reflects

Avengers: Infinity War
Directed by Anthony Russo, James Russo
Based on the Marvel comic books
Rated PG

It’s been a few weeks since the release but nevertheless, HERE BE SPOLERS.

There was an idea to bring together a group of famous characters for a gigantic mashup movie. That idea built up for more than ten years, and after 18 movies, we have finally reached peak Marvel – the culmination of more than a decade of universe-building, plotting, cameos, staggering promotions and relentless marketing. And it still is not over yet.

In Infinity War, an all-powerful Thanos is gathering six Infinity stones that will give him ultimate power to alter the state of the universe. The separated Avengers, the Guardians and their allies must give all that they can to prevent the destruction of life.

Thanos is consumed by the idea that balance can only be restored in the universe is by ridding it of half of its life population (an intriguing point) – and combining all Infinity gems with a magical gauntlet will enable him to do so with literally a snap of his fingers (never mind if the gauntlet makes the giant Titan’s already stubby fingers so thick that makes me doubt that actual snapping is possible.)

The story begins with the decimation of the Asgardians (a continuation of the ending of Thor: Ragnarok.) Hulk (aka Bruce Banner, Mark Ruffalo) escapes death through Heimdall’s (Idris Elba) final use of the Bifrost. Thanos (Josh Brolin) obtains the Tesseract from Loki (Tom Hiddleston), merges the stone with the Power stone already on the Gauntlet, then sends his children to find the other stones hidden on Earth (how Thanos got the Power Stone from Xandar may be the subject of another movie, who knows? Anything goes at this point.)

Banner crashes into Dr. Strange’s (Benedict Cumberbatch) Sanctorum and they wormhole to find Tony (Robert Downey, Jr.) just in time to explain Thanos’s plan before Ebony Maw (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) and Cull Obsidian (Terry Notary) arrive and wreak havok on New York. Spider-Man (Tom Holland) joins the fray but Strange is captured. Iron Man and Spider-Man manage to stow away on Maw’s ship.

Meanwhile, the Guardians intercept a distress call from the Asgardian refugee ship, rescuing Thor (Chris Hemsworth) in the process. Some comic relief is done while Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) refuses to be out-machoed by the God of Thunder. Rocket (Bradley Cooper) and Groot (Vin Diesel) join Thor in a quest for a new weapon in Nidavellir that can defeat Thanos, while Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Quill, Drax (Dave Bautista) and Mantis (Pom Klementieff) journey to Knowhere hoping to intercept the Reality Stone from The Collector (Benicio Del Toro) before Thanos can get it. Nope.

We’re then left with the last group of Avengers. Vision (Paul Bettany) and Wanda Maximoff (Elisabeth Olsen) are hiding away in Edinburgh (really?) when Corvus Glaive (Michael James Shaw) and Proxima Midnight (Carrie Coon) surpise them with an attack. The Mind Stone is almost taken, but Captain America (Chris Evans) and his merry bunch surprise Thanos’s Black Order and save Vision. The group decides to take the mortally wounded Vision to the one place that the stone can be removed – Wakanda. It doesn’t take them forever to get there, but so do Thanos’s army.

Thus in separate subplots do the disassembled Avengers and allies fight in multiple fronts to prevent Thanos from fulfilling his depopulation of the universe.

At which point in this lengthy set-up do we pause and ask, isn’t anybody going to call this superhero porn?

Not cool. Any depiction (in any film, especially from a popular blockbuster) that glamorizes the use of automatic hand weapons gets less recommendation from me. I made the same complaint against Skurge’s machine guns in Ragnarok. It’s just in bad taste, in the era of every day mass shootings. There is a particular scene in the battle at Wakanda that I’m referring to, and no, it’s not the bad guys doing the acknowledgment.

Infinity War is also the sum of years and millions of dollars worth of Disney branding and hype. It’s was already a “big” “spectacular” “action-packed” motion picture event long before the film came out (with someone who may or may not have been part of marketing calling it the biggest crossover event in history) – all that was needed was to know by how much its first weekend was going to make. Such is its persuation that as of this writing, a slate of candidates for the coming local barangay elections in Manila has all of the candidates’ faces photoshopped onto the bodies of Avengers superheros, their names in Avengers typeface. Kids will be named Gamora and Drax and Peter (okay, maybe not Drax.) Maybe Thanos. It’s hard to read aomebody else’s post-release review that doesn’t read like a pre-release publicity. It’s here, it’s done, it accomplishes what it has been built for, everything including the kitchen sink. Consider it the Empire Strikes Back of the MCU, with slightly fewer WTF moments.

At some point in the many battles, I tell myself that it all doesn’t matter. The big CGI battles don’t matter. There will be another another film where the Jedis come back and defeat the Emperor (yeah different Disney movie, but you get the analogy, right?) Midway into Infinity War, I already wanted to skip to the end, knowing that it is inevitable for Thanos to obtain all the stones before part two of this war. It’s not that it’s how it runs in the comics (slighlty different) – but half of it is because it’s yet another build up for yet another massively multi-superhero clash movie aimed at another boxoffice milestone. And so on, and so forth. Once you’ve seen Spidey swinging through a 360◦ shot, you’ve seen it all – it’s just a matter of whether he has a new set of jazzed-up suit and webshooters like Iron Man does each installment.

But the best part of Infinity War isn’t the Avengers themselves (despite the effort to show many of them in dramatic moments) but with the MCU’s current ultimate villain, Thanos. There’s an online discussion on the way Thanos is portrayed in the movie. It’s actually a great move on the part of the filmmakers and Marvel to present the Mad Titan’s insane motivations in very human terms. Where it slightly deviates from the comics where Thanos pursues the decimation of life to obtain pogi points for the Mistress of Death, in the movie Thanos is a benevolent dictator who believes that he’s ultimately doing the right thing. Plus he really truly loves his daughters Gamora and Nebula (Karen Gillian.) His scene where he decides Gamora’s fate is this movie’s version of Luke, I am your Father. It is presented as a heartbreaking scene – never mind if Thanos is in all aspects a mass murderer who is about to halve the cosmos. Not surprised that so many want to have their own Gauntlet toy in their hands, but I’m more surprised that so many viewers sympathize with Thanos. He is now the Darth Vader of MCU – he’s bad but he’s so cool. These days it is, after all, the age of strongmen.

RDJ was spot on as Tony Stark, reminding me why I never liked the asshole billionaire as a superhero in the first place. Music and massive battle scenes forgettable. Fate of the universe depending on Star-Lord’s temperament may be on-point character-wise, but at that juncture the inevitable already made me not care. Gamora is a device for Thanos’ character and the plot (it’s a yay and nay, relegating the character to the trivial as Thanos’ daughter and Keeper of The Secret and maybe Quill’s girlfriend. Would not have been a problem if she had been a one-off, one-time appearance, but it just happened that I love Zoe Saldana in the series. Sorry Gamora, you’re not Ms Marvel.)

I have no strong feelings towards Infinity War good or bad, except maybe a constant annoyance over Marvel’s compulsion/ urge to cut to punchline. In the MCU’s 18-movie outing, almost every character has thrown a punchline or two, but this is bordering if not outright contrived.

Despite the ten-year set-up, there are still a few plot holes left (and the missing Adam Warlock) and somehow it gives the impression that it’s a series that will never end. Winter has come and the following season will decide what happens to the Iron Throne, but there are signals that suggest everybody becomes the undying whitewalkers who will probably fight against the astrolab in a spinoff. There’s no point who to root for since the stakes are CGI rendered and everybody has their own spinoff anyway. Infinity War has got a great character in Thanos – maybe a little too great that made me question what Earth’s Mightiest can achieve, anyway.

The answer could lie in some person’s fan theory. Out of the millions floating about, I propose my own theory on how Thanos will eventually be defeated: Ms Marvel gets the Soul Stone through Dr. Strange, releasing everyone who was taken after Thanos snapped his fingers.

On a side note, can the Guardians be called Avengers, since they never as a group formally join Stark, the way Cap’s faction did before Civil War? Because Stark bothers to declare Spidey as one.

Affiant further sayeth naught. Peace out.