In 2008, Tony Stark stood at the podium and announced to the world “I am Iron Man.” I, on the other hand, was in sixth grade. In fact, I had just lost a tooth eating a Swedish Fish during my language arts class.
Now, in 2018, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is much more vast and complex than we could have conceived. Tony Stark still banters, but now it’s in space with Star-Lord and Spider-Man; Captain America still leads Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, but now with Black Panther, M’Baku and Bucky. Also, I’ll be graduating college.
In that span of time, it’s likely that most of our lives have been just as convoluted as a superhero shared universe: with your fair share of obstacles and probably even a few re-castings (sorry to ex-Hulk Ed Norton).
For many of us, the MCU has been a mostly reliable (not sorry to “Iron Man 2”) friend in the past decade. And some, like me, have grown up with it. So, even if this isn’t the end of Marvel Studios (did I mention that that “Black Panther” is now the ninth-highest grossing film of all-time?) it’s hard not to see “Avengers: Infinity War” as a sort crescendo, an impossibly massive culmination of nearly every Marvel hero to don the silver screen since Sam Jackson’s Nick Fury invited Stark, and thereby all of us, to join the Avengers Initiative after the “Iron Man” credits rolled.
That crescendo I speak of, the MCU’s latest and largest entry, “Avengers: Infinity War,” is a spectacle that has no right to work, with over 40 Marvel characters sharing the screen in two hours and 40 minutes of superhero smorgasbord. And yet, it does work…mostly.
This is a movie that shouldn’t be nearly as good as it is, but it’s certainly not without fault. With that much happening on the screen at a given moment, it was inevitable that there were going to be moments, scenes and maybe even entire characters that get lost in the race to stop the Mad Titan Thanos from claiming the six infinity gems and all of their unholy power.
It’s a cosmic level fight that primarily lends its focus to the characters who occupy the stars and stand in Thanos’ way to Earth; like Thor and the Guardians of the Galaxy, and the wayward trio of Iron Man, Spider-Man and Dr. Strange who don’t normally patrol the cosmos, but you know, such is life.
These characters are also the emotional core of the film. It’s a heavy burden to bear for any Marvel movie, but especially difficult to balance when it comes alongside “Infinity War’s” incredible action sequences. These movies are always about balance: balance of heart and heroics, and it’s in that “Infinity War” begins to falter.
For the first time in an Avengers film, the hardest hitting moments aren’t about the original Avengers. The biggest moments in “Infinity War” come from Thanos and his adopted daughter Gamora of the “Guardians of the Galaxy.” While the Russo’s and company were able to create a villain as galactically powerful with as much nuance as he has, placing the emotional beats with Thanos and those in his immediate preview, instead of with our friends down on Earth, doesn’t make for the biggest impact, which is what you need when it’s juxtaposed against these massive superhero throwdowns. It just makes you wish you had a little more time for smaller character moments with Captain America, Bucky, Black Panther, Hulk and etc.
But that was always going to be the problem with this movie. It’s impossibly big, but it was never going to be quite big enough to satiate every fan’s longings for their favorite characters. But the fact that it does so well, that it gets so close, is one heck of a feat.
And there’s so much that this movie gets spectacularly right. The Iron Man/Spider-Man mentor/mentee relationship is fun and perfect as we had seen a little before; Scarlet Witch and Vision’s existentially doomed love story is just as tragic as fans of the comics could have hoped; and seeing Captain America charge into battle with Black Panther makes you feel like this exactly what the Avengers was always supposed to be.
And If our biggest complaint is that we simply wanted more, well then even after a decade they’ve still got us. “Avengers: Infinity War” is a monument to that achievement: a giant purple flex that even after over 17 films since “Iron Man,” we’re still all in on Marvel.
