

It's a touching moment with lighthearted jabs exemplifying the filmmakers' goal throughout the series but feels even more significant here - the darkest, bleakest story of the franchise.įrom a script by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the film's best aspect is the strange-bedfellows banter of the characters.

Hemsworth carries over his jovial demeanor from his previous movie in a conversation with Rocket (Bradley Cooper) where the two continue suppressing their softer underbellies. The scene quickly establishes a morose and pessimistic tone that pervades the thrillingly grandiose action, and even the several comedic curveballs attempting to lighten the mood do so with a tense cynicism. Within minutes, the alien Titan easily overpowers the powerful Thor (Chris Hemsworth), out-smarts the ingeniously clever Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and pummels the incredible Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) to the point of bruising the Green Goliath's ego for the remainder of the runtime - a running gag that's as equally funny as it is frustrating. Picking up from a mid-credits sequence in Thor: Ragnarok, the film wastes no time shocking fans, as Brolin's Thanos begins inflecting his twisted form of justice. Even more astounding and unexpected is a poignantly weighty plot guaranteed to engage audiences on an emotional level. Miraculously, directors Anthony and Joe Russo, coming off the last two Captain America movies, do a phenomenal balancing act juggling between a laundry list of characters without losing focus on the main objective: stopping a nihilist-obsessed Thanos (Josh Brolin) from realizing his catastrophic plan for the universe. Eighteen entries to the franchise have basically been building up to this moment, and it absolutely feels that cumbersome and substantial, requiring some viewers to perhaps revisit the previous films prior to this undeniably bloated but surprisingly entertaining behemoth. It will go down as a formidable and somewhat exhaustive endeavor that tests casual fans' knowledge of the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe while pleasing the deeply loyal base with giddy enthusiasm.

Avengers: Infinity War has to be the biggest motion picture event of recent memory, a massively ambitious production ten years in the making.
