Review of Avengers: Infinity War (2018) by Rorshach S — 13 Jul 2018

Look, it's not a good movie.

I'm sure people will like it, but if you have to see ten years worth of films before this for it to make any sense, it fails. The entire movie is simply going to manipulate the audience into liking it with plenty of pop culture references and scenes that, on the outside, seem shocking, but are really basic and obviously going to be retconned out in the next installment, which is very disappointing, since there were some genuinely powerful moments.

Let's look at the specific reasons why this film failed. For one, there was very little character development. The film pretty much relied on the development in the previous films for its characters, and because of that they all seem one note. Some of them are entirely pointless and have few if any lines of dialogue, and are just thrown in for fan service. That is except for the film's villain, Thanos, who is honestly perfectly balanced between tragically likable and extremely evil. That's strange, since the MCU often struggles with its villains. He was, however, the clear standout of the film.

Another major problem is the pacing. Because the film tried to be so ambitious and feature so much happening at once, quite often a character's journey would be interrupted for incredibly long amounts of time to focus on the other characters, and by the time the film gets back to their story arch, it's lost all its momentum, and a lot of them simply feel unfinished and rushed.

Finally, the characters were flatout stupid. For people who are supposedly heroes, they quite often put their emotional wants above the world. To quote Spock, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one." Too many of the characters in the film ignored this, and were willing to sacrifice everyone to save their beloved (even when their beloved were part of that everyone anyways). This happens way too often, and it's simply bad writing.

People are going to like this film. It has a lot of fan service and "shocking" moments that the average moviegoer is not going to realize is textbook emotional manipulation, and really lazy manipulation at that. It focused more on what's already happened and what's going to happen next instead of what's actually happening in the film, and feels rushed, unfinished, and poorly done because of it. It's far from the worst movie ever made, but it's definitely not a good one.