Review of Avengers: Infinity War (2018) by Paul B — 20 May 2018

Avengers: Infinity War marks the 19th film of the Marvel Cinematic Universe which has spanned the last decade and pretty much everyone is crammed in. The Russo brothers (Captain America: Civil War) return to the director's seats and to their credit they manage to successfully juggle the huge cast without it seeming bloated or confusing.

A critique of the film is that there is not much in terms of development with regards to the characters, however, the beauty of the MCU is that they managed to develop their characters in the stand-alone films and now these characters seem like old friends. Although one character, in particular, does get the main focus and that's Thanos (Josh Brolin) who plays the main antagonist of the film. Unlike a lot of MCU films and superhero films in general, Thanos is a character who has believable motives and has some real menace.

With a cast of over 30 characters, not all of them get a lot of screen time despite the 2 and a half runtime. However, we do get to see some fun and interesting team-ups that we've never seen before. Thor teams up the Rocket and Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy, and this time Groot has grown from the fledgling we saw in Guardians Vol. 2 into a whining and grumpy teenager. Iron-Man swaps sarcastic barbs with Doctor Strange, in Benedict Cumberbatch's best outing in the MCU.

Obviously, this is going to be a very CGI heavy film and for the most part, it's very well done with only a few dodgy moments. However, Infinity War has shown that it is possible to make a convincing CGI villain (naming no names *cough* Steppenwolf *cough* Bland Justice League movie *cough*).

Infinity War is the culmination of 10 years worth of films and there now like large-scale episode and it's got to the stage where if you've not seen the previous films and don't know what's going on, then tough, keep up. If you've enjoyed the previous MCU movies then you'll really enjoy this and for me, it's probably in the Top 5 MCU films and I can't wait to see what happens in Part 2.