Avengers: Infinity War Review - A Monumental Achievement By Marvel

Admittedly, this took me a while. Being busy and lack of motivation to write were factors to be fault. But here we go. So, my most hyped and anticipated film of 2018, does it deliver? Oh boy, yes it did, and exceptionally well.

Now, I had watched Avengers: Infinity War (AIW) a total of three times in the cinema, as I was mindblowned by it after the first watching, and the second and third watchings were complimentary to the experience. In short, Marvel (read: Russo brothers) delivered on all their promises - a satisfying climax to Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), a cohesive and tight story telling, a balanced story and sharing of screentime of casts with it being the most casts-crowded movie of all time, a nerve-jerking film that ends leaving you wanting for more, and definitely, a monumental mark in the superhero movies genre.

The most casts in a movie ever.

Too many praises? Let me break it down one by one. First of all, as we know, AIW was considered as the climax to MCU's Phase Three and "the ending of the current MCU as we know it" as said by Kevin Feige. Of couse, AIW was the first part with Avengers 4 in 2019 as the sequel to this "ending to MCU as we know it". This is the 19th movie in MCU, and it brilliantly delivered the hype of being a "climax" and "the ending of an era" as it featured every known heroes from MCU that we have watched their stories unfolded from their previous movies. Benefit of being a shared universe franchise - writers can straightforward deliver us the grand story without initial character background, as we already had that from the previous movies. 

A total of 21 superheroes being featured (I count Loki as well), definitely the first superhero movie to feature such huge assemble of heroes, and this is not including the other supporting casts such as Pepper Potts and The Collector and the writers brilliantly use each characters to carry the main story forward. The main story of course, was about the long awaited Thanos, finally in move, with his Infinity Gauntlet to collect the Infinity Stones to fulfill his long dreamed ambition. The story was clear and simple - the Avengers and Guardians need to stop Thanos but yet, there were moments of character developments that serve as a climax to what we have seen these characters from previous movies, as well as a good and well-written story of a bitter father-daughter love between Thanos and Gamora. For such a massive movie, hugely anticipated and star studded movie to succesfully deliver a strong story complete with emotional touch, that for me was such a huge accomplishment.

As for the casts, at this point in MCU, we are already used to them and in this installment, we see them undergo something that they never had before as they were tested physically and motivationally against Thanos and his forces. This by far is the most intense and emotional MCU movie as it sort of had a somber and apocalyptic theme, besides watching our heroes were being tested with hard choices. Tony Stark, Thor, Wanda Maximoff, heck even Star-Lord, they were all emotionally tested. All casts did well on their part, and unexpectedly, Gamora stole the show. Thanos, on the other hand, salute to Marvel because they really did make him look as real as possible. You can literally see his forearm hairs lol. The CGI rendering was perfect, he did not look graphic-y and you can even saw the little details potrayed by Josh Brolin on Thanos' face whenever Thanos made a facial expression. 

That's how you did it DC, suck on that. Thanos perfect CGI aside, his character himself was perfectly written - he is not a one-dimensional CGI villain that is pure evil (*cough Steppenwolf *cough), but he is someone with a huge ambition, backed by a strong motivation driven by personal experience. As to his action scenes and visual prowess, Thanos easily is the most badass villain in MCU so far. Personally, I think Thanos is the best MCU villain up to date.

I see you, Wong.

Respect also must be given to Russo brothers as they brilliantly jumbled all our heroes in different places, with unique encounters that would surely excites Marvel fans. Seeing Doctor Strange interacting first time with Tony Stark was definitely exciting, same as seeing Star Lord, Peter Parker, Drax and Tony Stark being in the same place bickering with each other. Not even one character existed in the film for the sake of just being there, everyone played a part, even Wong. Yes, Wong was in this too. For me, amongst the huge casts, the ones I think that steal the spotlight or had a good arc or story was Thor, Tony Stark, and Doctor Strange. Thor had his own self-improvement journey in this movie, which kind of serves as a continuation of his story from Thor: Ragnarok.

Thanos in Vormir. A beautiful shot.

Visually speaking, this by far is the most well-captured Marvel movie as the cinematography was on a much higher level than any previous Marvel movies. Good shots on characters during intimate moments, as well as beautiful shots of different planets in space, and also good shots during the climatic events taking place at the end of the movie. There were never ending action scenes, from the beginning till the very end, and granted, there was no problem at all in regards to action scenes and seeing your favourite hero in action. Heck, even Wong got his own piece.

As for the music or scores, the common criticism against MCU movies is that they lack good soundtracks, however, AIW has the best scores set ever in MCU. Fitting in right with the intense and sombre theme of the movie, the scores were phenomenal, suspenseful and uplifting as well. On intense and emotional scenes, the music played well in helping to impovise the execution of the scene given by the casts good acting. The music also played an important part in the climatic events in the movie, right till the credits. 

Avengers: Infinity War was not only the best Marvel movie ever in my opinion, but it deserved to be considered as one of monumental achievement in filmmaking, as it succeed to deliver such an impactful story with such huge casts. Definitely the first superhero movie to achieve such accomplishment, in its own way, AIW shows that the "superhero fatigue" is yet to come, and that superhero movies are still here, to shock us in different ways.

If you are a Marvel fan, and you are yet to watch AIW, then you are insane. If you are a common movie watcher, AIW is definitely a recommendation from me. It was intense, packed with actions, led by good actings of A class actors from Hollywood, and it was braided with good emotional moments, helped by powerful cinematography and scores. Cannot wait for Avengers 4 after that mind-boggling ending.

Deserves to be in the hall of fame, so it's a 10/10 from me.