The universe’s resources are limited, and he intends to slice the population in half so that what remains of it can thrive. Yet Thanos thinks of himself as a genocidal humanitarian (sort of like Chairman Mao). This seems like the most dastardly of plans, and is. If Thanos succeeds, it would allow him, in a mad instant, to destroy half the beings in the universe. Thanos is on a mission to gather all six of the Infinity Stones (candy-colored gems named for Mind, Soul, Time, Power, Space, and Reality), several of which are in the hands of our heroes (Vision, played by Paul Bettany, has one of them embedded in his forehead). Thanos’ master plan could hardly be simpler - and neither, despite its gushing river of characters, could the film’s storyline. He’s like Hellboy, the Hulk, Darth Vader, and Oliver Stone rolled into one eloquent sociopath. The urgency derives, in this case, from the film’s villain, Thanos, the malevolent Dark Lord of the wrecked planet Titan, played by Josh Brolin (in a supremely effective motion-capture performance) as a towering walking-statue purple demon with a chin sculpted like Abraham Lincoln’s beard, and a demeanor of soft-spoken Nietzschean intelligence. It also has what any superhero movie worth its salt requires: a sense that there’s something at stake. But taken on its own piñata-of-fun terms, it’s sharp, fast-moving, and elegantly staged. “Avengers: Infinity War” can make it feel like you’re at a birthday party where you get so many presents that you start to grow tired of opening them. Tony, of course, has his zippy metal power suits, but a number of the other characters do, too, including Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), who after the opening fight spends the entire film trying and failing to call forth his inner Hulk. Once Tony and Strange are thrown together, you can’t help but notice that both are imperious quipsters with matching goatees, and they razz each other exquisitely, the main difference being that Strange keeps forming those light circles that look like they’re made out of sparklers. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), after trying and failing to match Ebony in wisecracks and firepower, gets sucked into the ship, and it’s up to Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) to rescue him, with an assist from Spider-Man (Tom Holland), a pop-culture geek who wonders if he’s in the middle of an “Alien” film, and who Tony outfits with anti-gravity armor. At the same time, you may begin to lose hold of what made each of these characters, you know, special.Įarly on, a donut-shaped alien spaceship lands in midtown Manhattan, allowing the effete Continental sadist Ebony Maw (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), who’s like a kick-ass version of the Ghost of Jacob Marley, to ring-lead some FX street mayhem.
“Infinity War” is a brashly entertaining jamboree, structured to show off each hero or heroine and give them just enough to do, and to update their mythologies without making it all feel like homework.
It’s a sleekly witty action opera that’s at once overstuffed and bedazzling. The directors, Anthony and Joe Russo, working from a script by the crack team of Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (who wrote their two “Captain America” sequels), are far more stylish and exacting filmmakers than Joss Whedon, director of the first two “Avengers” films.
So is the movie a jumbled, top-heavy mess of cynical franchise overkill? Sort of like the bloated and chaotic “Avengers: Age of Ultron” taken to the second power? Far from it. (I had to scratch my head to remember what Vision’s powers are, but he remains the coolest shade of Revlon.) The movie is a knowingly gargantuan Marvel mashup, so jam-packed with embattled uber saviors that you may feel, at times, like all that’s missing is Dwayne Johnson, Jesus Christ, and the cast of the last two “Star Wars” films. Strange, the rebooted Spider-Man) the Guardians of the Galaxy and a sprinkling of other figures who’ve been there on the fringes. Set in deep space, and in half a dozen lands (New York, Wakanda, Titan, Knowhere), the film presents a galactic battle for the fate of the universe that throws together the six original Avengers the follow-up wave of Marvel superheroes who’ve only recently been given their own origin stories (Black Panther, Dr.