Movie Review: Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Avengers: Infinity War (2018) directed by Anthony and Joe Russo

Thanos of Titan has set himself a quest. He wants to collect the Infinity Stones, a set of six gems that give the wielder power over the Soul, the Mind, Power, Time, Reality, and Space. Combined, he will have the power to do anything he wishes. What he wants to do most of all is solve a problem. On his home world of Titan, the population outgrew the planet's resources. Titan was devastated. To prevent such a tragedy on other worlds, Thanos decided to wipe out half of all life on every other planet in the universe. He justifies himself because it's necessary and he randomly chooses who will die. He begins a literally semi-genocidal campaign. With the Infinity Stones secured in a special gauntlet, he will have the power to halve the universe's population by merely wishing it so. If he can get them all.

This being the Marvel Cinematic Universe, several of the Stones have already appeared in previous films. Vision's forehead gem is the Mind Stone, Doctor Strange's Eye of Agamoto is the Time Stone, etc. Thanos and his minions split up to collect the Stones, which means a lot of battles with the Avengers who have been scattered since Captain America: Civil War. Loki still has the Stone from the Tesseract. The Asgardians are Thanos's first target. Thor and Loki have a humiliating defeat, which puts Thor on the path of revenge. Back on Earth, Iron Man (Tony Stark) teams up with Doctor Strange (Stephen Strange) to protect the Time Stone while Captain America and a handful of other Avengers fight in Scotland where Vision has been laying low, though not low enough to avoid the notice of Thanos's minions.

The movie quickly turns into an action-packed fight to keep the Stones from Thanos. Even with the very grim plot, the filmmakers are able to keep up the comic tone of the previous films, giving many characters moments to shine and to look like human beings rather than costumed crazy people. Almost every character from previous films shows up which does mean that some get short shrift. The film moves swiftly but doesn't feel rushed.

The ending is a huge cliffhanger which may be frustrating for some viewers, especially with the end credits scene that references a hero who has not yet appeared in the MCU. I recognized the logo and am excited for this character to show up.

Highly recommended, though it might be difficult to follow if you haven't been keeping up with the Marvel movies. And the cliffhanger, while very dramatic, is not very convincing.

Book Review: The Infinity Gauntlet by J. Starlin et al.

The Infinity Gauntlet written by Jim Starlin, pencils by George Perez and Ron Lim, inks by Joe Rubinstein, Tom Christopher and Bruce Solotoff

The mad Titan Thanos is resurrected by Mistress Death, who assigns him the task of halving the universe's population. He's filled his gauntlet with the six Infinity Gems giving him control over the Soul, the Mind, Power, Time, Reality, and Space. For all practical purposes, he is God. But he is also a madman, a nihilist, and in love with Mistress Death. If that wasn't bad enough, his main advisor is Mephisto, the Devil himself. Once Earth's heroes become aware of the situation, they marshall their forces to stop Thanos. But what can their relatively puny powers do against a madman with infinite power out to impress a female who is seemingly impressed by nothing?

Marvel launches another epic storyline where the slaughter of half the sentient life in the universe includes half of the Marvel heroes. The remaining heroes band together to fight the infinitely powerful Thanos. They also have their losses, leaving very few heroes until a late plot twist (which seems really obvious from early on) undoes the damage. Much like the Age of Apocalypse storyline, this makes an interesting "What if?" scenario that's undercut by the ending that returns everything to normal with hardly any consequences.

Such a story would be okay if it includes some interesting insights into or commentary about the nature of power or love, or the characters are well drawn and interesting. The most interesting character is Mephisto, who walks the thin line between sycophant and betrayer. Thanos himself is just power-mad and love-struck without any real genius on his part. He has some character development by the end but not enough to wow a reader. The other characters do their usual thing. Thanos's love for Mistress Death reads like generic character motivation, not genuine emotion. The reflections on his infinite power are more engaging but not particularly deep or insightful. The mythology about the Infinity Gems is interesting but is quickly glossed over. Maybe the story of Thanos getting the Gems would be more compelling than when he actually wields them.

Having a bunch of diverse characters band together to fight a villain is the main appeal of this book to me. The bigger issues were too flat and generic to make this a great epic.