Marvel’s ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Combines All the Best of the MCU

The Marvel Cinematic Universe began ten years ago with a movie about an at-the-time B-list hero led by an at-the-time risky bet of an actor with a troubled past. Since then, it’s grown into the most profitable film franchise of all time and made mega superstars out of just about anyone it touches. People who have never held a comic book know all about the MCU and they’re just as into it as the people who attend every comic con and know the complete history of every character since the days of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. On this foundation, after years of patient planning, careful character building and narrative development, it’s finally time to bring it all together with Avengers: Infinity War. This review won’t give away any spoilers, but just know that, in the words of Luke Skywalker, “This is not going to go the way you think.”

There’s a reason I use a quote from Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi there and it’s because we’ve reached a point with entertainment where theorizing is half of the experience. Take a quick glance at YouTube and you’ll see more endless speculation about which of our all-star superheroes will live an die in Infinity War than we saw about Rey’s parents or Snoke’s origins. That’s something that a very vocal group of Star Wars fans felt was to the detriment of The Last Jedi, but it’s something that’s a major strength here. Movies in the MCU are inherently pretty predictable because they all have to lead to another movie. Like the Fleetwood Mac song so artfully integrated into Guardians of the Galaxy Part 2, they could never break the chain. But now we find ourselves at the end of a major phase of Marvel movies, and pretty much anything could happen—hence the never-ending speculation about this film’s plot. One of the most rewarding things about Infinity War is that even when you think you’re sure what will happen next, you quickly realize that you don’t really know. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever whispered “holy shit” out loud to myself quite so many times in a movie theater.

The basic plot is something pretty familiar to you if you’ve watched even a couple MCU movies. The mad Titan Thanos, who the casual viewer might recognize as the purple dude in the chair in a bunch of those post-credits scenes, is determined to collect all six infinity stones and wipe out half of all life in the universe. It’s up to our expanding band of heroes to stop him. This time, the whole gang is included: Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Falcon (Anthony Mackie), Bucky (Sebastian Stan), War Machine (Don Cheadle), Vision (Paul Bettany), Scarlett Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), Spider-Man (Tom Holland), Guardians Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Rocket (Bradley Cooper), Drax (Dave Bautista), Mantis (Pom Klementieff), teenage Groot (Vin Diesel), and Nebula (Karen Gillian), Asgard’s Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Heimdall (Idris Elba), everyone’s favorite Wakandans Shuri (Letitia Wright), Okoye (Danai Gurira), and M’Baku (Winston Duke), and a whole slew of others that would make this list start to be ridiculously long. Hell, even Tyrion Lannister himself, Peter Dinklage, is in this. It puts a new meaning to the term star-studded.

As you might expect with this kind of talent, the performances from the cast are all incredible. Nobody is phoning it in and everyone has their character cranked up to 11. Many of these actors have been playing their assigned superheroes for years—a decade if we look at Robert Downey Jr.’s iconic turn as Tony Stark— and they’re incredibly comfortable in these roles, which makes everything feel totally natural, even if they are battling a big purple dude who’s trying to grab some magic space gems. Writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely and directors Anthony and Joe Russo also understand that they’re dealing with a giant cast and that everybody has their own favorite character, so the love is spread around pretty equally with it comes to epic intros, fight sequences and overall significance to the story. This is something we also saw in the first Avengers movie, but this one is even more jam-packed with heroes, so it must have been more challenging to accomplish.

Aside from Hiddleston’s Loki and Michael B. Jordan’s phenomenal turn as Erik Killmonger in Black Panther, Marvel has struggled with creating memorable villains. Thanos, being the ultimate big bad of the MCU, could have easily just been an unstoppable force for our favorite heroes to battle, but thankfully, he gets a surprising amount of depth. Sure, he’s still a big scary bad guy who wants to wipe out half the universe, but Josh Brolin and some stellar animation make him feel like an actual person and not some kind of mustache-twirling cartoon baddie.

This first installment of what will be a two-part ending to the current Marvel universe we all know and love seems to celebrate everything we love about the MCU. It’s quippy and funny when it needs to be, has great action, and gives us heart and a few tear-jerker moments when it needs to. Like the Infinity Gauntlet itself, it combines very powerful parts into something absolutely epic and the results are out of this world. We all know MCU movies are fun and enjoyable, but this kicks that up to a new level. Don’t read spoilers, don’t watch too many trailers, don’t speculate or over analyze, just go see it and enjoy for yourself.