Avengers: Infinity War

Our Review

Ten years of buildup cashed in one bet: make the villain the protagonist. Avengers: Infinity War is Thanos’s movie, and Josh Brolin’s motion captured Titan is the most fully inhabited CG performance of the era, a fanatic who believes he is the only honest man in the universe. The film gives him a quest, a history, a dead daughter, and the screen time heroes used to get.

The structure is a braided road movie: Tony and Strange on a doomed spaceship with a teenage Spider-Man, Thor rocketing to build a weapon with a talking rabbit, Cap’s outlaws in Edinburgh, the Guardians carrying the comedy. Two hours of gathering, gathering, gathering, done with enough personality that the sprawl mostly hides. Some heroes get shortchanged by the math, that is the cost of twenty leads.

Then the ending. The snap heard round the world, half of all life dissolving into ash while the villain sits watching the sunrise, satisfied, was the balliest ending a mainstream blockbuster had attempted in decades. No victory, no rescue, a credits tag as a question mark. Wakanda’s battlefield and the Titan moon fight are the spectacle highs, and the Strange versus Thanos spell duel is the series’ most imaginative brawl.

Our score: 9/10. The gamble paid completely.