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A giant with feet of clay. That's what Avengers: Infinity War is. An epoch-making event, an endless wait, a vast series of previews, supposed spoilers, speculations, interviews, specials. And then? The most banal of stories. This is the paradox of Marvel's latest mega-product. Everything is perfected, everything is grand, but it lacks the flavor of an interesting story, one a little less predictable, with a truly fascinating and credible villain, with piercing tragedies, with genuinely ominous tension.
Instead, as in the previous Black Panther, the attempt to climb a rung on the value scale only highlights the enormous limitations of the comic book movie world. These are, all things considered, childish stories, quite crude, which the noteworthy finesse of the scripts and the significant quality of the performances cannot release from their status as minor, adolescent, purely playful narratives.
Infinity War fails in the very aspects it was anticipated to excel. The tragic force of the villain, Thanos, who was supposed to be more than just a brute obsessed with destruction, and the transition to a world finally adult, where even heroes die, permanently. Both expectations are unmet: Thanos is only superficially a different enemy, almost a wise cultivator of evil. In fact, his conduct is purely extortive, and his mission is justified by the simple, disconcerting desire to [here there is a spoiler] halve the universe's population, so they can have more space [end]. Even his story with his adopted daughter Gamora fails to craft a well-rounded character, merely inserting itself contradictorily into a purely evil and two-dimensional figure.
The death of the good guys makes its way into the Marvel world. It couldn't have done so in a worse manner. [Another spoiler] Sure, someone dies, but these are minor characters, or ones likely to be resurrected. And even the final disaster is cheeky: almost everyone dies, but it's obvious that in the next chapter time will be reversed, and the massacre avoided. A twist worthy of Akira Toriyama [end]. In short, the biggest attempt by superhero cinema to make a great leap forward once again demonstrates its limited nature, confined to some rigid, inviolable continuity rules that don't quite fit the spirit of great cinema.
The story proceeds by itself. Once so many premises are laid out, all the development appears inevitable on the horizon. Even the heroes themselves acknowledge it; Thanos is already unbeatable for them after having collected two stones. Imagine, then, how enticing a nearly three-hour film with a brute that no one can defeat can be.
Sure, there are many narrative strands, and they are well intertwined; in this, Marvel is unsurpassable. But they mainly feel like centrifugal digressions that serve to acquaint the heroes with each other (because continuity is everything), while the outcomes of their actions are more or less already written. In short, many flies writhing in the room of the big purple guy with the swatter to crush them. But then they will return, they must return.
To those who say that irony and drama are masterfully mixed, alternating rapidly, I respond that, on the contrary, this film demonstrates the inability to create true tragic tension. Even the worst atrocities are quickly overcome because the product's commercial target cannot be narrowed. There's no time to mourn over the corpses, nor the desire to do so. The jokes remain excellent, there's no doubt about that, but it's the overall intention that makes one frown. Especially after ten years, a more decisive turn was needed.
Among the many countless gizmos, spaceships, new armors, mechanical arms, and shields, there are genuine moments of enjoyment, this is undeniable. Perhaps the most beautiful scene I barely saw because my eyelids drooped slightly, being 2:30 in the morning. But I don't doubt it was awesome, like all the others. That was not the (make-up) exam this film should have undertaken.
6/10
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