Main Menu

Avengers - Infinity War

Started by Judgedreddrocks, 27 April, 2018, 10:54:04 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Judgedreddrocks

I went to see Infinity War yesterday, and I can honestly say it was brilliant. I felt like I was watching a key moment in movie history. A total emotional rollercoaster.

10 years of (mostly) great films (Ed Norton's Hulk was a bit ropey), culminating in an a non-stop action
flick with a great cast and a fantastic bad guy in Thanos. (They totally nailed the CGI, unless that Justise League Stepenwolf guy).

The acting in certain scenes were top notch. A particular shout out to Tom Holland's Spiderman and Josh Brolin's Thanos.

I won't spoil anything for anyone. Go watch it and make up your own mind.


matty_ae

Yup 100% agree.

Marvel dont do 'set pieces' anymore - the whole movie is a 'set piece' but not in a Transformers nonsense way. I cared about the characters and was on the edge of my seat.

So many moments. Never had an audience applaud an entry before.

The Monarch

amazing film [spoiler]wished valkyrie wasn't killed offscreen[/spoiler] but alas a minor blip in an otherwise great film

also [spoiler]HOLY SHIT RED SKULL![/spoiler]

radiator

It worked about as well as it possibly could have done, considering how much stuff they had to juggle, but as is the drill with these things it feels like eating a giant three course meal where each course is a dessert. It's the best and worse elements of Marvel movies dialed up to 11.

As an experience, it definitely worthwhile (I saw it in a giant packed out cinema where every time a familiar character or element appeared onscreen there were huge cheers and applause), but it's more a sequence of individual great little moments than a great film in it's own right.

The glaring problem for me was that the non-stop pacing and the almost total lack of any non-superhuman characters in the movie made it all feel weirdly small scale and lacking in stakes and context.

The ending was weird... [spoiler]feels like it's all set up for some giant time-travel-related cop-out. And when everyone inevitably comes back, it has the old comic book problem where death seems totally meaningless. I'd rather have had a few minor deaths that are actually going to stick. I'm assuming that all of the non gauntlet-related deaths (Vision, Gamora, Loki, Heimdall) are permanent?[/spoiler]

As for [spoiler]Valkyrie - pretty sure she isn't dead.[/spoiler]

Fungus

#4
Anti-Marvel comment deleted.
Please enjoy your Marvel tosh.

Archie Leech

Saw this in IMAX 3D.
For a LOOOOOONG film it seemed to fly by. I didn't find any individual scenes boring or unnecessary. There were some sacrifices- Valkyrie not being onscreen. Winter Soldier being little more than a cameo...but to include so many characters, keep you invested, develop them all and move the plot along I would say this is a huge success.
Yes, it's not Godfather part 2 or Citizen Kane. It's a huge entertaining pop-corn film.
I found this much more enjoyable that the turgid Black Panther. Stand out moments from Chis Hemsworth as Thor in almost every scene he's in. Tom Holland, Zoe Saldana and stealing the movie from under RDJ's feet- for me- was Benedict Cumberbatch as the Sorcerer Supreme.
The ending was pretty much as promised (or threatened) by Thanos.
I'm also guessing a time travel solution based on what's known about Avengers 4 and my suspicions that Doctor Strange set it all up to go this way as the only scenario where they can win.
I'm now looking forward to Avengers 4, even if the heroes that died stay dead. It will be interesting to see where they go from here.
Financial success is assured and I know Marvel have their critics but I found this to be a much better film than Black Panther, The Last Jedi and Force Awakens!
I will be going to see it again. (That's a definite as my Mrs has told me she definitely wants to see it too based on word of mouth from her social circles.)

Link Prime

For what it was, it was great.
I liked Radiator's analogy;
Quote from: radiator on 27 April, 2018, 04:42:30 PM
it feels like eating a giant three course meal where each course is a dessert

For anyone who's ever seen Peter St John hand over a crystal pyramid to the bad guys, next years resolution won't be too much of a surprise.

Mattofthespurs

Some spoilers in Archie's report that I would rather not have read, no?

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: Mattofthespurs on 28 April, 2018, 04:29:45 PM
Some spoilers in Archie's report that I would rather not have read, no?

I'd expect spoilers, even inadvertent ones, in a review/discussion thread. I deliberately didn't read anything here until I'd seen the movie, although a kindly mod might want to add a 'SPOILER' warning to the thread title...?
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

TordelBack

#9
Ay chihuahua! I won't bother you with my rock-solid theory as to how all this is resolved, aka what the hell[spoiler] Dr Strange[/spoiler] was playing at, but despite few dud moments  (Girl fight? Really?), this was an unbelievably audacious, and enjoyable, film. The realisation at the end that the next two (intervening) MCU flicks are flashbacks was fantastic - almost too cunning.

It cleverly gave most screen time and many of the best lines to the '[spoiler]doomed' characters (in the process often feeling more like GotG 3 than anything else), and neatly pared the cast back to the original Avengers for the next one, without looking like that was what it was doing. 
[/spoiler]

If I could have suggested a change (or rather, a reversion), it would have been to be clearer that this was a Part 1 - I suspect this 'surprise' will hurt WoM. Certainly my kids were less than enthused by the cliffhanger, whereas I was thrilled by it.

Cleverest bit: the way Wong was handled.
Dumbest bit: how many Wakandans [spoiler]had to die to in the place of Mr Data.[/spoiler]
Best character: Drax.
Most perplexing choice: including both [spoiler]the Gungan battle from TPM and the Lonely Mountain forge lighting scene from Desolation of Smaug[/spoiler] in the same climax.
Coolest prospect: the return of [spoiler]Red Skull[/spoiler].

JOE SOAP

#10
Quote from: TordelBack on 28 April, 2018, 05:11:38 PM
If I could suggest a change (or rather, a reversion), it would have been to be clearer that this was a Part 1 - I suspect this will hurt WoM. Certainly my kids were less than enthused by the cliffhanger, whereas I was thrilled by it.

Dunno, marketing issues aside with calling things Part 1 and Part 2 in recent years (and 18 parts all ready preceding it) I like that it is made as an inverted version of Avengers or the Thanos solo film [spoiler]where he is tested with choosing between a loved one and his mission; defeats his enemies at his own equivalent of the battle of New York, and then, after completeing his hero journey and achieving his life goal, wakes up the next morning smelling the roses – all's right again in his world.[/spoiler]

Splitting the cast up into clustered groups centred around [spoiler]individual stones/forging Thor's new happy-stick[/spoiler] provides an obvious but nifty structure to the whole thing and gives all the main characters their moment(s). I don't really get the criticisms of pacing. No scene seemed too long or too short and there was nowt confusion as to what was going on or were we were at anytime. It felt as effortless as the original Avengers.

QuoteCoolest prospect: the return of [spoiler]Red Skull[/spoiler].

Yes; I love how the decades in [spoiler]exile seem to have mellowed him – even though it wasn't Hugo Weaving doing the voice.[/spoiler]

TordelBack

#11
Oh I did like the whole structure a lot, I just felt a more explicit To Be Continued... might have sat better with the more casual/younger audience than the prospect that our heroes screwed the pooch and that's that. Maybe a downer is easier to take if you know it's coming. But Thanos, a magnificent creation in every respect BTW, a great antidote to the usual heroic calculus, did warn us at the very beginning, and he's worth listening to.

Good point about recent marketing too. Been a while since Deathly Hallows Part 2 made such a splash.

Such massively long game these lads are playing.

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: TordelBack on 28 April, 2018, 06:12:42 PM
Such massively long game these lads are playing.

If DC want to know where they're going wrong, it's the apparent belief that they can put out five movies of —ahem— variable quality, the best of which is probably equivalent to something in the top quarter of Marvel's output, and then think they can hint at a Justice League/Darkseid movie and leapfrog straight to where Marvel are now.

Marvel has spent ten years playing chess whilst DC is barely playing noughts-and-crosses.
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

The Enigmatic Dr X

Load of pish in which there was a lot of noise but nothing happened.
Lock up your spoons!

Jim_Campbell

And, yes, I bloody loved this movie. My only real regret is that [spoiler]unless the hints at the end of GotG2 get realised way faster than I expected, Marvel is going to do their big Thanos storyline without Adam Warlock.[/spoiler]
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.