Avengers 3: Infinity War Review

What I liked: Infinity War fixed many of my problems with Civil War and Age of Ultron. For one the scale, if not the time frame, was much more war like. Most people have improved weaponry and suits, Black Widow gets some night sticks which is a huge improvement over the glowstick bracelets and Spiderman gets his fancy schmancy suit. They may have over compensated a bit in the body count but since they are in an 18 movie deficit we can forgive them there. We got to see the Wakandans engage in a much much larger battle, which fuels my suspicions that most Wakandans sat out the Killmonger vs Black panther show down in Black panther. Come on Wakanda, be politically active. I liked the unexpected team ups. Rocket and Thor was a pretty entertaining combination as was Rocket and Bucky. I liked the Star Lord vs Thor stand off and Guardians meeting Ironman and Strange was pretty good. Spiderman is always a favorite, smashing bad guys and being hilarious. There was some good banter and fun lines. I was impressed how quickly Cpt America was able to come to the rescue, since you know he had to collect his allies find an unknown location and get there. I'm not sure why the government was so opposed to fighting the aliens but it did give Cpt America a chance for a nice little mini speech. You would think they would have at least sent some bombers of something though. And as everyone was hoping there were some pretty awesome super powered battles.

What I didn't: I couldn't get a solid count on how many avengers/friends were involved in Infinity War but I think it is ~ 30. This is a lot of characters to keep track of.  So, if you haven't seen the other movies, this is not the place to jump in. We see very little Hulk in the movie, did the movie makers think we could only handle one big colorful guy on screen? Ok, they might be right about that. The bad guy's plan makes no sense. For a run of the mill villain coming up with a terrible way to combat resource scarcity, fine kill half the population. Clearly in addition to the ethical shortfalls, there are a number of problems like the fact that you would have to repeat the whole thing on the time scale of population doubling. So if the life forms you are trying to "protect" are bacteria, that's every 12 hours. Also how does that plan scale to creatures like wombats, pandas, and balugas? Obviously halving those populations would be counterproductive to overall species viability. But these and other shortcomings aside, as an evil villain collects artifacts that allow him to control power, time, space, and reality, the whole limited resources thing falls apart. Wouldn't it be easier to just get the reality, space, or power stones individually and fix the perceived problems rather than go on a quest to get all 6 and kill everyone? Or you know we could do some sciencey science and find solutions to the problems. I guess grad school isn't for everyone. Also for a guy wanting to kill half of everything, how does he have such a big army? was his army twice as big before? and if he is systematically taking over planets and taking the best fighters to be his elite assassin squad, why is the army exclusively demon ant dogs? The good guys didn't really have a stellar plan either. Why do heroes repeatedly try to take on Thanos single handedly, it seems like after you hear that he has beaten each of your friends alone maybe you would opt for the group approach. Also, I am a proponent of the justice system and heroes should let the legal system handle your standard bad guys. However, it seems like in a conflict titled "Infinity War" with half the universe's population at stake maybe you really should take the head shot and accept that some casualties are inevitable. The heroes' powers should also be more consistent especially Scarlet Witch and Dr. Strange. They are incredibly powerful but seem to only turn it on occasionally. I also think that there could have been some alternative to taking down the shield, like I don't know leaving a guard to take care of any sneaky escapers. Teenage Groot is much less cute than Baby Groot. 

Who should watch this? Infinity war took a darker turn than most of the previous Marvel movies and so it earns the PG13 rating. It is also long and feels long by the end, I kept counting how many more rocks we had to get through. But it beats out Civil War and Age of Ultron and anyone who likes the Marvel movies is going to want to see it. 

Would I watch it again? Yep. I'm going to go see it tomorrow with the roommates and will probably see it again after that.