Avengers: Infinity War
Rated: 9/10
What the Groot! This can’t be happening! This ain’t happening! But then, Que Sera Sera…
When two years ago, Captain America: Civil War ripped the superheroes party apart without a premise, the Marvel horizon started looking dark, grim and fatally crisis-driven, panning out to the audience in a shocking manner the fact that even incredible superheroes can be human, vain and divisive.
Just when the rude shock of this realisation was somewhat wearing off, in came Avengers: Infinity War. The grimness snowballed into sheer trauma, shock and awe, all put into one. Not that the scale of the canvas was reduced or action lost any impact or the heroes were not there in full attendance to entertain their loyal fans.
They were all there and added quantity, almost all of them — from the enigmatic Dr Strange to Iron Man to Captain America to Spiderman to Black Panther, to name a few. And those, who could not make it in this one, showed up in a post-credits teaser as harbingers of Infinity War Part 2 slated for the same time next year.
But returning to the one at hand and in sold-out cinemas, why Marvel has turned so definitively defeatist is a question in need of an intense thesis. But till then, the audience will have to stay with what unfolds on the big screen — sadly, it’s the beginning of an end no one envisaged, envisioned or wants.
Directors, however, ensure that the cinematic brilliance of the franchise which is expected to garner $14 billion worldwide does not get affected or blemished by the antibodies of catastrophic gloominess that invade the superhero universe so carefully and craftily created by Marvel and Disney till now.
The action is slick, the humour, despite the situation at hand, is wry, apt, Baconian and symbolic of the cryptic natter that has always existed between the superheroes whenever they share screen space. The climax though slow and enveloped in an air of inevitability is built up with bated breath. And when it finally explodes for the audience, there is disbelief and an intense desire to rub the Time Stone to bring it back to the happy times of pre-Captain America Civil War era.
None of that, of course, happens as Marvel inexorably bangs down upon the Avengers fans that destiny can sometimes be bigger than the biceps and the special powers of their heroes. And this realisation is brought to the canvas by the monstrous Thanos, the super villain in the film. He is an inter-galactic creature who is melancholic about the genocides he conducts of planetary populations without as much as a niggle in the mind. He says the universe is not in a position to take the pressures of population and that he has to invade every planet in his horizon and cut its population by half.
Though undeterred by any emotion of love, commitment or fatherhood, he goes about his destructive job with the twitch of a finger and in the process is able to gather the ultimate power anyone can have in the entire universe — through a set of six stones that he needs to find and embed on the back of his palm.
Saying anything more would be a big spoiler and our super heroes would not want that. So, suffice it to say, this part one of the grand finale is delightful and yet traumatic, wondrous and yet shocking and doom-struck but a wait worth its watch.
Source: The Pioneer, 29 April, 2018