Avengers Infinity War movie review: The God of all Marvel films, a landmark achievement

We are all, in our own way, chasing dragons. Large or small, permanent or fleeting, it is with these memories of the past that we look at the present, and the future. The elderly want to be young again, the young want to be free. Tony Stark wants redemption, and I want my blockbusters to remind me of the first time I watched the Avengers unite on screen.

Avengers: Infinity War
Directors - Anthony Russo & Joe Russo
Cast - Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Josh Brolin, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Pratt, Scarlett Johansson, Chadwick Boseman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Holland, Zoe Saldana
Rating: 4/5

The first time that Iron Man brought the party to us, and Hulk told Cap that he’s always angry; the first time that we heard that classic Avengers theme and saw our heroes in the same frame together, ready to save the world. These are the moments that movies are made of. These are the dragons we chase. In Avengers: Infinity War, our optimism pays off. Almost. But back then we didn’t really know what to expect. It’s possible that many of us hadn’t even seen all the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as we have now, multiple times. For instance, only the geekiest among us were aware of director Joss Whedon and his particular brand of storytelling. Even those of us that did know of his work were left scratching our heads -- Whedon was a television guy, untested in blockbuster moviemaking, let alone with a $220 million budget.

But neither were the Russos, when Marvel plucked them from relative obscurity and charged them with essentially rebooting Captain America. Like Whedon, the Russo Brothers - Joe & Anthony - also come from the world of TV, but unlike him, their experience lies almost solely in sitcoms - Arrested Development and Community. They’re two of the best sitcoms of recent times, but they’re sitcoms, and not, like Avengers: Infinity War, the most expensive movie ever made. Their experience in tackling parallel plot lines, ensemble casts, and balancing humour with gravitas, I feel, perhaps served them well on Infinity War, which is, despite its astounding scale, rooted in sitcom storytelling. Bet you hadn’t heard that take before.

So faced with the understandably daunting proposition of juggling close to 30 characters with respect, remaining faithful to previously established tones, and ensuring that we, as an audience, find ways to care about everyone involved - although a decade’s worth of movies has done a lot of the heavy lifting for them - the Russos went about it the only way they knew how. They segregated the Avengers into teams. Two parallel plots drive Avengers: Infinity War, two plots destined to collide by destiny itself: Thanos, the Mad Titan, on a quest to unite the six Infinity Stones, which, when embedded in the Infinity Gauntlet, give the owner the power to kill half the universe with a snap of his fingers.

Thanos, as played by Josh Brolin, is the tissue that binds these parallel storylines, driven by an almost inexplicable thirst for power. He is, in many ways, Marvel’s version of the Old Testament God - desperate for love and obedience; a wrathful being who is quick to punish, all the while convincing himself that he is showing us - the mere mortals of Earth - a kindness. By killing us, and every other ‘weak’ race in the universe, Thanos believes that he is being merciful.

We’ve come a long way since the Mach I armour, haven’t we?

But it was a necessary journey, a journey that prepared us for the utterly jaw-dropping conclusion to this one. Despite being more bloated than any other Marvel movie, Infinity War’s strengths lie in the relationships that we’ve developed, over 10 years, with th