MCU Retrospective: Avengers: Infinity War

Written by Anna Harrison

In these retrospectives, Anna will be looking back on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, providing context around the films, criticizing them, pointing out their groundwork for the future, and telling everyone her favorite scene, because her opinion is always correct and therefore her favorite scene should be everyone’s favorite scene. Now, the beginning of an end of an era. But not really an end. Like, half an end.

85/100

“Dread it. Run from it. Destiny arrives all the same. And now, it’s here. Or should I say… I am.”

The unbearable anticipation for Avengers: Infinity War made the hype around Joss Whedon’s The Avengers look like child’s play. Ten years after the arrival of Iron Man, the MCU had built its own complicated mythology, weaving in characters and storylines in a way that no other movie franchise had attempted; its characters had become instantly recognizable, the actors who portrayed them became megastars, and its cultural dominance was absolute. Even if you didn’t watch every Marvel film, there was no way to avoid them: the memes, the inside jokes, the lines, the gestures were everywhere. Suddenly your arms crossed in an “X” over your chest meant something greater, and if you said something as innocuous as, “I understood that reference,” you would—intentionally or not—open the door for endless Marvel, well, references. 

Since The Avengers premiered in 2012, the looming threat of Thanos on the horizon had grown ever larger alongside Marvel’s own growing importance. Damion Poitier appeared as the Mad Titan in The Avengers’ post-credits scene as merely a tease, but two years later, in Guardians of the Galaxy, he was in the body of the movie, this time played by Josh Brolin. In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Thanos would again cameo in a post-credits scene, and so by the time he shows up in Infinity War, the audience has been prepared.

With Thanos come the Infinity Stones. First the Space Stone (within the Tesseract) in Captain America: The First Avenger, the Mind Stone (within Loki’s scepter) and the Space Stone again in The Avengers, the Reality Stone (aka the Aether) in Thor: The Dark World, the Power Stone in Guardians of the Galaxy, the Mind Stone again in Avengers: Age of Ultron, and the Time Stone in Doctor Strange. Always there, always waiting for their big payoff. 

And so, at last, Avengers: Infinity War, originally titled Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 but renamed to avoid misconceptions (and presumably to give Avengers: Endgame a more final-sounding name than simply Infinity War Part 2). Joe and Anthony Russo, directors of Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War, reunited with writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely to craft the first part of the end of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (or, at least, the MCU as we knew it to that point). Theories were flying on who was going to die, and how, and when, with people hanging onto Kevin Feige’s every word regarding this movie and breaking down the trailers frame-by-frame. Clips shown at San Diego Comic-Con caused the enormous Hall H crowd to lose its collective mind, and the trailer now has well over 100 million views. It was all your favorite characters—even the disparate ones, like the Guardians of the Galaxy—coming together, it was the beginning of the culmination of 18 previous movies, it was all so unbelievably big. 

But when Infinity War begins, with no fanfare, no music, no images, just the crackling voice of Sir Kenneth Branagh (director of the first Thor movie) pleading for anyone to come help the Asgardian refugee ship last seen in Thor: Ragnarok, all the anticipation of the past ten years becomes swiftly replaced with foreboding. The opening of Avengers: Infinity War hits you like a bus, a train, an expletive, take your pick (I prefer the lattermost, starting with an “m” and ending in an “er”), and the ending only hits harder. 

That refugee vessel slowly comes into view as it floats listlessly in space, dead in the water; soon, the camera begins to survey the wreckage in one long, harrowing take, lingering on the dead civilians that litter the floor of the ship. Then Thanos (Josh Brolin) appears, dragging a beaten and bloodied Thor (Chris Hemsworth) across the wreckage like he weighs nothing. The fight has already happened, and Thor has lost—the triumph and jubilation from Thor: Ragnarok vanishes in an instant as we see how easily Thanos tosses Thor aside, and the dread only rises when even the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), one of the most powerful beings in the MCU, gets bested by Thanos with little more than a flick of the wrist. It rises, and rises, and rises: Heimdall (Idris Elba) sends Hulk to Earth and gets killed for his efforts, Thanos adds the Space Stone to his collection, and finally it all culminates in the Thanos lazily snapping the neck of fan-favorite Loki (Tom Hiddleston). 

It’s a one-two-three-four gut punch: what remains of Asgard decimated, Hulk defeated, Heimdall killed, Loki killed, bam, bam, bam, bam. Loki’s death in particular sends a shock to the system: the formidable villain of the first Avengers movie tossed to the ground like a broken ragdoll, the antihero from the Thor franchise who stole so many scenes he brought that same Hall H to its feet all those years ago merely by shushing them, making one last heroic stand that gets thwarted with astonishing ease. Loki has perhaps the most gruesome, drawn-out death in the MCU, thrashing and writhing wildly about like an animal, blood trickling out of his eyes and ears from the force of Thanos’ meaty hand around his neck before the God of Mischief gets his corpse bodily dumped in front of his defeated, crying brother. It is an utterly bleak opening and unlike any other Marvel movie that came before—there are no quips, there is only defeat and despair as we finally behold the true power of the Mad Titan Thanos.

In short, it’s one hell of an opening, and Infinity War hardly lets up on the gas pedal for the rest of its hefty runtime.

The Hulk conveniently lands in the Sanctum Santorum, the abode of Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and fellow Master of the Mystic Arts Wong (Benedict Wong), and he turns back into Bruce Banner upon landing. (Despite Bruce’s proclamation in Ragnarok that if he turned into the Hulk again he would never turn back, here he is; depending on what the directors need him to be, the relationship between Bruce and the Hulk tends to change at the drop of a hat. Taika Waititi needed Bruce to be Hulked out, but the Russos need Hulk to be beaten down to establish Thanos’ strength and simultaneously leave a powerful player off the battlefield, because otherwise the Avengers might win too easily. Back and forth we go.)

Bruce’s proclamation that “Thanos is coming” spurs Dr. Strange to get the Avenging band back together again. Strange interrupts Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Pepper Potts’ (Gwyneth Paltrow) walk through the park and family planning discussion, and Tony almost swallows his pride and calls Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), but they get interrupted by the arrival of Thanos’ lackeys, the Black Order. (A reminder, in case you forgot: the last time Tony and Steve saw each other, Tony was attempting to kill Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Steve’s childhood friend, for killing his mom, and Steve was doing his best to give Tony a very severe concussion or twenty.)

Trent Opaloch, the cinematographer for the Russo brothers’ MCU films, has crafted a handful of cool shots for Marvel, but by and large his camera has been workmanlike, favoring function over style. Yet here, like in the opening scene, he employs another long take that works beautifully to ramp up the tension: Tony walks out onto the streets of New York, the wind from the Black Order’s ship sending debris flying, and the chaos that unfolds around him gets no time to breathe or ease up via a cut, it only keeps growing. Someone runs into Tony and falls to the ground, a car hits a lamppost right in front of him, signs are precariously buffeted by the wind, and our trepidation only grows as he picks his way through the chaos to find the threat.

The threat turns out to be Cull Obsidian (Terry Notary) and Ebony Maw (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), the former of whom is forgettable but the latter of whom proves to be very coldly frightening. Seeing the impending threat from aboard his school bus, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) joins the fight, which ends with Dr. Strange, Tony, and Peter all aboard Ebony Maw’s ship, headed to a rendezvous with Thanos on his home planet of Titan.

Read More of Anna’s Ongoing Marvel Retrospective Series Here

And then, with a needle drop of The Spinners’ “The Rubberband Man,” the Guardians of the Galaxy enter Infinity War. (It’s not all gloom and doom, guys!) Zooming through space to answer a distress signal, they soon realize that they’ve arrived too late: the source of the call, the Asgardian ship from the opening, has splintered apart, and its occupants float eerily through the cosmos, all dead save the one-eyed bodybuilder who lands on their windshield. So, finally, our space misfits get to interact with the Avengers, or at least one. The Guardians bring Thor onto their ship, where Drax (Dave Bautista), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Mantis (Pom Klementieff), and Rocket (Sean Gunn for the motion capture, Bradley Cooper for the voice) ooh and aah over Thor’s significant muscles at the expense of Peter Quill (Chris Pratt). “He is not a dude,” Drax says. “You’re a dude. This… this is a man. A handsome, muscular man.” 

The subsequent interaction between Thor and the Guardians is a moment of immense fun amidst a very heavy movie (at least, heavy for Marvel), and seeing the Guardians finally interact with an MCU character outside of their own franchise sparks great joy. So much of the MCU’s success relies on how well it plays around in its own sandbox: it has established characters you know and love on their own, which is well and good, but when you put them together, it’s double the fun and double the novelty. Plus, the Guardians are such a bizarre bunch that putting them with any character even slightly less weird will pay dividends, and as these characters interact with their hitherto unknown fellows, it can coax out new sides of everyone involved, so not only is it simply fun to watch these worlds collide, it’s good character development, too.

In fact, the combination of Thor and Rocket produces one of the best scenes in Infinity War. The two, along with Groot (Vin Diesel), split off from the Guardians so that Thor can find a weapon strong enough to defeat Thanos, leaving the Guardians to go to the planet Knowhere to speak to the Collector (Benicio del Toro), seen in Thor: The Dark World’s post-credits scene and in Guardians of the Galaxy, who possesses the Reality Stone. Rocket, in a moment of remarkable maturity and empathy for the racoon (Yondu (Michael Rooker) really helped him with his issues in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2), notices Thor is feeling a bit blue, to put it lightly. Where Thor: Ragnarok dealt with its own repercussions a little too glibly, here Markus and McFeely strike a perfect balance between the newfound humor in Thor and the immense trauma he just experienced: there are jokes, but they are laced through with a current of sorrow.

“You know,” Thor tells Rocket, “I’m fifteen-hundred years old. I’ve killed twice as many enemies as that, and every one of them would have rather killed me than not succeeded. I’m only alive because fate wants me alive. Thanos is just the latest in a long line of bastards, and he’ll be the latest to feel my vengeance. Fate wills it so.”

“Mhm. And what if you’re wrong?”

“Well, if I’m wrong, then…” Thor replies, “what more could I lose?”

It’s a standout scene in a standout movie, one elevated by Chris Hemsworth’s standout performance. Thor: Ragnarok leaned overly hard into the comedy, often forgetting Thor’s age and largely ignoring the bigger emotional repercussions from things like his dad dying, his sister getting released from Hel, attempting to kill him, slashing his eye out, and then dying, and his home world getting destroyed; here, you feel the weight of it finally come crashing down.

Elsewhere, yet another thread of the movie gets introduced as we are reacquainted with Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and the Vision (Paul Bettany), now officially an item. Vision also looks like Paul Bettany for a few minutes, sparing the makeup team several hours of their time and letting everyone know he can change his appearance at will (and probably make it an easier pill to swallow for the audience that Wanda is dating a synthezoid thing). The two had shared moments in Age of Ultron and Civil War hinting at their future as a couple, but they were more snatches of time than anything, so Bettany, Olsen, and the movie have to work overtime to make their relationship believable. Luckily, it largely succeeds; even if Wanda and Vision will not get the limelight they deserve until their titular TV show, Bettany and Olsen’s charm and chemistry help sell their relationship very quickly.

Vision, unfortunately, becomes the target of the other two members of the Black Order, Proxima Midnight (Carrie Coon in a very thankless role, and I would please like Sarah Finn to cast her again as someone bigger, thank you) and Corvus Glaive (Michael Shaw). Vision gets wounded early on, conveniently nerfing (as the kids say) his formidable powers so he and the Mind Stone can’t run around and defeat the Black Order without dropping a sweat (not that Vision would sweat anyway). Luckily for our favorite sitcom couple, Bruce had called Steve, who shows up with Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) and Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) in appropriately dramatic fashion. They decide to take Vision to Wakanda, where T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) and Shuri (Letitia Wright) might be able to patch him up. (Steve, having been on the run since the events of Civil War, also sprouts a beard, a thrilling development everywhere for the female gaze.)

And so we finally have all of our plot threads: Tony, Strange, and Peter heading to Titan, having dispatched Ebony Maw; Thor and Rocket heading to the dwarf home world of Nidavellir to get a weapon; the Guardians off to Knowhere; the earthbound Avengers (now with Don Cheadle’s Rhodey in tow) off to Wakanda, where they also pick up recently de-brainwashed Bucky Barnes. 

Well, almost all. There’s still Thanos to deal with. Before the Guardians get to Knowhere, Gamora takes Peter aside and makes him swear to kill her if Thanos tries to take her; when the Guardians get to Knowhere, they find the planet burning and Thanos waiting for them, Reality Stone in tow. When Thanos takes Gamora, Peter follows through on his promise and shoots her, but the shot turns to harmless bubbles as Thanos harnesses the power of the Reality Stone. It’s a shocking moment—not the bubbles, but the fact that Peter actually tries to kill Gamora. Nearly every time something similar happens in a movie, the shooter can’t follow through. It’s become trite at this point, but Peter bucks tradition and pulls the trigger, which (conversely) speaks to the strength of his relationship with Gamora and the trust they have built between Vol. 2 and now. Like Olsen and Bettany, Pratt and Saldana have to work hard to sell their characters’ relationship, which was last seen as defined as “some unspoken thing” in Vol. 2, but it works. Saldana in particular turns out her best performance as Gamora yet as she confronts the adoptive father who slaughtered half of her planet, proving to be the unexpected MVP of Infinity War.

So now we finally have all of our plot threads: Tony and company on Titan, the Guardians on Knowhere, Thor and Rocket on Nidavellir, Steve and company in Wakanda, and Thanos on a quest to find the Soul Stone.

It is quite a lot of plates to keep in the air. Frankly, it is a marvel (ha) that Infinity War is even slightly coherent, considering that so many of its pieces stay separated throughout the entire movie. It operates, of course, on the assumption that you have seen at least a handful of the previous eighteen movies: it doesn’t have any pretensions about being able to stand on its own two legs without the foundations laid by its predecessors. It’s a movie that trusts its audiences, that trusts that we know the characters, that we know their relationships to each other, that we’ve been paying attention and understand what Thanos and the Infinity Stones mean to the universe. Taken in a vacuum, this would make Infinity War hugely messy, but it was never meant to be taken in a vacuum. You could count that as a valid flaw, and symptomatic of how the MCU is changing our movie landscape into a monolith, but you could also sit back and joyously watch ten years’ worth of solid character work pay off.

Infinity War marks perhaps the most obvious point in the MCU where it becomes nigh impossible to gauge a Marvel movie on its own: the MCU has built such a twisting mythos for itself that to judge Infinity War without judging what came before simply can’t work. The MCU has taken on a life of its own, and if you want to know what’s going on in pop culture, what’s making the rounds on Twitter, you’re going to have to sink quite a lot of money and time into the MCU just to catch up. There is a very cynical way to look at this, to view this money-making, independent-film-driving-away-ing, Disney-domination-cementing machine as nothing more than a hollow and artless cash grab, but the genuine glee that arises from pushing all these characters together in new ways and writing them into impossible corners is apparent from the care and love with which everyone is handled.

None of our main heroes get much development in Infinity War, per se, with a few exceptions here and there: Tony gets to yet again undergo extraterrestrial trauma, Thor processes his grief through vengeance, Gamora (and, later, Karen Gillan as Nebula) come face-to-face with the sins of their father. But most other characters, including even Steve Rogers, rely on their previous characterization to power them through this movie—luckily, a decade’s worth of content gives quite a lot to go off.

It’s not only the dense plot that forces these characters to the side, nor is it the sheer number of cast members to juggle (there were 23 character posters, which is insane), though those certainly played their part. It’s also the fact that Thanos is the true main character of Infinity War. In order for these stakes to be felt, and for this six-year buildup starting with The Avengers to pay off, Thanos has to be front and center. While all the rest of our characters get split up, he doggedly powers through with one goal in mind, going through his own hero’s journey. He makes pivotal decisions, he makes personal sacrifices, he is the one thread connecting everything—all the others are merely accessories.

Thanos’ goal comes from seeing his own planet, Titan, wither and die from a lack of resources; he had proposed an “at random, dispassionate, fair to rich and poor alike” culling of half of Titan’s population in order to stave off this destruction. Titan refused, and so it crumbled. Convinced he was right, Thanos then set out to eliminate half of the universe’s population to preserve the other half. “This universe is finite, its resources finite,” he tells Gamora. “If life is left unchecked, life will cease to exist. It needs correction.” This argument was so convincing that it spawned a lot of “Thanos did nothing wrong” memes, though they were mostly ironic; still, Brolin makes us feel something almost approaching sympathy for the big purple grape. Thanos is calm and logical, but he isn’t dispassionate, and he sees himself as a maligned hero honorably sacrificing everything for the rest of the world. Brolin does an absolutely tremendous job with the motion-capture and vocal performance, and he imbues Thanos with a tremendous amount of gravitas that has extended well outside the MCU and into pop culture; it’s thanks in large part to him that Infinity War works as well as it does and hits its emotional beats.

It turns out that the reason Thanos took Gamora was not entirely out of fatherly love; rather, it was because she knows where the Soul Stone is, and she reveals its location on Vormir after Thanos begins torturing her adopted sister Nebula (a nice parallel to the opening where Loki gives up the Tesseract and the accompanying Space Stone after witnessing Thor’s torture at the hands of Thanos). After Thanos and Gamora go to Vormir, Nebula escapes and alerts the Guardians to join her on Titan, and our threads slowly begin to coalesce. 

Unfortunately, not all of these threads are equally engaging. While Thor and Rocket have some of the best interactions in the movie, their plotline seems like a minor sidequest, one that ignores that whole moment in Thor: Ragnarok that establishes how Thor doesn’t need a weapon to go around and wreck shit. Ragnarok has him grappling with and overcoming the loss of his hammer, Mjolnir, before realizing that he is the God of Thunder, not the God of Hammers, but Infinity War has him turn right back around and decide that he needs a weapon. (It also gives him a replacement eyeball, which is easier for both Hemsworth and the VFX team, but negates another Ragnarok development.) The Nidavellir plotline seems to exist only to take Thor away from the action until the most opportune time while still giving him something to do, and the introduction of the giant dwarf Eitri (Peter Dinklage) feels like an unnecessary addition in an already-crowded movie. Sure, Thor gets a cool axe, and it’s Peter Dinklage, but… why? Is it really necessary? Not really.

Luckily, though, the Guardians are here to save the day. They arrive on Titan and immediately cross paths with the Avengers, resulting in some very funny misunderstandings and a lot of very tired, very exasperated looks from Tony as he deals with their insanity. Placing all these characters in new situations and letting their personalities clash organically results gives rise to some excellent humor. The Russo brothers’ previous forays into the Marvel world, Winter Soldier and Civil War, are among the most serious MCU titles (Winter Soldier especially), and Infinity War continues that trend while also, for my money, having some of the funniest scenes in the entire MCU, yet it’s not as quip-laden as many other Marvel movies. Markus and McFeely excel at naturally coaxing the humor out of character interactions, something they also did in Civil War; rather than tacking on a joke at the end of a beat, the funny moments are (by and large) seamlessly baked into the dialogue, advancing the plot, giving character depth, and keeping the audience entertained all in one fell swoop. Plus, it’s just so damn satisfying to watch all your favorites finally interact with each other—provided, of course, that you’re already invested in them, but again, the entirety of Infinity War is predicated on the fact that its audience already cares. If you don’t, then why are you watching? (Highlights: “Why is Gamora?,” “Kick ass, take names,” which is coincidentally my Instagram bio, “That’s on Earth, dipshit,” “What master do I serve? What do you want me to say, Jesus?,” and “Please don’t put your eggs in me!”) 

Elsewhere in space, Thanos and Gamora arrive on Vormir, where they are greeted by a familiar face: the Red Skull (formerly Hugo Weaving, now voiced by Ross Marquand in an uncanny imitation), last seen in Captain America: The First Avenger getting sucked into space by the Space Stone and now guardian of the Soul Stone. It’s a bit random, but a neat way to tie together a loose thread and a fun reappearance from an old villain. Vormir is a desolately beautiful place, a properly somber setting for what’s about to occur: to get the Soul Stone, you must sacrifice something you love. The resultant scene serves to heighten Thanos’ villainy, of course, but also his humanity: the horror at what he’s doing and the sheer willpower it takes to sacrifice Gamora plays out in vivid detail across Thanos’ face, turning the scene into a veritable Greek tragedy. The work that Infinity War puts in to build up Gamora and Thanos’ relationship pays off here, though it has no right to: Gamora has been a main character in the Guardians series, but not one who necessarily evokes much pathos, so to successfully build her up in this movie while balancing so many other characters and make her death truly mean something is no small feat. Saldana continues to grow more comfortable with Gamora, and here she turns in an incredibly impressive performance; combined with Brolin’s anguish, the pair expertly sell their twisted relationship, even though they get saddled with some clunky expositional dialogue in the middle, making it the unlikeliest heart of Infinity War. (Or maybe I’m just predisposed to care too much about these Marvel people, who knows.)

And so, now with four Infinity Stones, Thanos sets out to retrieve the Time Stone from Strange on Titan, and the remaining Black Order members go to Wakanda to get the Mind Stone from Vision’s forehead. The pieces inch ever closer.

The reason for how separate all these pieces are can be found in Civil War. When Steve and Tony broke up, they split the Avengers, and so when a threat like Thanos appears, they can’t band together and stop him. Thanos could divide and conquer because the dividing part was already done for him by the Avengers themselves; without a united front, the chinks in their armor become that much more obvious. See, guys, here are some events in the MCU that actually have ramifications down the line! 

As the climax approaches, we now only have three things (only three, imagine that!) to cut between: Thanos duking it out with the crew on Titan, Thor taking the full force of a star to make his axe, and the Black Order hunting Vision in Wakanda. The fight on Titan is the most interesting of the three plots as it allows Dr. Strange to go ham with his powers and Thanos to utilize the full force of four Infinity Stones, leading to some interesting visuals and downright cool moments; the fight on Wakanda doesn’t have nearly as much going for it, and the enjoyment from that scene comes from simply watching all the different characters’ fighting styles as they face down the Black Order and their unimaginative dog-looking alien things. (Why don’t the Avengers just destroy the Mind Stone and possibly Vision along with it, you ask? “We don’t trade lives,” Steve says, before asking a bunch of Wakandans to trade their lives to defend a synthezoid they have never even met. It’s a good sentiment, Steve, but… you might want to work on your logic a bit there, buddy.) When things seem to be looking dire, Thor arrives in the most triumphant fashion possible and does some very, very cool shit. It is very, very awesome, and the payoff almost makes up for the strange nature of his subplot in this movie. Plus, we get this eloquent exchange between Groot and Steve: “I am Groot,” Groot says as he skewers a bunch of bad guys. “I am Steve Rogers,” Steve says, very politely

Elsewhere on Titan, things seem to be almost looking up, and everyone is working together to restrain Thanos and get the Infinity Gauntlet off, but when Peter Quill learns of Gamora’s death, he discards the plan in favor of trying his best to cave Thanos’ skull in. A lot has been said about this moment and a lot of fingers have been pointed towards Peter as the reason the Avengers lost, and yes, it was a bad move on his part. But it was also completely, 100% in character: Peter is still emotionally stunted from his mother’s death and always incredibly reactive, thinking with his heart instead of his head, so of course he’s going to throw the plan out the window when he hears of the death of the woman he loves. The understandable impulses driving Peter’s actions make it that much more tragic when they allow Thanos to regain control of the Infinity Stones; Peter is, after all, only human (or at least 50% human). Reunited with the Infinity Gauntlet, Thanos handily defeats his foes and stabs Tony with a bit of his own nanotech in a very sudden move that provoked many a gasp in the opening night audience, prompting Dr. Strange to give up the Time Stone. (Tony patches up himself right away, but that scene is the closest I have ever come to having an honest-to-god heart attack.)

From there, Thanos arrives in Wakanda, and with five Infinity Stones in tow, proceeds to completely decimate the remaining Avengers. It’s harrowing to watch when we have become so accustomed to success after success for our heroes (barring Civil War, which had no winners); against Thanos, they’re nothing. Annoying gnats buzzing in his ear. The only one who can put up any fight is Wanda.

Faced with annihilation or the death of one man (robot, android, synthezoid, whatever), the Avengers finally choose the one—or, rather, Vision chooses to sacrifice himself. Alas, the only person able to hurt him is his lady love, and so Wanda gets saddled with the task of killing her boyfriend. Fun! As with Gamora’s (unwilling) sacrifice, this shouldn’t really work, given the limited screentime Wanda and Vision have had, but Olsen and Bettany act the hell out of the scene, a feat made even more impressive when you realize that some of it was improvised. It seems as though, through Wanda and Vision’s sacrifice, crisis was averted.

And then Thanos simply turns back time and takes the Mind Stone out of Vision’s head by force.

But wait! Thor is here to save the day, driving his axe into Thanos’ chest as revenge for everything he has suffered. Our heroes have finally won.

And then Thanos says, “You should have gone for the head,” snaps his fingers, and half the world turns to dust. Thanos vanishes, the music stops, the world stops as we slowly watch some of our favorite characters vanish from sight, disappearing in a puff of ash. If you’ve made it this far in the MCU, if you care in the least about any of these people, this moment should floor you. Indeed, it floored pop culture for quite some time, and you couldn’t move five feet on the internet without bumping into a reference about Thanos’ snap. (There was even a whole subreddit that banned half its community in an attempt to emulate Thanos, attracting the attention of Josh Brolin and Anthony Russo.) 

Peter Parker’s cries of “I don’t wanna go” (also improvised) in particular are gut-wrenching, because for all the ass-kicking he’s been doing over the course of the movie, he’s a 16-year-old kid clinging to his father figure in a desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable. It is incredibly heavy fare for Marvel. “It was the only way,” Dr. Strange tells Tony, but it certainly seems like the end times. Even Steve Rogers can’t think of a rallying cry, as he simply collapses next to Vision’s body and says, “Oh, god.” And Thanos, like he promised earlier, gets to “finally rest and watch the sun rise on a grateful universe.” And so the movie ends with the triumph of the villain.

Of course there’s going to be a sequel, and of course everyone who was snapped away will return, but that knowledge does little to lessen the distress evoked from seeing the utter decimation of the Avengers. Infinity War has some of Marvel’s highest highs (the Guardians meeting everyone else, Thor arriving in Wakanda to much fanfare), but its ending packs a wallop that no other MCU movie has even attempted to. It no doubt has its flaws, but at the end of the day, Infinity War is one of the gutsiest tricks Marvel has ever pulled—there is no reason a movie this crowded, this plot- and MacGuffin-heavy should have worked, and yet it did. It still does, even knowing what comes after. 

Avengers: Infinity War is one very agonizing descent into hell for our favorite characters, an inevitable fall made all the more excruciating because possible wins are presented at every corner before slipping through our heroes’ fingertips. They almost get the Gauntlet off on Titan, and then Quill lets his emotions get the best of him; Vision’s sacrifice seems to make Thanos’ goal impossible before Thanos winds back the clock; Thor’s axe strikes true but his desire to make Thanos suffer before death backfires. And so here we are, and the credits start to roll, and there’s no music playing, and you’re left to rot in the despair left behind in Thanos’ destructive wake. Put simply, there was nothing like Avengers: Infinity War: not because it’s the best movie ever made, or because it’s even the best Marvel movie (though it comes damn close), but because it turns the entire MCU on its head. I don’t think there will be anything like it for quite some time. 

Groundwork and stray observations: Marvel has no big master plan; rather, they plant seeds wherever they can in the hopes that some of them might one day germinate. None of these were planned from day one, lest the whole ship sink, but the seeds germinated nonetheless:

• The post-credits scene shows Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) paging Captain Marvel so we can all get excited about Marvel’s next movie and give them even more money!
• Loki’s death sets the tone for the movie quite well, but some fans were upset that the consummate trickster’s big plan to best Thanos was… stab him with a knife. It was so straightforward a plan that people thought Loki would still be alive, and there were theories that he simply cast an illusion and hid himself among the wreckage and went off elsewhere; while this didn’t come to pass, and Thanos even says, “No resurrections this time” to preempt any “Loki lives” discussions, Richard E. Grant’s Classic Loki in the Disney+ show Loki did exactly what was theorized, probably as a nod to how flimsy OG Loki’s “plan” was.
• There’s a far subtler “girl power” moment here than in Endgame with Wanda, Natasha, and Okoye (Danai Gurira) taking down Proxima Midnight. #girlboss
• On the different side of the #girlboss spectrum, though, is Shuri making a dig at Bruce for not thinking of some science-y technobabble stuff, which isn’t unfunny but shows a lack of imagination: you shouldn’t have to knock others’ intelligence just to make Shuri look smart, she should simply be doing that on her own. (Game of Thrones fell into that trap all. the. time.)
• I find it very funny that while T’Challa and Steve show off their superhuman strength and speed by sprinting out in front of everyone during the Wakandan battle, Bucky, who has that same strength and speed (as evidenced in Civil War’s car chase scene), is perfectly content to lag behind with the normies. He’s too old for this shit.
• The Bruce/Natasha eye contact and Sam muttering, “This is awkward” is the perfect way to move past their misfire of a “relationship.”
• The Russo brothers love to sneak in references to their past work on Community and Arrested Development in their Marvel movies: Community alums cast throughout, the Bluth staircase car in Civil War, and here, a blue man looking suspiciously like the never-nude Tobias Fünke slumped over in one of the Collector’s cases.
• Ebony Maw burning his hand on Dr. Strange’s medallion is a nod to Raiders of the Lost Ark, which I learned because I, like all cool people do, watched the entire movie with commentary one afternoon.
• If Eitri has no use of his hands, how does he pee? How does he do anything, as a matter of fact? How is he still alive? I need answers, Kevin!

Anna’s Favorite Scene: Woof. I have to say, the opening is pretty fantastic, even if it causes me great emotional distress, and Peter’s “I don’t wanna go” kills me every time, but I have to give it to Thor: both his “what more could I lose” scene with Rocket and when he arrives in Wakanda with Stormbreaker are very great scenes for very different reasons.

MCU Ranking: 1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier, 2. Avengers: Infinity War, 3. Captain America: Civil War, 4. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, 5. Thor: Ragnarok, 6. Guardians of the Galaxy, 7. The Avengers, 8. Spider-Man: Homecoming, 9. Captain America: The First Avenger, 10. Iron Man 3, 11. Iron Man, 12. Black Panther, 13. Doctor Strange, 14. Ant-Man, 15. Thor, 16. Avengers: Age of Ultron, 17. Thor: The Dark World, 18. Iron Man 2, 19. The Incredible Hulk

Avengers: Infinity War Trailer

Avengers: Infinity War is currently available to rent and purchase on most digital storefronts, and is streaming on Disney+.

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