Marvel Studios ties it all together in Avengers: Infinity War
It’s hard to believe that Marvel Studios has been building their cinematic universe for ten years now. The year Iron Man debuted Barack Obama was elected president. It was the year the housing market collapsed. The year some banks were labeled too big to fail. A lot can happen in ten years.
In that time, you’d think fatigue would set in. People would reject superhero movies in favor of the next fad. Maybe they did in some respect—the DC cinematic universe continues to flounder, although it could be argued that those films are simply not very good.
There have been other studios that attempted a cinematic universe—Sony, Universal, etc. They didn’t work very well either.
Marvel has done the impossible. They have made ten years of good films, telling individual stories that are interconnected in an overarching way.
With Avengers: Infinity War, that grand arch finally comes to fruition. This final story, which was told through various McGuffins and end-credit sequences over eighteen films, had absolutely no reason to work. In the hands of a different company, it would have fallen on its face.
Instead, Marvel has done something remarkable. Its slow and steady universe building has paid off, not just financially, but in narrative and audience satisfaction. Marvel told a ten-year story. If you’ve kept up with it, there is quite a reward waiting.
The capstone of 2012’s The Avengers revealed a new villain in the far reaches of space. It was the first glimpse movie audiences got of Thanos (Josh Brolin), the Mad Titan, master of the Infinity Stones. Comic book fans, of course, know the story of the Infinity Gauntlet from the comic book event in the 1990s. The ending of Avengers: Infinity War was spoiled almost thirty years ago, although the details are quite different.
As far as the MCU is concerned, however, Thanos and his quest to eliminate half of all life in the universe is brand new. Avengers: Infinity War is likely mistitled—this is a Thanos movie. While audiences know and love the heroes after having spent a decade with them, they have never really been worried about their well-being.
Marvel has created a bubble of safety surrounding their top stars. Avengers: Infinity War pops that bubble. For once, they are faced with a villain with an agenda, with clear goals and motivations, who genuinely believes in the correctness of his mission, and who is vastly more powerful than anyone else.
And because Marvel Studios did the work of establishing their heroes over the course of a decade, they can devote Avengers: Infinity War to developing the villain.
Villains have long been the problem with Marvel films. Loki aside, most fans of the series would have a hard time naming the bad guys from the eighteen films. They were there to attempt to seize power and be thwarted by our heroes. Thanos doesn’t have this problem. He doesn’t want power. He wants balance for what he sees to be the greater good.
Avengers: Infinity War is almost all set pieces populated by Marvel tent pole characters trying to come to terms with how outmatched they are. It’s perfect for creating tension. The film moves methodically from place to place, never wasting a moment, putting the final pieces into play.
From a narrative and screenwriting standpoint, this film is a masterpiece. The only negatives I could find were occasional issues with the CGI. But so much is happening and the stakes are so high that small visual problems are forgotten quickly.
What does this mean for future Marvel movies? Audiences will have to wait a year to find out. Avengers: Infinity War was filmed at the same time as its yet-to-be-named sequel. And the films will continue afterwards. There’s money to be made, after all.
But I’m not sure Marvel will be able to top this story after it is all said and done. The new phase might lose the audience once the old guard is finally changed out. But then, I never expected it to last this long. We’re truly in new filmmaking territory. I can say this definitively though: Avengers: Infinity War is worth the price of admission, as long as you’ve paid that price eighteen previous times.
Don’t miss it in the theaters.