You can call Marvel's Avengers: Infinity Warthe "most ambitious crossover event in history" — and it might as well think it is. But there's something about it that feels a bit ... familiar.
Sure, Infinity War is going to make a ton of money opening weekend. It's going to be talked about, and talked about, and talked about. Rightly so: It's the culmination of Marvel's entire Cinematic Universe, a world that has far reaching roots and references and callbacks in not only each one of its movies (18 different films in 10 years, if you're counting), but nearly every bit of popular culture.
SEE ALSO:So, who's going to die in 'Avengers: Infinity War'?This film is the product of 10 years of exposition, and that should beexciting. We've not only waited 10 years to get to this point, we've invested hour after hour, watching movie after movie, poring over frame after frame of Robert Downey Jr. sporting rose-tinted Ray-Bans in the backseat of a limo to get here. And the payoff is this: a two-hour, 29-minute epic jam-packed with every superpowered human, alien, and Groot you can imagine.
Admittedly, there once was a point in which it was exciting to me, too. But that was in a world before Ryan Coogler imagined Wakanda, Taika Waititi set Asgard ablaze, and Peter Parker moved to Queens. Now, all of that makes the idea behindInfinity Warfeel nothing more than antiquated.
Squad up.Credit: Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel StudioSWe've seen this. We've done it before. Twice. (Three times if you count Captain America: Civil War.) The Avengerswas markedly better than Age of Ultron, and there's something to be said about the difference between the two. Even if you want to discount the comparison in the name of scale (remember the days when the Avengers were like only 6 people?), the originalAvengersmovie soared in being the first movie of its kind. At the time, it was funny, fresh and new.
But since then, we've had 12 different films – a whole 25 hours and 55 minutes of self-referential story with each character jumping in and out of each other's films so often that it's almost hard to keep track which hero each movie is about. That's not even including the countless TV shows and miniseries that rule streaming. All of it has faded the novelty of seeing all these heroes cross paths, to the point that the idea has become more tired than ambitious.
And what makes all of it so frustrating is that Marvel has proven superhero movies can be so much more than just a bunch of people in capes punching Chitauri. Consider Marvel's last three: Spider-Man: Homecoming(2017), Thor: Ragnarok(2017), and Black Panther(2018). These films rode their way to critical acclaim and lucrative runs at the box office off of fresh takes of your standard hero vs. villain plots.
Spider-Manused wit and charm to reinvent a story told numerous times before as a teenage drama. Thortook a forgotten character and revived him in an '80s-themed comedy in space, peppered with just enough Jeff Goldblum and Tessa Thompson to make it feel as if it were created for adults. Black Panther was, well, Black Panther.
The same thing could be said about DC's Wonder Woman, or Logan, or Marvel's Netflix series Jessica Jones, or even Luke Cage. The list goes on and on and on. The superhero cinematic catalog has become so vast, so giant, so prevalent that it's evolved past worlds we visit to escape into ones we can rely on to tell us things about our own. After all, being a genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist can only go so far.
All of which makes Infinity Warfeel like a devolution of the modern-day "superhero" film, even if it's being billed as the opposite. It's the best version of the kind of film it is: a giant pile of bulging biceps, high-tech suits, and shields thrown together against some bulking, cartoonish-looking CGI-produced villain. But that kind of film feels so old when you're comparing it to the movies of late.
Look, Infinity Wardoesn't need to be War and Peace. Nor does it need to be a film in which Thanos sits atop his throne to preach about the geopolitical impact of mining conflict-free Infinity Stones. But Marvel's propping up this film as its most ambitious film to date, and its sole defining characteristic is that it will unite a team of superheroes on one screen to fight a villain. That idea just isn't as fresh as it used to be, regardless of scale.
That being said, I'll be right there come opening weekend. And maybe that's the problem.
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