Marvel’s Infinity War is rather aptly named. When they first said that there would be more than 50 characters from films gone by, I think the general reaction was that the film would be cluttered and unwatchable. If Justice League struggled to make six characters function in a single story line, more than 50 would be ridiculous.

Infinity War is the climax of a decade of marvel studio films. When they revealed that they were building towards the first Avengers movie it seemed that that would be cluttered. However, with most characters being introduced in stand-alone films, by the time you got to the ensemble picture you already knew their stories and as such it was able to focus on one central narrative and use the different characters to broaden the depth of the film. Infinity war attempts to do the same things on a much larger scale. Whereas the first Avengers was the culmination of five films, Infinity war is the culmination of eighteen.

The plot is as you would imagine: Thanos, the bad guy that’s been slowly introduced since the first avengers film (six years ago!) is now ready to enact his plan for universal domination and the marvel universe of heroes must unite to stop him. This slow introduction of the films central story over previous films is actually one of its strongest choices. While not quite infinite, it can’t be argued that the film isn’t huge in its scale. If they had had to fully explain all characters motives and stories in depth while also introducing a narrative and a villain they would have been saddled with the mess that many fans expected (a problem that the DC universe ran into head first).

None of this is to say that the film doesn’t have problems. I can imagine it being an average watch if you’ve never seen any of its preceding films, but I suppose that’s not the idea with a universe of this scale. I think there were times where it felt like it jumped between story lines awkwardly and certainly points at which proverbial punches were pulled by characters with insane power levels, but to be quite honest it was so enjoyable that you don’t really mind a lot of these small issues.

The set pieces are immense and manage to give each character involved their own moments to shine, the comedy is threaded through each scene in classic Marvel fashion without being too intrusive, but what was most surprising was the small attempts to offer depth to characters in a film so tightly choreographed and the fact that they didn’t seem to stunt its pace.

Infinity war sits on a scale of watchable to great, depending on your interest in Marvel’s cinematic universe. So while for some it’s a three for others it will rightly be a five.

If you are interested in Avengers: Infinity War then you'll love our collection Endless Apocalypse Stories!

Links

• You can pick up Endless Apocalypse, part of out Gothic Fantasy series here.
• Click here for a video looking the development of the marvel universe over the past decade.
• For an interview with the cast about what they "stole" from the set, click here.