The lights were dimmed. My chair was reclined. My Raisinets were at the ready. I was prepared for the greatest Marvel movie of all time. I don’t normally watch high profile movies the weekend they come out, but I decided to ignore the noise of everyone else and let myself get sucked into the movie.
I could already feel myself grinning a little bit when that epic Marvel intro came on the screen. I was excited to see some superheroes that hadn’t been seen in a while, as well as some that I had felt hadn’t gotten enough screen time. Of course, Benedict Cumberbatch will never have enough screen time in my eyes.
Now, I’ve always been a sucker for a good story and I willingly get overemotional when it comes to them, but the beginning of Infinity Wars was somewhat of a letdown. I’m sorry, but killing off Loki five minutes in? Not a fan. And to me his death wasn’t even that emotional, although I had grown to love Loki throughout the Marvel movies. But I’ll admit this was the only part I really had a rational problem with. The irrational problems I will get to later.
First of all, I want to say that my favorite lines in the whole movie were the ones where Tony Stark and Peter Parker kept calling Dr. Strange a wizard. I thought it was absolutely hilarious and I’ve always been a fan of their banter. Second, I thought it was a really nice touch not having the Hulk destroy everything in sight and have him fix all of the Avengers’ problems. Not only did it provide fun dialogue between Bruce Banner and the Hulk, but it was a nice breather from everyone relying on Hulk to do all the work. This might just be me, but it was also refreshing to see the Hulk get his butt handed to him by Thanos That’s when I knew that things were getting serious and everything was fair game. (I’m going to go on a little writer’s tangent here, but that should have been evident when Loki died because he was a main character and Marvel doesn’t normally do that. So, when we lose most of our other main characters at the end of the movie, Loki dying should have set that up, not Hulk’s reclusiveness. But that’s all the complaining I’m going to do today.)
There are so many great things about this movie, and there was one that might not have made everyone feel great on the inside but did wonders in it’s storytelling. It was the moment when Thanos threw Gamora off the cliff in order to get the Soul Stone. The scene where we see Gamora sprawled on the ground at the bottom of the cliff made the theater go completely silent. You couldn’t even hear a sniffle. I might not have loved Marvel for killing off one of my favorite characters, but I loved that feeling they gave us. Making the room go silent is the mark of great storytelling after all.
I can’t leave without talking about that last battle scene. It was filled with loads of drama and just the right amount of comic relief that I didn’t have a heart attack from all the anticipation. I’m a little disappointed that Captain America replaced his shield with that pointy
black one, but he looked fantastic either way, so I’m not completely heartbroken. And we of course need to talk about that moment that Thor catapults into the fight because holy crap he looked so badass. It was in that scene that I thought all hope was lost, but when he arrived, I smiled because everything was going to be okay. At least until the end when everything isn’t.
Now, I heard a rumor that Marvel claims all deaths in the movie are final, especially since they conveniently didn’t randomly select many of the original Avengers to be wiped off the face of the planet, but I’m keeping my hopes up. I refuse to accept that Dr. Strange will not come back because I don’t want to think about the very real possibility that he will stay gone. Also, Marvel just started making Spiderman movies, so I’m going to take that as a positive sign that they’re all coming back. Anything to keep my irrational hopes up