For ten years and nineteen films, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has all been building towards this. The question is, can Avengers: Infinity War possibly live up to the weight of those expectations? The answer, thankfully, is a resounding ‘yes’.

Premise: Picking up immediately after the post-credit scene in Thor: Ragnarok, Thanos (Josh Brolin) is on the warpath to gather the six infinity stones that are scattered across the galaxy. It will take the combined might of all the heroes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to stop him.

Review:

It really is difficult to understate what an achievement this is. Back in 2008, Marvel Studios was an unproven film production company looking to produce its first ever self-financed film. But having sold the movie rights to all of its biggest characters – including Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four – Marvel Studios only had its “B-list” characters left, a bunch of comic book characters that most cinemagoers hadn’t even heard of. And when it was announced that they had cast ex-con and recovering drug addict Robert Downey Jr. to play the little known superhero in Iron Man … well, let’s just say the big Hollywood studios weren’t exactly quaking in their boots.

Fast forward ten years, and Marvel Studios (the little studio that could) has produced five of the top twenty highest grossing films of all time. Not only that, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe is an endeavour unlike anything that has ever been attempted before – a complex series of interconnected films, all sharing the same continuity, with characters crossing over, back and forth, across the films. The Bond franchise may have made more films, but there’s no real continuity across all 24 films and it took them over fifty years.

“…the crossover to end all crossovers…”

Avengers: Infinity War really feels like the culmination of the first ten years of the MCU. Whereas 2012’s Avengers Assemble brought together the four “founding” members of the MCU – Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Captain America (Chris Evans) – and teamed them up with SHIELD operatives Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), Infinity War quite simply blows the lid off the crossover box. From the outer reaches of space with the Guardians of the Galaxy (Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Pom Klementieff, Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel), to the MCU’s newest members Spider-Man (Tom Holland), Doctor Stranger (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), Infinity War brings everyone together for the crossover to end all crossovers.

So the big question I had going into this film was, could the filmmakers balance the screen time properly between so many main characters (around 23, by my count)? Even the excellent Avengers: Age of Ultron struggled in this regard, and that didn’t have nearly as many characters to service.

“…every character makes the most out of every moment of screen time…”

But the advantage that Infinity War has over Age of Ultron is that it doesn’t really have to introduce any “new” characters, so it can just hit the ground running. It assumes that, if you’re watching the 19th film in the series, you’ve watched most/all of the others and you pretty much know who’s who and what’s what. So it jumps straight into the plot, without wasting any precious screen time on explaining anyone’s backstories or histories. It can only do this because of the meticulous groundwork laid by the previous 18 films, so that every character can make the most out of every moment of screen time they have in Infinity War. This is the benefit of the MCU not having tried to run before it can walk, something that other franchises could certainly learn from.

I want to say as little as possible about the actual plot of Infinity War, as it’s such an enjoyable rollercoaster ride of a movie when you don’t know where it’s going. Suffice to say that, as established in previous films, Thanos (Josh Brolin) is on a mission to gather the six powerful infinity stones, which will give him the ability to reshape the universe as he wishes. One of the surprises in this film for me was how well fleshed out Thanos, and his motivations, were – he’s definitely at the Loki, Killmonger and Vulture end of the Marvel villain spectrum, rather than the Malekith and Ronan end.

“…as good as you dared dream it might be…”

The way in which the writers (Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely) and directors (Anthony and Joe Russo) have balanced the tones in this movie is incredible. The dramatic scenes are incredibly intense, and this is without a doubt the MCU film that has the most palpable sense of jeopardy and danger. Right from the off, it’s made clear that neither Thanos nor the film itself are pulling any punches – and there is a genuine sense of dread throughout the film that any character could potentially meet their end at any point. Yet at the same time, the movie has countless laugh out loud moments – the scene where Peter Quill meets Thor, for example, had the cinema in stitches when I saw it. The way that the film is able to flip-flop back and forth between nail-biting apocalyptic danger and tension-relieving humour is incredible.

It’s not a spoiler to say that this film was originally announced as being called “Infinity War – Part One”, and although they later renamed it to simply Infinity War (and changed “Infinity War – Part Two” to the currently unnamed Avengers 4), you shouldn’t necessarily expect this to all be tied up neatly by the end credits. In many ways, this film feels like it might be the MCU’s The Empire Strikes Back, as it’s darker than what came before, it packs several emotional punches, it really feels like it ups the ante, and it leaves you counting down the days until the next instalment is released…

If you’ve followed the MCU this far, of course you’re going to watch Infinity War – but what’s such a relief is that it is a genuinely fantastic film, that does the impossible by actually being as good as you dared dream it might be.