The highly anticipatedy Avengers – Infinity War opened at Village Theatre Thursday Apr. 26 to a long line of eager movie-goers. This was the first time an Avengers movie brought together so many of their characters into one film, all with one purpose – to stop Thanos from wiping out half the population of the universe.
Marvel did an impressive job of seamlessly integrating the various characters into one action-packed film. While I wasn’t familiar with all of the Marvel heroes and villains, I understood enough of their stories to appreciate what they could bring to a fight. I would recommend seeing Black Panther prior to watching this movie to understand the background story for him, but aside from that character you could be a super hero novice and still quickly get up to speed on who they are and what abilities they have. I thought it might be difficult for the writers to take such different super heroes and have them work together, merging their powers for one common purpose, but Marvel made it work well.
Leaving the film feeling conflicted, I believe this is the most difficult movie review I’ve had to write thus far. Heart pumping action, humor, joy, sadness, shock and devastation kept me enthralled throughout the movie, but questionable judgement and some confusing plot twists left me disappointed in the end. I took my son, who was really excited for the movie and he said, “I thought it was terrible, a waste of 2 1/2 hours of my day;” he went on to say, “But I guess I did like how they brought in all the characters, it was cool to watch them all in the same movie.” So as you can see, he was conflicted as well.
My brother Mike said, “They brought together the characters from the various Marvel movies in a humorous way. It was good with some surprising twists in the story. It left me knowing, or at least hoping for the next one, to get the answers to several questions it left me with.”
Parents should know that there are some really heavy themes and violent scenes that had me questioning my decision to bring my son. There were a lot of scenes during the film I found myself covering his eyes, and the primary theme of Thanos wanting to kill off half the population of the universe was a bit much for kids under 13 in my opinion.
Movie times: click here
Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Directors: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Actors: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson
Rating: Rated PG-13 for intense violence.
