A Better Title Might've Been "Avengers: Infinity WOW!!!"

Yes, yes, I’m writing an essay about this one - because you just KNEW I would.  It might not really be terribly necessary, as every single human being on the North American continent will see it (at least once), as will large percentages of the human race on all the other continents… and possibly some of those Emperor penguins in the Antarctic as well.  This may not be a “review,” per se, as I loved it, and you knew I would, so you really didn’t come here wondering what my opinion would be. I suppose the only way to honestly convey my take on it is to not even attempt to summarize it in a way you non-nerd readers out there can follow, but instead just tell you how this two hour-thirty minute, seventy-something character visual explosion affected me.

All of that being said, I find writing this more difficult than you might imagine.  I first saw Avengers: Infinity War three days ago, then again the following day, and have struggled trying to start this piece.  “How can it be so hard???” you may ask. Well, I’ll tell you. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU, for short) has been a dream-come-true for those such as myself who grew up having these stories and characters become as important to us as daytime soap operas were to our mothers.  It’s a shared continuity featuring a varied cast of fascinating and colourful characters played by excellent actors starring in stories that have been adapted by talented filmmakers who actually respect the material. It’s something from our formative years that society has allowed us geeks to continue to enjoy as we hit our Golden Years without having to feel ashamed of it.

There are other film franchises out there that have been around longer and produced more films that this one, but none that has been as effective at stringing together a connective narrative throughout ALL of its entries and building to a dramatic conclusion like this one.  It has steadily been growing over the years by adding different characters and elements organically to create more depth as it goes. Avengers: Infinity War is the culmination of all the work that went into building a universe by having it pay off in the biggest team-up movie ever made.

While this movie is one of those rare instances of a piece of incredibly over-publicized and over-hyped entertainment actually living up to said hype (and possibly even exceeding it), there’s never really been a film like it.  It’s not a standalone movie. It’s also not a direct sequel to anything. Do you need to have seen all eighteen of the other Marvel films to enjoy it? Will you be completely lost with so many characters flying/jumping about? Is more than two and half hours of all this going to feel like cinematic excess?  The answer to all of these questions is Yes… and No.

While I’m sure there are spoilers about the plot and its surprises out and about in mass media by now, I won’t be one to add to them.  Disney’s marketing people did a superb job of producing trailers and other TV/internet video spots that haven’t given away much of anything - and in some cases have even lied about certain elements.  The broadest stroke of plot-summary is that all these Infinity Stones that have been constantly popping up in the narrative of so many of these MCU flicks are finally being brought together to threaten the entire universe.  The Mad Monster from the planet Titan, Thanos (Josh Brolin, beneath a whole-heap of computer-generated imagery) is gathering them with the intent of killing trillions of beings, and all of our scattered, various heroes must unite to stop him.  Pretty simple.

One of the most surprising things to me about Avengers: Infinity War is that it is very much the villain’s story.  Thanos is one of the best villains the MCU has yet had. Sure, that’s not saying much (Mickey Rourke’s Whiplash from Iron Man 2… need I say more?), but I do think it accurate to say that we feel his motivation much more than we usually do from other Marvel movie villains.  Brolin’s often understated delivery is an excellent contrast to Thanos’ intimidating stature and immense strength (he did WHAT to the Hulk??? DAMN!!!). While those who have seen Guardians of the Galaxy are aware of his relationship with Gamora (Zoe Saldana), seeing how it began, and how important it actually was to him added an emotional weight to that part of the story that I didn’t really expect.  Thanos’ motivation is clear and simple, and makes sense from a certain point of view. There’s definite method to his madness, and time is taken to give him the depth required for a villain that has teased since 2012.

None of this comes at the expense of the heroes, though the film doesn’t spend any time introducing them to an audience that might be unfamiliar with them.  While no one hero has much of a chance to outshine any other (well, maybe Chris Hemsworth’s Thor has one or two more rays of light than the others…), this is a team-up, after all, so all of them are equally served by the screenplay, and all of them FEEL just like we’d expect them to after coming to know them in their own films.  It’s the characters that keep people coming back to this franchise, and this movie never loses sight of that. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo (the guys who also made the last two Captain America films) seem to assume audiences have at least a basic idea of who these people are, and can accept those characters' contributions to the story.  If audiences can meet those two expectations, then they will be tremendously entertained by the interplay between several vastly different characters whom we would never otherwise get to see interact and hear speak to each other in some pretty hilarious ways.

Infinity War uses every minute of its two and a half hour run time, and I can’t for the life of me think of anything that didn’t need to be there.  I was prepared for one of those struggles that only we middle-aged men with ever-smaller bladders have to face, but that didn’t happen. Despite large segments of dialogue, the action seemingly never stops until the abrupt, cliffhanger ending.  Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (all three Captain America flicks, among other things) have managed to craft a film story effectively utilizing more characters that normally appear in several movies, and given them all useful actions and witty things to say, a feat that may be studied in screenwriting classes for years to come.  Sure, it’s not Shakespeare, but the Bard never had to write a play for seventy-five characters.

The only disappointment from Avengers: Infinity War is knowing that you’ll have to wait until next year’s Avengers 4 (yet-to-be subtitled) to find out how it all ends.  If you can forgive that, and you dig superhero movies in general, then you may find Infinity War to be the perfect movie. Well, not Citizen Kane or Lawrence of Arabia kind of perfection, but you get my drift…

Dancin' thru "Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2"

Ah, the Curse of the Sequel - we all love the first (insert the franchise movie of your choice here), and because of that love, we all froth at the mouth in anticipation of the follow-up, then see it and either complain that it was either too much or not enough like the first one, and leave the theater in a snit.  Yes, Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 is just as susceptible to this totally irrational judgment as whatever franchise you chose to insert above.  It possibly doesn’t have the same sheen of newness as its predecessor.  You may possibly find that it meanders a bit in the second act.  One could possibly observe that its climax revolves around yet another universe-shattering menace. I personally wouldn’t make such judgments myself about this movie, though.

The movie opens on a planet where our heroes await the arrival of an inter-dimensional monster they have been hired to dispatch. The ensuing chaos that follows the beast’s appearance plays behind the opening credits in what was probably intended to be a harkening to one of the fan-favorite moments from the closing of the first film, with more 70s-era pop tunes blaring away and CGI-cuteness shoved in our face, but I thought it was a bit too much “fan service” and went on a tad too long.  However, my gripes about the movie pretty much ended right there.

I didn’t find this to be a mere copy of the first film, as it embraces a completely different structure, something that brings with it positives and negatives.  While the first movie was a fast-moving caper movie, with various parties after the powerful Orb of which the Guardians had taken hold, Vol. 2 takes the time to build up its plot more naturally. As such, the first half of the movie, while still enjoyable, doesn’t have much in the way of forward momentum. Rest assured, though, things coalesce in the second half to form a stronger movie with a much more emotional climax than I would’ve imagined we’d get at the start.

There’s so much to enjoy throughout the rest of the film, starting with Kurt Russell being Ego, a “celestial” being who happens to be Peter Quill’s (Chris Pratt) long-sought father.  Who better to portray the father of the swaggering, cocky Star-Lord than the man who perfected that type of role while Chris Pratt was still in diapers?  I mean, this is Jack Burton!  This is Stuntman Mike!  Any movie Kurt Russell chooses to do MUST be worth seeing!  Forgive the nerd-gasm, Dear Reader, but I think one of the great strengths of the Marvel movies under Disney is that they have been able to successfully draw such top-level talent, in front of as well as behind the camera, to do these movies, getting National Treasures like Snake Plissken… uh, I mean Kurt Russell to play along with them.

“Play” is the operative word when it comes to the Guardians of the Galaxy films, and with this outing, it continues to be the most lighthearted of Marvel’s cinematic efforts (yes, even more so than Ant-Man).  While this means the films don’t have quite the depth of previous films like Captain America: Civil War, there’s still something irresistible about watching a cast have this much fun.  Michael Rooker has to receive special mention, as while his surly Yondu was a secondary character in the first movie, he is elevated to full-star status here, and every minute he is on-screen is just golden.  

Family drama drives most of the story, of which Quill’s parentage is just one example.  As in the first chapter of the Guardians saga, Vol. 2 spends some time ruminating on its characters’ need for a family, whether they want to admit it or not (most of the time it’s not).  Drax (Dave Bautista) is still dealing in his own inimitable way with the death of his wife and children. Rocket (voice by Bradley Cooper) continues to have issues with his communication skills. Gamora and Nebula (Zoe Saldana and Karen Gillan) continue to struggle with their upbringing under Thanos' heel.  Baby Groot needs parental guidance. It’s all dysfunction at its finest.

Of course, this ain’t a Woody Allen film, where we expect gobs and gobs of whining and introspection.  We buy a ticket to a Marvel film for lots of flash-bang, pretty-colored-lights exploding around spandexed and heavily-makeup’ed famous people, and I promise you, folks, you get that in spades here.  The film’s $200 million-dollar price tag is all up there for you to see, and not a penny wasted.  Writer/director James Gunn’s passion for this section of the Marvel Universe is obvious, as we can tell this film was made by someone who cares deeply about the material.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 is not as good as the first film.  That is true. The first film was something incredibly original and caught movie-going audiences by complete surprise.  That is also true (boobie-prize if you get the reference!).  We all have expectations now, and humans tend to be very unforgiving when it comes to having our expectations met.  Do not let that prevent you from seeing Vol. 2.  It is fun, funny, touching and maybe even slightly-"touched," and is a great way to kick off the summer movie season.

"Guardians of the Galaxy" is Out-of-This-World Fun!

Can you imagine some young-buck producer trying to pitch this idea to some big-wig studio boss of yesteryear’s Hollywood?  Eager producer storms into studio head’s office and starts, “Hey, J.B.!  How ‘bout this? We take five characters from comic books that hardly anybody has heard of (only one of ‘em human, by the way, since the others are a green gal, a walking tree, a talking raccoon and an oversized literal-minded wrestler), and run ‘em all through space spitting out rapid-fire dialogue at each other; we fill the soundtrack with a bunch of songs from forty years ago (that most of the kids in the audience won’t have ever heard of), have ‘em fight a villain that wants to destroy everything just because he can, and make the movie’s climax the almost-destruction of a planet that has nothing to do with any of the characters! Whatta ya think, J.B.!?!?”

(studio boss takes long pull on cigar before speaking…) “Kid, get the Hell outta my office!”

Well, thankfully, old Jack Warner or Louis B. Mayer aren’t behind some desk at the Mouse House these days.  Behold the world-devouring behemoth that Marvel Studios has become!  Forget that Disney owns them - the House that Stan Lee Built would be ruling the world right now even without Disney’s might behind it.  Guardians of the Galaxy is without a doubt the most off-beat of all the entries Marvel Studios has created for its Cinematic Universe to date, and if it isn’t the most pure, all-out fun movie they’ve made yet, it’s only surpassed by the original Iron Man.  If ever there was a movie to fit the term “Popcorn movie,” this is it.

Attempting to summarize the plot would serve no purpose other than to create a less-than-stellar impres-sion of the movie, as it boils down to a megalomaniac bad guy who wants to kill everything/everybody want-ing some Orb that contains an Infinity Stone that would help him do exactly that, and lots of disparate characters who at first dislike each other coming together to prevent him from getting it.  It’s not a horribly original idea, but as Shakespeare (or some wise old soul or another) once said, there are only seven or eight really original stories in all of mankind’s history that have ever been told, anyway.  

The Orb, a Hitchcockian “Maguffin” if ever there was one, is never fully ex-plained, other than the Infinity Stone it contains, but who cares?   The beef Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace) has with the Kree Empire over their peace treaty with the planet Xandar (just stay with me, folks) is murky at best, but again, who cares? The involvement of the mad Titan, Thanos (an uncredited and unrecognizable Josh Brolin), gives comic-book nerds like me a big thrill, but the average movie-goer may not feel a surge of nerd-gasm over it. Yet again, who cares??? The movie is fun, folks - I mean really, REALLY fun - and that’s what counts.

Rapid-fire smart-aleck one-liners abound here, as all five of the protagonists are very funny, and in five very different ways.  The wise-ass human thief Peter Quill/ ”Star-Lord” (Chris Pratt) seems to draw all the action to him, and will all-but-certainly begin to melt the tough exterior of the green space-ninja-badass Gamora before film’s end (one could begin to wonder just how many colors Zoe Saldana can play over the course of her movie career - I count three so far).  Sure, the Walking Tree only says three words over and over (“I AM GROOT”, croaked to great effect by Vin Diesel), but the timing of those words, and the actions and facial expressions that accompany those words, are priceless.  A computer-generated talking raccoon named Rocket may strike you as ludicrous, and it may very well be, but it works here, primarily due to Bradley Cooper’s voice-over performance, which would be Oscar-worthy if such a category existed.  All five characters fit a stereotype, yet all five seem to be in on the joke and exploit that knowledge to comedic effect.  One couldn’t ask more of a screenplay.  

Director James Gunn, whose primary claim to fame before now has been the indie horror/comedy Slither (which I have not yet seen, but really want to), has created such a fantastic mood for this mish-mash of science fiction, slapstick comedy and buddy/action movie that I marvel (no pun intended) at Marvel’s foresight in realizing how perfect he would be to bring this concept to the screen.  With so much going on in the script, he finds ways to relate important stuff to the audience in a way that we get it, or at least enough of it to keep us up to speed.  His use of the 70s-era pop tunes that litter the soundtrack is one way he keeps us grounded, and are almost part of the overall joke, as the characters all hear and react to them.  They keep us, the audience, rooted in the unbelievable story, too, reminding us that “Star-Lord” is just a dude from Earth, just like us (well, most of us, anyway).  

Guardians of the Galaxy has some of the same “vibe” that the rest of the Marvel movies do, but in some other hard-to-describe way, doesn’t really feel like a part of the same series.  Maybe because there is no “superhero” for the audience to latch on their attention, the movie feels separated from the Earth-bound flicks we’ve seen so far. Nonetheless, with Thanos as part of the mix, and given his post-credit appearance after the first Avengers film, we know all of these paths will meet at some cinematic point in the future, so we have that to look forward to. In the meantime, we have this movie, very possibly the most fun flick of 2014, to revel in, and thanks be to Nerd Heaven that Disney’s studio bosses these days seem to be a little more open-minded than those of olden days might have been.