Avengers: Infinity War
Directed By Anthony Russo And Joe Russo
It has been announced for some time: Avengers: Infinity War, ambitious gathering of almost all the super-characters appeared in " the Marvel film universe " in front of a common enemy touched since several episodes, would reach dramatic peaks of a unprecedented height in the franchise (cosmic threat, dead superheroes).
Upon arrival, only one of the dramatic peaks of the film will have kept that promise.
Problem: these are the last minutes - moreover, the film ends on what is certainly his most beautiful shot: the face of the formidable antagonist Thanos, bathed in an unreal light and crossed by a vague and enigmatic smile (I do not want to deviate much here: it is official that this "war of Infinity" will continue in a later episode).
Why so funny?
To arrive at this acme, it was necessary, alas, to pass by more than one hundred and forty minutes of a narration with the intensity and stakes systematically restrained by a familiar industrial method but here particularly cumbersome. We're talking about this "Marvel touch" that has been proven since Iron Man , which consists in permanently maintaining the connection of the public to the characters by never separating - or never from too far - the seriousness and the humor, whether in the interactions between super -heroes or in the middle of their exploits.
However, by following the multiplication of characters, points of view and actions, the recipe's systematism becomes a real shot: the smallest emergency scene cannot do without a good word, a comic collision, a a conversation bogged down, as if the seriousness of the situation should not be allowed to prevail at any price.
One example among others: Thor must put his life in danger to restart what must allow him to build a new weapon; an acolyte objects to him "it will kill you! To which he retorts with his superb custom "only if I die!" "- moment that would be dramatically remarkable if the other, at that time, did not feel obliged by the dialogues of Marvel to answer with a comically sorry air something like" yes ... it is the principle ... "And everything is in order, so that until the cataclysmic end, it is almost impossible to take seriously what goes through the characters and the seriousness of what they face, while the very status of the film (that of "The final confrontation") would call for revising at least a little reassuring and purring dosage.
Poor soap opera
Avengers: Infinity War naturally has everything of a soap opera, like the series of comics from which it is drawn. But it is a soap opera whose pages and chapters seem to turn too fast, so much it takes care to linger as fleetingly as possible on most of its adventures, or only the time of digressive exchange of valves, while a montage in automatic mode chained the sequences without worrying about any question of urgency or suspense. High time or low time, everything is worth, so nothing stands out.
Even a potentially tragic emotional revelation, that of Thanos's paternal love for his adopted daughter Gamora, which he has only exploited for his own purposes, is being shipped as one scenario element among others. However, we remember this scene because it is the only one where reproduces a feeling by which the best Marvel films seduce: that of discovering a new plot of a character (Thanos will remain the most intriguing of the lot, despite some facilities writing).
Because the poverty of the soap operaAvengers: Infinity War is also due to the fact that almost none of his characters arouses more than a polite interest: all known, more or less widely explored previously in the franchise, their problem is that they have their place in this story only for what we already know about them, that their interactions and mental traits do not teach us anything more, and that we will never be able to let this pre-established gaze evolve on these heroes whose various singularities do not seem, in the unifying context of this film, to really have any more importance.
Where are the superheroes of yesteryear?
Hence the ultimate and scary doubt left by the neutralizing dosage that handicaps this eighteenth product - in ten years - of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: if Marvel Studios continues to distribute super heroic figures, would it not have lost in way the meaning of what defines the best heroes of fiction, what sets them apart from ordinary mortals, what makes their value but also their cross?
We remember Iron Man 2 and 3 , where the same humor was implemented as the mask of fragility (we think of Tony Stark falling into his escapades while death was gnawing him from the inside out ). Outside the MCU, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man had found a nice balance where campy lightness would never hinder the credibility of what moved the characters. And we do not forget Christopher Nolan's Batman, who not only did not laugh a lot (which some of his enemies could sneer at ), but did not compromise when he had to go to the breakout .
These are movies that are at least an awareness of the price of heroism, even - and even more so - for superheroes , a consciousness that Marvel Studios seems to have decided to write off with Avengers: Infinity War, at the expense of its flavor. The franchise has already experienced fluctuations in interest; it would be presumptuous to condemn her future by the yardstick of such a weakness, and one would like to believe that she is still capable of producing some small miracles in her next deliveries. Nevertheless, this great farandole, whose programming will have sacrificed the incarnation, will have exhibited the limits of the Marvel method more cruelly than ever before.
THANKS FOR READING You can check out my previous review on Black Panther