The Column
Motto: Balance to the Universe
I’ve been unable to write this column for the past 50 hours since I watched Avengers: Infinity War for the first time. My brain has been trying to comprehend how incredible everything about this movie (and by extension, the franchise as a whole) is. In writing this, I hope to be able to move on a bit to what’s next.
Marvel’s Cinematic Universe is the single most impressive thing that’s ever been done in movies. Sure movies like “Citizen Kane” are better movies - but that’s not as impressive to me as making 19 blockbuster hits in a row over the course of 10 years. 19 consistently good-at-worst movies that tell a compelling continuous story, while being entertaining on their own. If you ask people what the greatest franchise of all time is - they’ll probably say Star Wars, James Bond, J.R.R Tolkien’s Middle Earth movies, or Harry Potter… but Marvel so clearly deserves to be at the top of that list. Star Wars is 9 movies over the course of 40 years - only 5-6 of which were good. James Bond was 24 movies over 57 years, about half of which have been good. The Middle Earth Harry Potter was 3 good movies then 1 good movie split out into 3 terrible ones. Harry Potter was pretty good, I suppose.
I’m not going to go on and on about this - but what Marvel has done with this franchise was the most impressive thing I’ve seen any company do in my lifetime. I am lucky to live in the era that I do. (Although being born in 2000 would have been cool. It would have been more acceptable for me to love these movies as much as I do, I’d be the same age as Spider-Man, and I’d have had a tablet to play with as a kid instead of an OG Gameboy.)
Avengers: Infinity War is not the end of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s not the capstone that sits atop the arch. That will come in a year with the release of the (as of now) untitled sequel followup to Infinity War. At that point, the universe won’t be over… but it won’t be what it is now. It will have to hit reset in some form or another. At that time I’ll re-evaluate how much I want to retain my fandom going forward. Until that day, a Marvel Movie fan I will remain.
AND AS a Marvel movie fan - Avengers Infinity War was positively astounding. As a person - it was the best movie-going experience of my life - topping an experience I had previously written off as being “untoppable” when I watched The Avengers back in 2012.
Infinity War is a movie that’s never been possible before. No other movie has had so much context set up for it… and literally 6+ years of hype built up. All of these disparate elements coming together - having 50+ characters that you already know and care about coming together, developing, meeting each other, working together to a common goal.
This movie showcased 30 characters, paid homage to at least a dozen previous movies, and introduced a new bad guy whose immediately got to be included in every “best bad guys of all time” conversation from this point forward:
Not to mention - Infinity War did all this while being funny, action-packed, emotional, and just downright entertaining. I’ve never been so thoroughly on the edge of my seat for 2 1/2 hours before. Never before have I seen a movie that felt so important. Only twice before have I ever felt so at awe about something I was watching - and both of those times took place in this same franchise. Never did I think that they’d be able to pull everything off thus far and have it all be so good.
I don’t want to talk it up too much. I don’t want to talk spoilers. I just wanted to say holy cow what a story thus far.
Now I just hope they don’t trip over the finish line.
Top 19: MCU Movies, Ranked
19. Thor: The Dark World
18. Iron Man 3
17. Iron Man 2
16. The Incredible Hulk
15. Doctor Strange
14. Thor
13. Ant Man - I love this movie, and the fact that there’s a dozen above it in my mind is astounding
12. Captain America: The First Avengers
11. Avengers: Age of Ultron
10. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
9. Iron Man
8. Black Panther
7. Guardians of the Galaxy - again, how could this be not in the top 5? BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY GREAT ONES
6. The Avengers
5. Spider-Man: Homecoming
4. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
3. Thor: Ragnarok
2. Captain America: Civil War
1. Avengers: Infinity War
Quote:
“How is it that a movie I’ve been looking forward to for 10 years wound up being in no way disappointing?”
- Me. walking out of the theater (I said something like this, but less-well worded) -