Faiz Elahi
Maybe it was because I knew too little about film then, or because I was just twenty, but I’d never felt as excited for ANYTHING as I was for Avengers: Infinity War (2018). Have I felt excited about other movies since? Yes, but I would give anything to anticipate something like I anticipated this film. Six years later, I worry I’ve become cynical: I’ve become disillusioned with the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). I think I demand too much from movies because I developed this pretentious thing called “taste.” Still, the prospect of seeing Hugh Jackman play the Wolverine again should’ve excited me, a person whose personality was once defined by superhero films.
The first time I saw the trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine during previews in the cinema, I felt nothing. I rolled my eyes so far back at that dumb pegging joke. I didn’t care that Hugh was finally in yellow spandex. This movie was promoted to death, and none of it stirred anything in me. To examine this new apathy I felt towards the MCU, I decided to rewatch Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019), the two MCU films that hyped me like none other.
This essay is Part One of two where I analyze the two films in light of my waning connection with Marvel. Divorced from the hype, not only because my entire identity isn’t defined by this franchise/genre anymore, but because I’ve learned a lot about film in the years since, I came back to these movies with a more critical lens. Concurrently, I’m juggling the dissonant recollection of the significant emotional experiences I had with these films. These two essays are the result of my rewatch. Over these two essays, I argue that Infinity War is a superior, more focused screenplay compared to Endgame, which I situate as the originating artifact of Marvel’s inconsistent quality since 2019.
“The hardest choices require the strongest wills”
In its first act, Infinity War introduces most of the 22 heroes that received promotional posters, specifically Thor, Tony Stark aka Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Vision, Wanda Maximoff aka Scarlett Witch, and Gamora. It also details the goals of the villain, the Mad Titan Thanos, and his four “children,” the Black Order. Infinity War has the monumental task of coherently introducing and then grouping around 30 characters. It then branches them out into diverging threads that converge at later points in the film.
Despite this juggling act, Infinity War is a miraculously coherent, thematically focused, and character-driven story. This is because screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely frame this narrative through its villain, Thanos, rather than the many Avengers. Although his screen time does not dwarf the other prevalent Avengers in Thor, Tony, and Gamora, Thanos is this movie’s pseudo-protagonist. Infinity War is the story of Thanos, the one who intends to bring “salvation” to a “dying” universe. His quest is to collect the six Infinity Stones that will grant him the power to bring this salvation. He faces physical and philosophical resistance from the entire universe—he’s called a “madman”—but he is indomitable, more committed and driven than the Avengers, which is why he will defeat them. The Infinity Stones serve as signposts that mark both his dedication to the goal and his ability to master the powers that the Stones grant him. This is a story where the villain out-commits and outsmarts the Earth’s or the universe’s Mightiest Heroes.
By centering Thanos, the film theme becomes the dedication one requires to succeed in their cause. Thanos is defined by his conviction, focus, and resolve, remaining steadfast regardless of the setbacks he endures. The Avengers as a collective fall short in the face of the Mad Titan’s maniacal stoicism. The film’s conflict—between the heroes and Thanos and between the heroes themselves—as well as its dark resolution are dictated by this theme.
The ethical disparity between Thanos and the Avengers is best exemplified by comparing two conversational scenes. The first scene is when the Avengers remaining on Earth— Steve Rogers aka Nomad, Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow, James “Rhodey” Rhodes aka War Machine, Bruce Banner aka Hulk, Vision, and Wanda discuss a strategy to counter Thanos’ surge. Vision suggests that they destroy the Mind Stone in his head, thus preventing Thanos from completing the set. However, the Avengers refuse such a drastic course of action. Vision implores Wanda, both his lover and the person powerful enough to destroy the stone, to sacrifice him. But Wanda says that killing him to stop this threat is too “high a price.” Vision responds, “One life cannot stand in the way of defeating” Thanos. Steve interjects, saying that they “don’t trade lives.”
It is a discussion of the cart problem: which track do the Avengers take, the one that runs over one of their own, or one that runs over half the universe? Their fatal flaw is that they have less time than they think to prolong destroying Mind Stone. Thanos is speeding across the universe to collect the Stones. He is a force willing to destroy anything that stands in his way.
The second scene is when Thanos and his adopted daughter Gamora argue over his goals. Thanos has halved entire planets for a long time. Infinity War is the final, decisive series of steps he needs to take to complete his objective. Thanos kills half the living beings on a planet to curb overpopulation in the universe, allowing for the demand of those remaining to match the supply of resources. He brands Gamora’s planet, from which he adopted her after his conquest, a “paradise.” He believes that murdering half the universe will be a “small price to pay for salvation.” No number of bodies would be too many for Thanos. His cart problem has an equal number of bodies on either track. His choice is “dispassionate, but fair,” and he has a grandiose, maniacal objective.
It is this cold, sociopathic calculus that differentiates Thanos from the heroes. However, his conviction isn’t entirely devoid of sentiment and emotion. He demonstrates both his resolve and his stoicism when he has to acquire the Soul Stone. To acquire the stone, Thanos must sacrifice a loved one. Gamora rejoices, taunting Thanos, saying he failed because he’s incapable of love. To sacrifice her, Thanos throws her off a cliff with a tear streaking down his face, ironically proving to Gamora that he can love by ridding himself of his loved one. This level of fortitude is unmatched by anyone in the Avengers. Only Peter Quill aka Star-Lord and Wanda attempt to sacrifice their loved ones to prevent Thanos from acquiring the stones. However, Thanos’ singular focus also facilitates his mastery of the Infinity Stones, thus he’s able to render their attempts void.
The Mechanical Purpose of the Infinity Stones
By using Thanos as the vessel through which the theme of conviction is explored, Markus and McFeely focus this crowded film around his singular quest to collect the Infinity Stones. The rocks are his goal, the film’s narrative. With this focus, Markus and McFeely give the stones a mechanical purpose in Infinity War. They smartly render the glowing rocks as stepping stones to Thanos’ ascension to destructive deity. Moreover, the stones individually serve the story by revealing Thanos’ character, and consequently, that of the Avengers. Each time Thanos inserts an Infinity Stone in his gauntlet, the sequence is accompanied by a striking display of his mastery of the stones. The infinity gauntlet is thus made into a growing arsenal of weapons that Thanos utilizes to escape any situation.
Few examples of how Thanos—and thus Markus, McFeely, and directing team the Russo brothers—smartly apply the stones. Using the Power Stone in his possession, Thanos tortures Thor to force Loki’s hand into giving the Space Stone. He later uses the Reality Stone to turn Star-Lord’s power beams into bubbles when Star-Lord tries to kill Gamora at her behest. He does the same to Gamora’s blade to prevent her from killing herself so he can sacrifice her. Thanos uses one stone to acquire the next, accumulating more power and access to aspects of the universe.
The Mad Titan’s mastery of the stones is best exemplified in his brief encounter with Doctor Strange. First, Strange throws a fiery thunder-like beam, which Thanos dodges and sends his own beam using the Power Stone. Strange counters that by conjuring a large glass structure, which he pushes towards Thanos, who obliterates it into shards using the Power Stone. From the shards, he uses the Space Stone to conjure a black hole which he hurtles towards Strange. Strange counters it by turning the objects surrounding the black hole into butterflies. He then makes several afterimage clones of himself to overwhelm Thanos with numbers, all of whom create energy whips to restrain Thanos. He then uses the Mind Stone and Power Stone in conjunction to locate the real Strange and destroy the clones. Thanos then uses the Space and Reality Stones together to alter the topography and close the distance between them. Finally, he grabs Strange by the neck and chides him for not utilizing his “greatest weapon,” the Time Stone. Once Thanos overpowers the other heroes in this skirmish—Iron Man, Spider-Man, Star-Lord, Mantis, Drax, and Nebula—Strange gives him the Time Stone. Thanos teleports to Earth to collect the remaining Stone, which starts the final sequence of the film.
The Converging Poetry of Infinity War’s Climax
There is poetry in Infinity War’s climax, a convergence of theme and storytelling mechanic. When Thanos arrives on Earth to take the Mind Stone, Avengers try to stop him from reaching Vision. Vision finally convinces Wanda to destroy the Mind Stone. He tells her that they are “out of time,” which they are, literally and figuratively; the Avengers as a collective just lost the Time Stone to Thanos. As Wanda kills her lover, the same orchestral score plays as the one when Thanos sacrifices Gamora, correlating the two acts of sacrifice.
However, it’s too late. Thanos’ singular focus ensured he gathered five (technically four) Infinity Stones faster than the Avengers could muster up the courage to sacrifice one of their own. By the time they finally did, Thanos had acquired the one Stone that allows him to reverse time. When Thanos acknowledges Wanda’s courage, saying he understands, she vehemently disagrees. He responds, “Today, I lost more than you can know. But now is no time to mourn.” He then uses the Time Stone to reverse time around Vision’s corpse to resurrect him and the stone. He extracts the Mind Stone from Vision’s skull, puts it in the gauntlet, and completes the set.
Once he completes the infinity gauntlet and becomes the destructive deity, just after one of the Avengers reminds him of what he endured to get there, he’s simultaneously immobilized and given the opening to complete his quest because one of the Avengers lets his emotions get the better of him.
While the Avengers’ failure to match Thanos’ sociopathic commitment is an implicit failure, two of the Avengers explicitly fumble their tasks to hand Thanos his win. Much has been made of Star-Lord’s meltdown upon learning that Thanos sacrificed Gamora. Because he can’t contain his grief, he ruins the strategy he’d devised with Iron Man, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Mantis, and Drax. Although it’s a frustrating turn of events, Star-Lord’s error is no different from Thor’s mistake.
After Thor sends his axe into Thanos’ chest, the biggest blow the latter has received in the entire film, Thor reminds him of the vengeance he’d promised upon Thanos at the beginning of the film. Having lost his realm, half his subjects, his friend, and his brother, Thor is grieving. He’s on the brink of mental collapse. We understand why he relishes his vengeance; he’s the character with the most screen time after Thanos. We’re rooting for him, because he’s the strongest Avenger, the one with the most rousing entrance of the film. However, Infinity War is about Thanos. It complicates its heroes even further coming off of Captain America: Civil War (2016), exploring through an unstoppable villain the fatal flaw of the Avengers: their focus is diverted by their sentiments, their compassion, and as is the case with Star-Lord and Thor, their emotions. Both take a moment to savor Thanos’ immobilization and say their piece, but they are clouded by emotion, which gives Thanos his opening to escape.
In the brief moment Thor takes to relish his nearly hard-earned victory, Thanos reminds him why he’s ahead. He says, “You should’ve gone for the head” and snaps his fingers. Thor should have been focused only on the goal of stopping him. The Avengers should have sacrificed one of their own when they had the chance.
And, thus, Infinity War ends in a shocking and silent sequence: we watch one-by-one as half Avengers disintegrate into ash. He snapped the universe’s population into half. His children are dead, his only loved one sacrificed, his army is defeated. But Thanos symbolically shed it all in the opening scene when he rid himself of the bells and whistles of his armor and army, retaining only the infinity gauntlet, the symbol of his objective. He won. As the violins mourn for the trillions that vanished with the snap of his fingers, the Mad Titan rests in his garden, on a universe he considers grateful, having brought his malicious salvation to the universe, his destiny fulfilled.
A Note Regarding the Sequel
Six years later, away from the D-23 announcements, leaked trailers, trailer breakdowns, and easter eggs videos, I can say Infinity War is a fulfilling, coherent story. It is a movie that works on its own merit, as much as one of these films can. I was genuinely so delighted to watch Infinity War and find that it held up to my scrutiny. For now, 2018 Me and 2024 Me are in emotional alignment. In Part 2 of this essay, you’ll see that I don’t feel nearly as positive about Avengers: Endgame.
