AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR - Against All Odds

What's that, you say? You like your epic genre entertainment to really put you through the wringer during the penultimate chapter? Well, have I got good news for you!

. . .in a manner of speaking.

NOTE: I will keep this as spoiler-free as humanly possible, but since I can't say much without at least broadly touching on the central conflict and themes at play, be warned.

It's been 10 years since Iron Man inched opened the door to a new way to think about blockbuster cinema, and 6 since The Avengers blew said door off of its hinges. After years of speculating whether or not it could ever work, franchise crossovers are so much an accepted part of the cinema landscape that multiple studios have already failed in multiple attempts to turn this or that intellectual property into "their version" of the MARVEL Cinematic Universe. And the reason for that is because, while not every individual MCU film is great, no other franchise in history has been this successful for this long in creating this many characters that people crave time with.

And that's why Infinity War, first teased with the now-famous credits stinger of Thanos at the end of 2012's game-changing blockbuster, works. Because it knows exactly how much viewers have come to care for the Avengers and the Guardians and friendly neighborhood superheroes.

Which means it knows exactly how to hurt you when it wants to.

Make no mistake, this is not a movie that plays nice. If Captain America: Civil War was a movie about the bonds between surrogate family being broken by unchecked toxic emotion, this is the fallout of that scattered household magnified to the most horrific level imaginable while still feeling like an immediate threat. Thanos has arrived, and his dispassionate-until-it-shockingly-isn't approach to what he sees as "balance" in the universe also arrives, with the same fury and hopelessness of standing in front of a natural disaster and attempting to stop it with an outstretched hand. Josh Brolin's take on the Mad Titan is as easy to hate as he is surprisingly easy to understand, and his combination of fatalistic devotion to what he sees as his duty with the weary "you people are lucky I put on pants to wreck your planet" melancholy makes for a startling subversion of the "giant boring CGI bad guy" that he could have easy become the nadir of.

The heroes who scramble to stop him aren't given as much individual backstory attention as the villain, or even as they were in the first Avengers film, but there are still multiple interactions devoted to meet cutes and nd personal explanation - and, given that it's been designed as a culmination of a decade of stories, and the way we digest pop culture is so all-encompassing, the film feels like it's playing fair with the abbreviated recaps and introductions to new players. The worry that there would simply be too many characters to handle is allayed in the film simply choosing some of the heroes to be key supporting players instead of trying to cram two dozen individual arcs into a single film (which is itself telling only one story of a cosmic double act). The "everyone gets a great moment" rule still very much applies, and the characters who are given the most heavy lifting deliver some all-times stuff (fans of Thor, for instance, are gonna be very happy).

The other part of the balancing act is where I'm curious to see how this film plays on the broad stage and in the long run. The Russo brothers (The Winter Soldier, Civil War) returning with writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (all 3 Captain America films) do an uncanny job of balancing Big Damn Hero moments and crowd-pleasing set pieces inside a film that is ultimately - by design - not really what you'd call a crowd-pleaser. For example, the Guardians of the Galaxy talk and act and feel incredibly right for the version of these characters that were so distinctly brought to life in James Gunn's specifically personal offbeat space comedy romps, but also play off of the other characters in ways that befits Thor's mythic trials just as neatly as Tony Stark's cavalier quipping while still delivering raw emotion when the chips are down. It's a mastery of tone and managing of scene tensions that shouldn't work together at all, but do so anyway.

As a whole, this movie just shouldn't work as well as it does, and would likely fall apart if it weren't for how well it adheres to brass tacks narrative structure. For all the talk of endless franchises and "Part 1/Part 2's," the story question at the center of the film is both clearly asked and definitively answered during the film's lengthy-but-breathless 156 minutes, and the back and forth of "what will happen next?" is never a series of "and then and then and then's" but always a "but..." or "therefore..." or "no, and furthermore..." One small defeat paves the way for a larger setback but then there's a hopeful turnaround and by the end of the film you realize that you're so exhausted because you've become unaccountably emotionally invested in. . . what amounts to a bunch of people in funny clothes fighting over magic jelly beans for a purple smurf's power glove.

That's why MARVEL is still here and the reason so many studios have failed to copy the "magic blueprint" of the MCU is that it's not really about having a scavenger hunt for nerdy easter eggs or trying to get people excited for something that might or might not happen 3 movies down the line. It's because we care about these characters right here, right now. We cheer at their victories and mourn their fallen regardless of what may or may not happen in another year or another ten years, because every hero leaves someone broken behind, an impossible standard to live up to, an empty home to rebuild - no one person in this crazy experiment is without consequence.

Because if there's a central thesis to this movie, perhaps to all of these movies, it's that no one, ever, is without consequence.