Despite what Bruce Banner would like to believe, The Avengers would definitely not like to be The Beatles.
Rather, and this is something that a well-known critic felt too, they could be The Rolling Stones.
Not The Rolling Stones of their glorious, gorgeously gritty heyday, you know. Not the raw, ribald and dirty band of London boys who fumed when their unarguably more dynamic rivals did the ‘blues thing’ better in Love Me Do and who started churning out the angry and messy music that was every bit the opposite of artistic sophistication and production ingenuity that had become the touchstones on the other side. In a nutshell, not the Stones who delivered sexy, seedy classics like Satisfaction, Brown Sugar, Honky Tonk Woman, Monkey Man or even the hard-boiled rebels who raved and ranted deliciously of street fighting, painting it black and sympathy for the devil.
No, The Avengers are rather the Stones who always outstay their welcome and don’t give a damn about it. Sure, they sound still great as ever; as the latest Stones No Filter tour proves, they still slam it hard when live and Mick Jagger is as white-hot as he has always been, even if he no longer wears the makeup but they have been doing what they did so well for decades now and it is high time since we woke up from the illusion.
Likewise, we all know that peace accords or no peace accords, Zemo or no Zemo, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes might just come back again for one more time to rock the stadium. Conflict, in their world, is just the plot for yet another movie and unlike The Beatles, they clearly are at a loss when left alone and don’t quite know how to move on and do their thing.
If only directors Anthony and Joe Russo had stuck with that idea – of a big, bawdy nostalgia tour to keep the fans shaking in orgasmic delight to infinity and beyond – this might have been a hell of a party. Sure, it would have been unashamedly self-indulgent and even a betrayal of all the promises of new directions that the last smashing Captain America movie offered but it would have done the job.
Why, oh why, then does it want to sing Let It Be?
The problem is that Marvel’s blockbusters have already set up a high bar, matching up to which seems to be the only motive behind Infinity War. A couple of fabulous sequels have proved that they are game for more darkness than their squeaky clean surfaces allow for and with Guardians Of The Galaxy and Thor: Ragnarok, they could also say proudly that they could be cool about the nutty, self-depreciation of some of their most freaked out stories and characters. The Russo Brothers’ film seems to be vying for both fun-filled zaniness and overarching ambition when it is clear from the film’s basic premise that it is little more than just a team against a supervillain.
Did I say a team? If you walked into this film after foaming at the mouth over the trailer, chances are you won’t be disappointed. We have the Avengers, the Guardians Of The Galaxy, the coolest new Marvel superhero who broke the American monopoly on both vibranium and Hollywood casting, a boy from Queens, New York and a wizard dealing with all these Muggles. They put up a formidable team, sure but while cinematographer Trent Opaloch gives them their trademark moments of thundering camaraderie, especially in the blazing battles fought in outer space and in green and sweltering Wakanda, can we get to know them a bit more first, of what are they just going through?
A chunk of the key characters is given surprisingly little to do (I was particularly aghast at what precious little does Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa aka Black Panther have to chip in) and it is ultimately the most unexpected turns, coming from Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, now looking more like a Max Rockatansky hurled through the galaxy, Zoe Saldanha’s Gamora and Tom Holland’s Peter Parker, that have any meat and conflict to them. The rest is only safe play, though it is fun to watch Benedict Cumberbatch and Robert Downey JR spar as Doctor Strange and Tony Stark respectively.
Maybe all these heroes feel significantly buttoned down because the villain overwhelms almost everything in the film. Josh Brolin’s Thanos, now no longer an archetype kingpin lurking on the edge of things, is a magnificently powerful creation, a villain of pure brute force and relentless determination and yet endowed with believability and unexpected flashes of warmth. His counterpart of the comics was nothing less than a big, monstrous bully; Brolin’s measured yet always compellingly menacing performance gives this bulking supervillain a heart of pain, even gnawing remorse at the terrible task that he has to do.
He looms over the proceedings; even as the heroes pitted against him do everything, from trading punchlines to even getting all foolhardy and angry, he sticks firmly to what he has set out to do, even as it leaves the saddest of smiles on his ravaged face. Unforgettable.
And yet, the fact that we feel more for the villain rather than for any of our mighty heroes says a lot about how fundamentally messed up the balance feels. Infinity War often gets the banter between these super-powerful freaks right but it needed more than just some stock wisecracks to remind us that these heroes are admirable and worth rooting for. We need gravitas to go along with the gab and even as able performers like Downey Jr., Cumberbatch and Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner do their best, it never quite feels sufficient. A lot is talked about sacrifice, sticking together and even crossing limits but so focused is the film in joining the disparate dots and making room for the big standoff in the end that there is ironically no room for real drama.
That feels a bit symptomatic of the Russo Brothers’ tendency to stretch the repartee endlessly to the point that we feel, after a while, like shutting some of the mouths so that they can come alive as heroic by deed rather than just talk. The tone jars frequently too; at one moment, they are all chucking verbal firecrackers at each other and the next moment, they are brooding solemnly. With the kind of portentous proceedings that Infinity War packs in by the time we head for the climax, we need to feel really the impossibility of the task ahead and that never happens. These guys are still trying to please the crowds, especially those who come to these movies to laugh rather than cheer for glory.
Crowd-pleasing, for that matter, is one thing that this film tries very hard to resist. Heading unmistakably to a gloomy denouement, it begins gloomily too and while I am spilling no beans, it must be said that its contrived effort to sober rather than stun viewers feels like a cheap trick.
To come back to the Beatles analogy, everyone remembers how the Fab Four capped off their decade of daredevilry with the fabulous Abbey Road, an album that boasted of such staggering musical synchronicity and stunning interplay of individual styles that it hardly felt like farewell. ‘And in the end, the love you take is the equal to the love you make’, sang all the four boys, forgetting even for a while the cracks that divided them and yet laying to rest an entire legacy of greatness.
Despite the title that they have earned, the Avengers would be more content to keep on thrilling the crowds. But even the most rehashed of the Stones concerts has real rock-and-roll revelry. Infinity War, if you are still hunting for that elusive spoiler, is simply rock-and-roll suicide.My Rating: 2 Stars Out Of 5
