Review of Avengers: Infinity War

**** 1/2 out of five stars

Currently showing in theaters EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME!

by Walter G. Tarrow

As a child of the ’50s, I was raised in the early days, the birth times, of today’s media. TV was beginning to draw away the consumers of books, radio and movies. Our entertainment choices, our means of mass distraction, our modern bread and circuses, would become more home based, more accessible, more personal, yet more mobile, so that we would NEVER be allowed to be alone. 

And producers of those circuses could then mass market their stuff on a very individual basis. Always questing for the secret formula that would tantalize us, seduce us to open our wallets and commit fully to today’s sirens of consumer and social media, these corporate nations, with the happiest company on Earth, Disney, leading the charge, have invaded our lives, captured our hearts and minds, and, DAMMIT!, cracked the consumer code.

Sadly, the good news is that Marvel, originally the comic book company that gave us, and this science fiction obsessed nerd, the Silver Age of superheroes in the ’60s, has captured the formula to make today the new age of comic book superheroes for the silver screen. After a ten-year, 18-movie buildup, we are treated to an assembling of almost all of the Marvel superheroes to battle a threat to the entire universe.

In 1966, when I went off to Grand Valley State College, I left behind, in my childhood home, what my mother determined were my childish things, an extensive collection of hundreds and hundreds of books and magazines, mostly science fiction, and my treasure trove of mostly Marvel comics, including a plethora of first editions. When I returned home the following summer, my mother had, as had countless mothers before and after her, sold my entire collection, all the books, all the magazines, all the comics, everything, to a book store in our neighborhood, for pennies on the pound. Yes, mere pennies on the pound! (In 2011, a copy of Amazing Fantasy #15, the first appearance of Marvel Comics’ Spider-Man from 1963, sold for $1.1 million in auction.) 

Unknowingly, she had set in motion, as had all such mothers, the inevitable pining, the cloying nostalgia that would guarantee Disney a mega blockbuster more than 50 years later. She stole my childhood, and lo, these many years later, I find solace, like apparently countless others, in seeing the comic books of my youth recreated on the big screen. 

In Avengers: Infinity War, the invincible Thanos, believing he is saving all of existence through his population reduction pogrom (the ultimate eco-terrorist), is chasing six all-powerful stones across the universe. Once he acquires them all, he will become unstoppable and capable of wiping out half of all life in the cosmos with a snap of his thumb and forefinger.

So it falls upon those Marvel characters to whom we’ve been introduced, and with whom we’ve grown familiar due to the relentless onslaught of ten years and more of merchandise/media exposure, to save the day. Onboard with visits to numerous locales on Earth and in Outer Space, we join the Avengers as they also chase the stones and do battle with the seemingly unstoppable Thanos and his minions.

Battle set pieces abound with super powers pitted against super powers in massively intricate play, eye candy for the video initiates. And above it all is the CGI augmented visage of Josh Brolin as Thanos, now out of the uncanny valley, showing a very human range of emotions, a sympathetic tyrant. One almost feels sorry for him.

But, shouldn’t we be feeling sorry for ourselves? Are corporations bad because they give us want we want, and not what we need? Are corporations, these artificial entities, created to protect the individuals running the show, indemnifying them from personal responsibility, each stakeholder, each officer, benefiting from our self-destructive tendencies; are corporations ultimately evil because, through advertising and mass marketing, they appeal to, take advantage of, our basest appetites, without any concern at all for our well-being?

Well, as has been said, give the masses bread and circuses to appease. Apparently, to our detriment, that’s true. How else can you explain a movie on its way to grossing over $2,000,000,000 (yep, two billion dollars) and the installation of a demagogue in the White House?

You’ve been warned.

Oh, and I really really liked Avengers: Infinity War. It was a lot of fun.