Avengers: Infinity War- Fear In A Handful Of Dust

No specific spoilers but this is written for folks who have seen this movie. A general spoiler-free review would just consist of “Holy shit, it’s really good.”

A thought occurred to me while watching some of the Avengers: Infinity War actors on Jimmy Kimmel the other night about the nature of growing up and maturity, and not just with regard to the film. Many, many years ago I used to walk to school every day, about 30 to 40 minutes both ways, and every morning I would listen to 106.7 KROQ’s morning show starring Kevin and Bean. This station has been the birthplace of a lot of talented folks like Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew Pinsky but one of my favorites and an eventual collaborator with the former was Jimmy Kimmel, originally known as just “Jimmy the Sports Guy”. As a kid I didn’t know much about sports and I didn’t really care but he was given about a 60 second spot every other hour and I liked listening to Kimmel, he had a good voice and a sharp wit.

But if you had told me that one day he would go on to be one of the more entertaining and decent late night hosts on a major television network I might have picked up my pace on the way to school out of disbelief and distrust. And yet here we are, and I’m a little proud of how far the guy has come. The same can be said of Marvel, a company that was once a plucky publishing house with a friendly rivalry with DC Comics. I like to think I grew up with them as well, and while DC had had Batman and Superman movies out for years, Marvel wasn’t even on the board until the late 90s. Then X-Men came out and it was pretty good even for how vigorously it seemed to want to distance itself from the source material. And the Sony and Fox purchased properties that followed varied in quality until Marvel finally went all in on Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. and the rest, as they say, is history.

Ten years later Marvel, now a powerhouse film studio owned by Disney, has produced a bracing, thrilling, charming, breathtaking, complicated-yet-accessible crossover film, the first of its kind in the history of cinema in Avengers: Infinity War and the word that keeps coming to mind is maturity. Despite the obvious financial success of all 18 films in its canon up until this point, Marvel has been edging further away from fun superhero movies and closer and closer to what I’d describe as grown-up features. Captain America: The Winter Soldier is probably the best example of this which, even without the fireworks and effects, is just a damn solid spy drama and character piece. Black Panther is also a step in this direction with its social commentary and conscience on full display. And in Infinity War, with the superb work of the Russo brothers, Marvel has produced probably the least kid-friendly superhero movie of all time, besides maybe Tim Burton’s Batman Returns. I don’t say that to suggest children couldn’t enjoy IW, not by any stretch, in fact its a lot more fun than I was anticipating and I laughed out loud several times. However, there’s a darkness to this film, as fantastical and otherworldly as it is. I’d argue that it’s not, in fact, really about the Avengers as much as it is Thanos’ film from start to finish.

With that maturity comes one of the most shocking and heartbreaking finales of any tentpole franchise film ever, darker than The Empire Strikes Back, darker than the death of Mufasa in The Lion King, darker than that other Vin Diesel vehicle, The Iron Giant. I obviously don’t want to go into detail because with the forthcoming sequel/continuation due out a year from now, there is little doubt the story will find a way to undo the extensive damage that Thanos has wrought, rather I’d like to marinate in the feelings and sensations that followed the conclusion of Infinity War. By now, as an audience, we are all well trained by Marvel to sit patiently through the credits for whatever morsel or tease of information Kevin Fiege and company see fit to brush off the table, but this time was different. This time I sat in relative silence along with the rest of the theater trying to process the deep sense of loss and impermanence, the feeling of tragedy without succor. And in retrospect, from the first trailer, they told us it was coming all along, “I know what it’s like to lose. To feel so desperately that you’re right, yet to fail all the same. Dread it. Run from it. Destiny still arrives.” 

So where do we go from here? Where can Marvel go from here? Ant-Man and The Wasp is due out this summer and although that looks like a charming diversion I feel like we’ve just stood out in the pouring rain at some misty station, watching the love of our life get on a train to some new life without us, like a scene out of a Miyazaki film and now we’re expected to just move on and take a Tinder date to Applebee’s. Don’t get me wrong, I adore Paul Rudd and he might be the only face from that universe that I could handle right now, but I’m just not sure my heart is ready to love again. In case anyone missed it, the logo at the end of the post-credits scene has foreshadowed the arrival of Captain Marvel to the MCU, the long overdue female superhero pic. My expectations are low, for some reason, even though Marvel has continuously found a way to exceed them. I mean, how did they make Guardians of the Galaxy work? How was Ant-Man in any way a good idea? And how did they land Avengers: Infinity War so perfectly, so fantastically, so thrillingly that they’ve absolutely broken my heart and all I want is more.

Ready Player One: Weaponized Nostalgia

I really liked Ready Player One. As far as critical analysis, that’s not exactly the kind of concise deconstruction I go for, but it’s difficult to avoid over-complicating a thing that isn’t very complicated. The fact that I liked it came as a kind of surprise, however. I read the book that it is based on years ago when I received it, rather appropriately and uninvitedly, in a Loot Crate box. And much like Loot Crate, the movie itself is chock full of nostalgic tchotchke; junky toys referencing everything geek culture, from your Star Trek/Wars, Firefly, Batman, Doctor Who, to Power Rangers/Voltron, blah blah, etc., etc., that, when taken individually has little to no value but when lumped together in a big orgiastic cornucopia of nostalgia is actually kind of a blast, somehow, even though in the long run you know you’re just playing with memories of fun. The book itself is absolutely that, an entertaining read that falls apart under scrutiny or disappears between the couch cushions, it’s a bit wish-fulfillment, a lot of idealizing, and more than a little bit derivative but, in it’s unabashed enthusiasm and self-awareness, is successful in being what it sets out to be: fun. The film version, directed by Steven Spielberg with a script from author Ernest Cline and the wretched Zak Penn, amplifies that experience the way Guy Fieri amplifies an appetizer menu in the sense that it’s easy to make fun of the movie equivalent of Trash Can Brisket Nachos but we’re all much better off just going for the ride.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that a film version would be superior to the book, this is largely a visual story and it’s a little bit underwhelming to read about someone playing an 8-bit Atari video game. The representation of the Oasis itself, the virtual online Universe that is the setting for most of the movie, is as visually sumptuous and vivid as one could hope for and so overly saturated with pop culture characters and references that it’s going to keep the Achievement Hunters busy for days, possibly weeks, to track them all down. This is the aspect of the book that I was convinced would overwhelm the basic quest narrative, the need to rely entirely on these references and nostalgia to keep the audience amused, but this is Spielberg, of course. The man is nothing if not good at young adult characters stumbling through an adventure, and it’s the charming cast that persists as the focus. In fact a lot of it, particularly the finale, kept reminding me of The Goonies (directed by Richard Donner, but produced by Spielberg) with its themes of adults trying to steal everything magic and fun from the world and the kids doing their best to stop them.

What was a legitimate surprise is the tightening and pacing of the story itself, with first time scripter in Cline and Zak Penn, whose collaborations with Simon Kinberg succeeded in middling the comic book universe with gems like Elektra, X-Men 3: The Last Stand, and his original script for The Avengers that Joss Whedon promptly chucked out a window. But where his dialogue is usually monosyllabic and overly simplistic, in Ready Player One, it’s perfectly fine and I chuckled more than a few times. The big improvements are in the challenges themselves, the book had a real Slumdog Millionaire feel to it where it just so happens that Wade was an EXPERT at that particularly specific game. This lost some of relatability and sense of suspense but in the movie there is a lot more emphasis on the teamwork aspect of the hunt and what can be called detective work. It doesn’t have mysteries the audience is expected to solve, however it’s solutions are relatively satisfying within the logic of the movie. One sequence in particular, and I don’t say this very often because it’s a dumb, overused cliche, however it does apply, was absolutely jaw-dropping and not because of spectacle or volume or choreography or any of the usual reasons that descriptor is used. It had me floored because of its fidelity, because of an accuracy to a thing that I will not spoil and because it was, as a film lover, the one thing that would have sold me on the Oasis immediately. I want to see it in the real world some day.

Speaking of loving film, I like to read and watch other people’s reviews of things to keep a perspective and while I am guilty of piling onto a thing if it really deserves it, if it really ruins a good concept or idea (I’m looking in your direction, The Cloverfield Paradox), I do not understand the current Comic Book Guy trend of viciously tearing into a movie that happens to only be adequate or mediocre. The whole purpose of cinema is to be entertaining and if it reaches for that and fails, well, that’s alright. There’s probably something positive to be found in there, far too many people get paid to collaborate and make a film for there to be no quality at all in the end product. But if a picture isn’t genre-changing or epochal it’s immediately called a dumpster-fire and dismissed out of hand and I just don’t understand that mentality, as if the privilege of watching a movie is a job some critics don’t want and wouldn’t wish on their worst enemy. Ready Player One has a lot of joy in it, which is special in a movie with this much CGI, and it was written by a guy who has a lot of love for pop culture and directed by the guy who created a big chunk of it. This is a weird, meta-creation, it’s kind of a dream-come-true wish fulfillment story that would be a little corny if it hadn’t actually happened for Ernest Cline. Well, it’s a little corny anyway, but it’s got heart, it looks amazing, and it’s a lot of fun but if it doesn’t do anything for you, that’s okay too, just save your hate for the films that deserve it. Like The Emoji Movie.