REVIEW: Batman Ninja

Outside of the realm of comic books and video games, it's fair to say that DC is in big trouble. With their awkward attempt at a shared universe film franchise knocking on death's door and their home-video animated releases hosting one of the worst things I've ever seen, it's safe to say that the executives at Warner Bros simply don't know what to do with the timeless heroes and villains of Detective Comics. We live in an age where the best Batman movie of the past half-decade stars a bunch of animated LEGO toys; they couldn't even get The Killing Joke right, weighing down the whole experience with uncomfortable romantic subplots, camp gay stereotypes, and embarrassingly sloppy animation. When it comes to DC properties, if it's not a comic book or video game, I've got little reason to be excited for it. But then, out of nowhere, we get a new direct-to-video release. A co-production between WB and a handful of notable writers, animators, and producers from Japan's anime industry. This is Batman Ninja, and it's goddamn crazy.

The film opens at Arkham Asylum, where we see the Bat-Family trying to put a stop to Gorilla Grodd's (Fred Tatasciore) latest scheme. It seems that the super-intelligent ape has built a time machine, which he promptly uses to fling the Dark Knight (Roger Craig Smith) back in time to Feudal Japan. It's here that Batman learns that he wasn't the only one sent back to the past; a number of his greatest enemies took the trip as well, and have since established themselves as daimyōs, each controlling a different section of the island. Most notable is the Joker (Tony Hale), who keeps Grodd's time machine locked away in his towering castle; if the Clown Prince of Crime is able to defeat the other daimyōs and unify Japan under his rule, the entire course of history will be changed. It's up to Batman, Catwoman (Grey Griffin), and the rest of the Bat-Clan to stop the villains, saving Japan (and their future) in the process.

Comparing Batman Ninja to other recent efforts from Warner Bros Home Entertainment (such as Batman & Harley Quinn and The Killing Joke), the difference is night and day (and not just because of the obvious cultural shift). While those efforts both featured the talent of industry veteran Bruce Timm (who, along with Paul Dini, spearheaded the DC Animated Universe of the late 90's/early 2000's), his talent felt very much squandered. Compare that to Batman Ninja, which comes to us from Takashi Okazaki (the creator of/character designer for Afro Samurai), Junpei Misuzuki (a producer on Jojo's Bizarre Adventure), and Kazuki Nakashima (a writer for Kill La Kill, Kamen Rider, and my personal holy grail of anime, Gurren Lagann). If none of those names or titles sound familiar to you, then you may want to reconsider giving Batman Ninja a watch. Simply put, if you haven't seen at least one of those series I just mentioned, you're not the target audience for this film.

I am a huge fan of how crazy things can get when it comes to anime; my favorite anime of all time, Gurren Lagann, is about robots that are powered by machismo who throw galaxies at each other. I want my anime to get crazy from time to time. That said, there are some moments in Batman Ninja (specifically during the final 30 minutes) that are even a bit too ridiculous for my tastes. The premise itself is an insane idea, the kind of thing I'd have come up with when I was seven, hopped up on Fun Dip and Tang, bashing my Batman and Power Rangers toys against each other on my bedroom floor. I absolutely hate to use the old "just turn your brain off" excuse for anything, but when it comes to Batman Ninja... well, what did you expect? Were you looking for high art? For something as politically-charged as The Dark Knight Returns, or as engrossing as Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? This is a movie where Nightwing (Adam Croasdell) looks like a cross between Vegeta and Sasuke and the Joker pilots a moving castle with a pair of robotic arms. It's absolutely nothing more than an excuse to see Batman and his assorted cast of characters duking it out in a Feudal Japanese setting, and it's awesome.

Right off the bat, the most striking thing about this film is its art direction and animation. Okazaki's interpretations of these classic DC heroes and villains feel both familiar and wholly original, lending themselves wonderfully to the style of animation on display. It may take a moment or two to get used to everything looking like the opening to the first part of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, but once you adjust, you can fully start to appreciate just how gorgeous this movie really is. It's a far-cry from the stilted, lifeless, and often off-model animation seen in the more recent DC home-video releases; everything here is colorful, expressive, and just bursting with detail without appearing at all overwhelming or busy. It's a distinctly home-grown Japanese spin on a Western property that feels right at home against the Feudal backdrop in which our story takes place. And that's not even mentioning the action. Oh ho ho, the action.

It's not at all an exaggeration to say that Batman Ninja has some of the most exciting, engaging, and just flat-out badass action I've seen from any DC movie, let alone their efforts from the past decade or so. The use of CGI allows for animators to operate with a greater deal of versatility than they would be able to with more traditional techniques, and that's something that Batman Ninja takes full advantage of. It's so refreshing to see a Joker who can actually go toe-to-toe with the Dark Knight (rather than just an edgy mastermind who is soundly beaten down without incident), and their numerous clashes ended up being some of the highlights of the entire film for me. The climactic duel between the two (featured in most of the trailers) is everything I wanted this film to be since I'd heard of its existence. 

I also adored the characterization of Harley Quinn (Tara Strong) this time around, feeling much more in-line with the mischievous hench-wench of the old 90's animated series than she has as of late. Her confrontations with Catwoman were equally as thrilling; if I have one action-related complaint, is that there wasn't enough of it. Yes, what this movie puts forth as "plot" is basically just an excuse to move things from fight scene to fight scene, but so many of them involve some combination of Batman, Catwoman, the Joker, and Harley Quinn. The other iconic members of Batman's rogues gallery hardly get the amount of screen time we'd hope for (considering how great their designs are), and when it comes time for each to throw down with a member of the Bat-Family, the vast majority of the non-Bat/Cat-related action is handled off-screen.

Now it's important to note that, at the time of writing, I have only seen the English dub; as I would later find out, it turns out that the English and Japanese versions of Batman Ninja are radically different in terms of plot and dialog. Apparently, the Japanese team went about animating the film before any of the dialog was written or recorded (not an uncommon practice in the anime industry). This is, however, the exact opposite of how things are done stateside, leaving the English localization team with nothing to work with besides a series of rough storyboards and a translated script that totaled a whopping six pages long. This forced writers Leo Chu and Eric Garcia to more or less wing it, and while the end result isn't exactly pure poetry, it wasn't quite enough to distract me from all of the jaw-dropping art design and pulse-pounding action. If anything, I'm excited to have an excuse to revisit it in Japanese (besides, of course, hearing "Joker" pronounced as "JEEYOOOOOKAAAAAAH" over and over again).

Is Batman Ninja a good movie? Therein lies the question; it's not especially thought-provoking, or even all that coherent. If I'm being honest, I checked out of the plot well before things got truly convoluted, but then we're not exactly here for the plot, are we? We're here to see Batman have a samurai fight with the Joker in ancient Japan, and that's exactly what we get. This is not an intelligent or clever movie by any stretch of the imagination. It is, however, immensely entertaining. Batman Ninja is like Gurren Lagann meets Naruto meets Zoids meets Power Rangers meets Jiro Kuwata's Bat-Manga; it's an exercise in light-hearted nonsense, and the result is the kind of fun experience that Justice League only wishes it could provide. If you like anime and want to see what would happen if a really kickass piece of fanart came to life for 85 minutes, I can't recommend this enough. Grab some friends and a case of your favorite Japanese beer, check your mind at the door, and enjoy the ride.

REVIEW: Deadpool 2

It's going to be more than a little difficult to write about Deadpool 2 without simply reiterating everything I said in my Review of the first Deadpool film. It stands to reason that, if you enjoyed Deadpool, you'll also enjoy Deadpool 2; however, I feel like statements such as these tend to take on a somewhat bittersweet connotation, implying a lack of scope or growth on the part of the filmmakers. "If you liked X, you'll like Y" seems to imply the idea that a sequel is simply more of the same and little else, but I have to say that that's not entirely the case with Deadpool 2. While it doesn't exactly shoot for the moon in terms of upping the stakes, it still manages to deliver another hilarious (yet surprisingly heartfelt) chapter in the life of Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds). 

When you've broken as many box office records as Fox did with the first Deadpool, there'd be an understandable temptation to go all-out with the sequel. The first film was made on a comparatively modest budget of $58 million (about a fifth of what it cost to make Avengers: Infinity War), forcing director Tim Miller to find creative workarounds for the movie's lack of funds; for example, the planned gunfight that was meant to make up the climax proved too expensive to actually film, leading to a stellar gag in which Deadpool forgets all of his weapons in a taxicab and has to fight everyone with just his swords. Limitations can often be the impetus for moments of brilliance, so one of my greatest fears for this sequel in the months leading up to its release was that the small-scale charm of the original would be lost under a tsunami of studio money. There's always clear temptation to blow millions upon millions on making things bigger and better when making a sequel (especially a superhero sequel), so I was happy to see that the crew behind Deadpool 2 focused decidedly less on reinventing the wheel and more on merely refining what made the original so endearing.

With the original Deadpool ending on a surprisingly sweet note, it's worth noting that happiness and good fortune rarely smile upon the life of Wade Wilson for long. Without spoiling anything (that, admittedly, happens in the first five or so minutes), we see Deadpool's life thrown into chaos and misery once again. As Colossus (Stefan Kapicic) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) attempt to get the mopey merc back on his feet by training him to be an X-Man, the team runs afoul of a troubled young mutant by the name of Russell (otherwise known as his edgy alter-ego, Firefist, played by Julian Dennison). Meanwhile, in a briefly-glimpsed post-apocalyptic future, the cyber-soldier known as Cable (Josh Brolin) returns home to find his family incinerated by a now-grown Firefist. With Cable traveling back in time to kill Russell before he can get a taste for murder, it's up to Deadpool to step outside of his comfort zone and try to find a decidedly non-violent solution that will simultaneously fix the future and save Russell's soul.

The thing I liked the most about the first Deadpool is that its stakes were, for a superhero movie, very small and personal. There was no super-weapon or invading force poised to destroy all of humanity as we know it, just an insecure goofball looking to get revenge on the guy who ruined his good looks. This is also the case here; Cable isn't fighting for the fate of the entire future, just his wife and child. Deadpool isn't looking to save the world, just one messed-up orphan. And Russell isn't looking to take over the world, he just wants retribution on those who wronged him. It's all very low-key compared to the planet-hopping odyssey that is Infinity War; it doesn't feel like an "event", per se, just another adventure. Describing it in that way almost makes the events of the plot seem unimportant, but that's hardly the case. Deadpool 2 and it's predecessor are largely character-driven, from the plot to the jokes, so that kind of small-scale, unorthodox approach suits this irreverent kind of spoof just fine.

Make no mistake, though, this isn't just another retread. Everything you loved about Deadpool is here, but better. A bigger budget means better special effects, so while the action is still relatively up-close and personal (care of John Wick director, David Leitch), the movie is free to get a little more creative with its use of gore and dismemberment. It also feels far more self-assured in its sense of humor than our first outing did; Deadpool was a tremendous risk for the studio when it was released, so it's understandable that the filmmakers would make an attempt to please as many people as they could. It's an approach I referred to as a "comedy shotgun" in my old Review of the first film; it doesn't matter if the jokes are hit-or-miss, so long as there are more hits than misses. 

With Deadpool 2, the referential humor (while still very much present) feels far more self-contained and relevant this time around. Compare the scene from the first film in which Wade refers to Gina Carano's character as "less-angry Rosie O'Donnell" (LOL, I 'MEMBER!) to Deadpool 2, where we see Cable get called "One-Eyed Willie" during an action sequence (both a surface-level visual gag and a reference to Josh Brolin's first appearance in a film). It just feels like, for the most part, it isn't trying quite so hard to be shockingly irreverent as the first one was; people know what to expect from a Deadpool film at this point, and while not every joke lands as hard as that Logan reference in the opening scene, it's definitely a more consistently funny comedy than its predecessor was. You can tell everyone involved learned and grew from their experiences with their first time around the block; they've found what works and now they're free to simply focus on crafting a fun, entertaining time.

The supporting cast (with the exception of T.J. Miller, who has completely regressed into irrelevance) is by and large excellent; it's great to see Stefan Kapicic and Brianna Hildebrand back as Colossus and Negasonic, and both Cable and Domino (Zazie Beetz) make for great additions to the gallery of straight-men for Deadpool to bounce off of. The only issue is that, not unlike the first film, it can sometimes feel as though we don't get to spend as much time with these characters as we would like. Cable in particular feels a little lacking in terms of screentime, considering how vital he is to the plot; his fluctuating good-cop-bad-cop dynamic with Wade makes for some of the most interesting and entertaining moments in the film (particularly during the finale), and it definitely leaves you wanting more (which I suppose is a good problem to have). At the same time, no one really feels overplayed either, so I suppose this approach of making Deadpool the primary focus while swapping out whichever character he's meant to interact with has both its benefits and its flaws.

I think it's also worth noting that your mileage may vary when it comes to the more emotionally straight-laced elements of the film. As a fan of the comics from which this character spawned, I greatly appreciate Ryan Reynolds and pals taking the time to inject a little heart and tragedy into the story of Wade Wilson, rather than just making him a taco-eating meme machine. It balances out some of the more outlandish comedic moments, but some will definitely find themselves wishing that the film would just get on with it, rather than coming to a full-stop every so often in order to hit the requisite emotional beats. It also doesn't help that, for all the sarcastic winks and nods the movie tosses towards various superhero clichés, it very much falls victim to several of the conventions it sets out to mock (most notably, an over-reliance on the status quo).

These hang-ups, it's worth noting, are very minor; all in all, I actually enjoyed Deadpool 2 much more than I did the first one. Perhaps it's simply because it's free from being bogged down by all the origin story boxes that the first Deadpool needed to tick, but I found this sequel to just be objectively better. For as crass and irreverent as it gets, there's an undoubted feeling of refinement in how the filmmakers serve up their cartoonishly brutal displays of viscera and toilet humor. Is it as emotionally-engaging and conceptually-ambitious as something like Infinity War? Not by a long shot, but then it's not exactly trying to be. Deadpool 2 is the lone pull-my-finger gag amidst the monolithic, multi-billion dollar industry that is the modern superhero genre; it sets out to keep everyone humble and smiling, and it goes about accomplishing this task with a sardonic grin on its face. My only hope is that, as Deadpool continues his steady rise to the top of the X-Men franchise, Ryan Reynolds and friends don't fly too close to the sun on future installments. We don't need a Deadpool Cinematic Universe; I'd be perfectly happy to get a solid, heartfelt action-comedy every few years (though some innovation definitely wouldn't hurt here and there). Seeing how they've approached Deadpool 2, I see no reason to temper my expectations for the inevitable third entry. I'll be there opening night, excited and ready for more.

Best Boys Episode 3: You Never Forget the First Time You See The Bean

On this latest entry into the Best Boys Cinematic Universe, Mark teams up with Adam and Jake to talk about TJ Miller's drunken bomb threat, the trailer for the best giant shark movie of 2018, and what the hell Tom Hardy was thinking when he signed on to do Venom. Featuring a full-length spoiler-heavy discussion of Avengers: Infinity War!

(Infinity War spoilers start at 02:10:00 and end at 03:21:35)

REVIEW: Avengers Infinity War

Well, it's finally here. 10 years after Iron Man kicked off the modern superhero craze, 6 years after the first Avengers teased this particular storyline in its post-credits stinger, and just over two months since Black Panther set all those impressive box office records that this is inevitably going to demolish; Avengers: Infinity War is finally upon us. There are many who view this as the grand finale of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the designated jumping-off point for anyone (like myself) beginning to feel the strain of superhero fatigue. It's taken 18 movies over the past decade to get to this point, so it's understandable if it's all starting to feel like a bit much nowadays. Having at long last seen Infinity War, I can safely say that Joe and Anthony Russo have accomplished the impossible; not only have they crafted a blockbuster with over 30 main characters that doesn't feel like an incoherent mess, they have reignited my excitement for the latent potential of the MCU, leaving me to eagerly await whatever comes next.

The film begins directly after the post-credits scene of Thor Ragnarok, as we find the mad titan Thanos (Josh Brolin) making his way across the galaxy collecting the ubiquitous Infinity Stones, six glowy ingots that each control some basic element of existence. With all six stones, Thanos would possess the power of a literal god, a power he intends to use to wipe out half of all living things in the universe (all for the supposedly-altruistic goal of restoring cosmic balance, naturally). As one might expect, his plans put him in conflict not only with the recently broken-up Avengers, but with the Guardians of the Galaxy as well. What follows is a two and a half hour long event, taking us from the streets of Manhattan to the far reaches of space, and right about now is probably a good time to mention that there will be mild, implicit spoilers from this point onward. I'm not going to be outright stating what happens to whom, but this isn't the kind of thing you'll want to read if you intend to go in totally blind. So once more, for the people in the back:

SPOILER ALERT: the remainder of this Review reveals certain plot elements of Avengers: Infinity War!

The most immediately striking thing about this movie, for me, was how smartly put-together it was. When describing this movie, it's understandable to assume it would sail about as smoothly as the Titanic; it's got over 30 superheroes in it and acts as a sequel/finale to 17 other movies (I'm not counting Ant-Man since Scott Lang isn't present here), all while acting as a part one to it's own finale. Balancing a stage full of spinning plates isn't even an apt metaphor, it's more like the Russos are balancing live tigers on top of lit sticks of dynamite while riding a tilt-a-whirl. There's no shortage of things that could go wrong with a situation like this, but it's obvious that everyone involved in the production of Infinity War was perfectly cognizant of these possibilities and did everything in their power to avoid making any fatal mistakes (not unlike a certain Sorcerer Supreme).

I've seen a fair share of critics accuse this film of being an exercise in excess, and I can only assume said critics are completely new to the superhero genre. Infinity War shows a frankly miraculous level of restraint in how it doles out its eye-candy; there's no headache-inducing, nigh-incomprehensible action bukkake here like you'd find in Age of Ultron or X-Men: Apocalypse. We aren't given an extended sequence where all 30+ characters attack Thanos at the same time, reducing the screen to an eye-melting visual cacophony of CGI laser beams; instead, everyone is divvied up into teams and given something important to do. Everyone has a plot line to contribute to and, as such, everyone feels as though they matter to some degree. Naturally some characters are more prominent than others (Doctor Strange and Thor play much bigger roles than Okoye and the Winter Soldier, for instance), but no one really feels completely tertiary or useless. It doesn't revel in its own scale this early on, not while there's still half a story left to be told in next year's Avengers: Untitled (a daring, but unique naming convention, if I do say so myself).

The filmmakers knew that, going in, all of our most pressing questions would involve Thanos. All he's done for the past decade is sit in a chair, so they waste no time at all in establishing him as a credible threat. How do they do this? By showing him beating the incredible Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) into submission with nothing but his bare hands in the first five minutes of the movie. The character that has been a trump card for essentially every film he's appeared in is dispatched in the very first scene and doesn't appear again for the rest of the movie (fake trailer shots like the one above are a trend I wholeheartedly endorse, incidentally). The inevitable rematch is something we're denied until the next Avengers film comes out; while some may find this unsatisfying, all it does is make me even more excited for next May.

I also appreciated how Infinity War refuses to waste its audience's time. We've waited this long to get here, so there's no justifiable excuse for any filler. There's a scene near the end of the first act where a broken and battered Thor (Chris Hemsworth) comes across the Guardians of the Galaxy. After an offhand mention that Gamora (Zoe Saldana) is Thanos' daughter, Thor begins to dramatically advance on her while the other Guardians try to fast-talk their way out of a godly beating. Things grow tense for just a moment, only for Thor to pat Gamora on the shoulder and remark "family can be tough". In a lesser film, we'd surely be subjected to a 5-10 minute action sequence where Thor fights the Guardians of the Galaxy over a misunderstanding. It would accomplish nothing beyond padding the runtime with more unnecessary action and feel like a trite waste of our time which, in a movie that's already well over two hours long, is something we cannot abide. Instead, Infinity War makes the mature choice to forego mindless action in favor of a small character moment. It knows exactly what it wants to accomplish and adjusts its priorities accordingly; we've already had entire movies about Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and Spider-Man (Tom Holland). This one is all about Thanos.

With the recent addition of characters like Killmonger, Ego the Living Planet, and the Vulture to the MCU pantheon, there've been rumblings that Marvel's supposed "villain problem" is finally over. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Infinity War's handling of Thanos; Josh Brolin is far and above the breakout star here, delivering a performance that more than lives up to nearly ten years of hints and teases. I haven't been this taken with a villain performance since Heath Ledger's turn as the Joker in The Dark Knight, screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely have somehow found a way to take a giant purple cartoon character who has done nothing but sit in a chair for the past decade and turn him into the most nuanced Marvel antagonist this side of Loki (Tom Hiddleston). I've seen a lot of people praising Thanos' motives as being relatable, which I honestly don't understand; his motivation for enacting a universe-wide culling is essentially to preserve resources and vastly improve the quality of life for those who survive (rather than an obsessive infatuation with Lady Death, as seen in the comics). His logic is inherently flawed (considering he could just make more resources appear with a snap of his fingers), but then that's sort of the point; he is the mad titan, and the film makes it perfectly clear that Thanos is insane. He truly believes in his heart of hearts that he's doing the right thing, that he's the iron-willed savior of life as we know it, and that's what makes him such a tangible threat. He isn't simply evil because (as the misleading trailers put it) murdering billions of people puts a smile on his face. He's the hero of his own story; if you watch Infinity War as a film where Thanos is the protagonist, the seemingly odd structure and pacing suddenly make perfect sense. This is a movie where the main character is the villain. It's got a horrifying, depressing, downer of an ending, unless you're watching from Thanos' perspective, in which case everything worked out exactly the way it was supposed to.

The film also takes an opportunity to put other, less prominent Avengers in the spotlight; after Infinity War, I think my favorite character in the entirety of the MCU may be Thor, which is an insane testament to how far we've come. Between Thor: The Dark World and Infinity War, the God of Thunder has been re-worked from a complete jobber with exactly one joke ("I say mortals, what is this "Twitter" you all speak of? Is it anything like the Casket of Ancient Winters???") into a true king who's lost everything. By the time he meets the Guardians in Infinity War, he's lost his family, his friends, his kingdom, his home, his hammer, and his eye, and we finally get a feel for how all of this senseless loss has affected him deep down. My favorite scene in the entire movie is a quiet moment between Thor and Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper), in which his typical bravado is slowly chipped away as we see him truly begin to process his grief. Chris Hemsworth has truly come into his own with this character and I'm praying to Odin and Frigga and all the powers that be that he's not among the deceased in the next Avengers outing. I also came out really enjoying Benedict Cumberbatch's Doctor Strange, who (much like in Thor: Ragnarok) seems to shine best when he's got some other parts of the MCU to bounce off of. Special kudos must also be awarded to Tom Holland, who feels more like Spider-Man here than in any other MCU film (including his own).

With a budget falling somewhere between $300 and $400 million, Infinity War is easily one of the most expensive films ever made; and boy does it look it (can you imagine how embarrassing it would be if the visuals here were complete and utter trash?). It's safe to say that most Marvel movies don't look bad when it comes to their use of CGI, but this is the first time in a very long while where I've actually been impressed by the visual effects in a blockbuster like this. We've reached a sort of singularity where the visuals all mesh together perfectly, and we start to forget that characters like Thanos are made entirely inside a computer. Spider-Man has lost that offputting, overly-animated action figure look he had in Civil War and Homecoming, and I don't even bat an eye when I see Rocket Raccoon and Groot (Vin Diesel) interacting with a room full of real humans. This is also the first film to be shot entirely with IMAX cameras, so perhaps that distinction added something to the visual fidelity we're left to enjoy. When you're dealing with something of this scale, it's important that the action never feels overly-cluttered, and that's something the visual effects artists completely nailed.

The cinematography (care of longtime Russo collaborator, Trent Opaloch) is also quite good, maintaining the Russos' standard up-close-and-personal approach while (for the most part) ditching the requisite shaky-cam we find in The Winter Soldier and Civil War (I suppose shaking an IMAX camera would be both very difficult and potentially very expensive). One sequence in particular that I absolutely adore happens very early on, when two members of Thanos' Black Order (The Ebony Maw, played by Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, and Cull Obsidian, played by Terry Notary) do battle on the streets of New York with Iron Man (Robert Downy Jr), Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, and Wong (Benedict Wong). The beginning of the sequence, where we see the Black Order's ship descending on Bleeker Street, is shot entirely from street-level; we see the ship for the first time the same time Stark and Strange do, and it's this choice of camera angle (along with the seat-rattling sound design) that makes this sequence so immersive. Imagine being a civilian in a post-Avengers NYC; there's a big donut-shaped spacecraft ominously humming above a residential neighborhood and Tony Stark is running towards it alongside two wizards. Things are about to get real. It's a feeling I haven't gotten from one of these movies since I saw the first Avengers film back in 2012, and I think it's Infinity War's ability to not only recapture that same feeling, but to improve upon it that has me so taken with it.

Really, that sums up my entire takeaway here; Avengers was an unforgettable experience the first time I saw it, but it mostly coasts by on spectacle alone. Once you've seen it, it's never quite as good on repeat viewings (especially when you're at home and not in a theater). Infinity War, on the other hand, has so much more to offer right off the bat; already, I'm able to appreciate it on a level beyond the sheer scale of it all. Despite all my praise, it's not quite a perfect film. There are definitely some who will find the length and pacing exhausting, while others will be disappointed in how much screentime is given to certain characters (you can definitely tell this was made before Black Panther went on to make over a billion dollars, and I'm pretty sure Captain America has less than ten lines in the entire thing), but these minor speedbumps can't change the fact that this is an expertly-crafted event of a film that more than lives up to the hype Marvel Studios has spent so much time building. Anyone dismissing this for not feeling like a standard Marvel movie or requiring viewers to do their due-diligence in keeping up with the MCU canon is completely missing the point of this movie; this is not your traditional Marvel movie. At the same time, those who are quick to write off the numerous character deaths as "inconsequential" fail to realize that, in this situation, it's very much about the journey rather than the destination (mainly because we haven't reached the destination just yet). It should be obvious to anyone over the age of 10 that a number of the characters killed off in Infinity War will return for the next Avengers outing, but that doesn't invalidate this film's contributions to the overarching, multi-film narrative that is the MCU.

Avengers: Infinity War is a dark, daring blockbuster that soundly breaks the modern superhero movie mold while upholding and celebrating all the elements that made the genre the box office behemoth it is today. It's a modern-day Empire Strikes Back; in 20-30 years, when we ask the new generation of filmmakers what movie inspired them to pursue such a career, I would be shocked if at least one of them didn't cite Infinity War as the film that changed their life forever. It's a new high for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it made a True Believer out of me all over again. Go check it out.