or at least not too much.
I ran out to see Avengers: Infinity War on the spur of the moment. On the drive to the theater I was thinking it might not have been such a good spur of the moment as it spurred right after I’d awakened from an impromptu nap (lunch had been a bit too heavy and I’d not gotten much sleep the night before). The reason? Over the past five years or so I’ve found it increasingly difficult to not fall asleep in the movie theater. Whether alone or with a group, if the film doesn’t really capture my attention, I’m off to the land of Nod, only to be rudely awakened by explosions, bombastic, swelling scores or shouted bad language.
This became such a regular thing that I started including my naps as part of my film reviews. Any film I managed to stay awake for had achieved at least a marginal level of acceptability; any film that put me to sleep during its first half was questionable, and any film that put me to sleep that didn’t manage to wake me up before the closing credits was pointless. Films punctuated with nod-offs were probably ok for the younger set.
I didn’t fall asleep, nod off, drift, nap, doze or catch any Zs during Infinity War, so right there you know it was a decent film (at least so far as modern cinema goes).
On the other hand, putting my ultra-critical hat on: The MCU seems to have become an exercise in “phone booth stuffing”, a college craze that I thought was long gone (predecessor to goldfish swallowing and streaking). Boy, that dates me, doesn’t it?
It does seem to be something of a trend: first phone booths
then cars
subways
planes
space stations
and now Marvel Cinematic Universes
There’s freakin twenty four – 24! – characters on that poster, all but one of them a good guy. They could have added at least four more baddies. Also. This may very well have been the reason for no Hawkeye, no Ant Man, no Valkyerie, No Agent Coulson, no Nick Fury . They just could not fit them into the picture frame.
The film itself runs to 149 minutes. If screen time were evenly divided among the principals(!), they’d have gotten about 6 minutes and 12 seconds each. Of course that doesn’t count scenes where more than one character appears at the same time, but still.
Speaking of which; MCU seems to have set the upper limit for “groups of super heroes working together” at five, exclusive of “massive battle scenes attempting to emulate Braveheart”.
I’ll say one final thing. Josh Brolin just did not impress me as the re-done Rooster Cogburn, a bigger than life role that found him being directly compared to one of Hollywood’s biggest bigger-than-life actors. But as Thanos, he’s found his role, despite being hampered by a chin that reminds at least one other character of a different body part. This is good for Avengers flicks, but may not be so good for the man’s future career.
