Get Ready for Avengers: Infinity War (a Crib Sheet)
Posted on April 13, 2018 at 3:56 pm
Copyright Disney/Marvel 2018A lot is happening in “Avengers: Infinity War,” opening April 27, 2018, and there are a lot of characters and locations in 240 action-packed minutes. Some refresher/background:
Characters include the Avengers we already know: Iron Man, Captain America, Ant Man, Spider-Man, Black Panther, Black Widow, Thor, Hawkeye, Hulk, Dr. Strange (all of whom except Black Widow and Hawkeye have had their own movies), plus the secondary characters like Pepper Potts, Happy Hogan, and Heimdal and a few who are sometimes on our side, sometimes against us characters: Loki, Scarlet Witch, Bucky (glimpsed at the end of “Black Panther”), War Machine, Jarvis, Nebula, plus the “Guardians of the Galaxy” group, including Star Lord/Peter, Gamora, Drax, Groot, and Rocky Racoon.
The bad guy is Thanos, played by Josh Brolin, who basically wants to control or destroy everyone and everything. For that he needs all of the infinity stones, some of which we have already seen. Nerdist has a great, detailed breakdown of the stones and their history and powers.
Basically, all you need to know is that the bad guy is going to destroy everything and the good guys in various quippy combinations, are going to do their best to stop him, and if they can’t, of course they will AVENGE!
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and brief suggestive material
Profanity:
Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Drinking and drunkenness
Violence/ Scariness:
Extended comic book fantasy peril and violence
Diversity Issues:
None
Date Released to Theaters:
November 3, 2017
Date Released to DVD:
March 5, 2018
Copyright Disney 2017New Zealand director Taika Waititi is exactly what Marvel/Disney needed, a true fanboy who loves superheroes because they are fun. Away with you, brooding and tortured comic book characters! What we want to see is a superhero who gets messed with, some colorful characters, a fascinatingly deranged villain, some thrilling action and slamming special effects, a surprise cameo, and, after a suitable series of setbacks, triumph. Plus some post-credit scenes. There’s all of that in this movie, plus some of the funniest moments on screen this year. It is irreverent, even cheeky. It has a sense of humor about itself while never, ever making fun of comic books or their fans.
Waititi, with a script by Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, and Christopher Yost, has taken one of the most serious of the Avengers, with only Chris Hemsworth’s imperishable charm keeping him just this side of wooden, and made use of his fellow antipodean’s true superpower, which is that he is a superb comic actor.
What does Thor have going for him? He has his dad, the king of the gods, Odin (Sir Anthony Hopkins), his home, Asgard, his strength, his hair, his divinity, his confidence, and his hammer. He loses most of that pretty quickly, and stripped down Thor suddenly becomes a much more relatable character, more deserving of our support because he actually seems to need it. You might even say down to earth, except that earth does not really come into it this time.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Thor begins. “Oh, no, Thor is in a cage.” He’s not talking to us, and finding out who he is telling his story to is the first hint we get that we are operating in a slightly cracked universe. But then, reassuringly, Thor does his Thor thing and gets himself out of a big mess with endless panache.
And then things go wrong. The Goddess of Death (Cate Blanchett) turns up to crush his hammer in her hands. She intends to take over Asgard and there does not seem to be anything he can do about it. He ends up on a planet that is essentially a junk pile, where he is discovered by scavengers. “Are you a fighter or are you food?” they ask him. Before they can gobble him up, he is captured by another scavenger (a terrific Tessa Thompson), who turns out to have a connection to Asgard. But she sells him to the Grandmaster (a glam Jeff Goldblum), who runs a lucrative gladiator show for galactic fans. Waiting to go to battle in the arena, Thor meets the movie’s most endearing character, a rock creature named Korg, played by Waititi himself. And then Thor sees his opponent in the battle to the death: his old Avenger buddy Hulk (Mark Ruffalo). We may love seeing the Avengers join together to take on the bad guys, but we love seeing them fight each other, too, and the Thor/Hulk fight is a smash. Literally.
Loki is there, too, I’m happy to say, and I only wish that someday he will have a movie of his own. Tom Hiddleston’s silky bad boy admits at one point that his loyalties shift moment to moment, and his mercurial impishness is perfectly calibrated. Despite her best efforts, Blanchett’s villain is not nearly as interesting as the other characters, and the resolution does not have the emotional weight that it does in the comics. But she barely diminishes the sheer fun of this film and I hope Marvel keeps Waititi on the roster for as many of these as he is willing to take on.
NOTE: Stay through the credits for TWO extra scenes!
Parents should know that this is a superhero movie with a lot of peril and action-style fantasy violence and some disturbing images, some alcohol, and some strong language.
Family discussion: What does Loki want? Which Avenger would you most like to be? What makes someone significant?
If you like this, try: “Guardians of the Galaxy” and the Avengers movies
Rated PG-13 for sci-fi violence and action, suggestive material and brief language
Profanity:
Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:
Extended sci-fi/action violence, guns, chases, characters injured and killed including genocide
Diversity Issues:
A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:
July 21, 2017
Date Released to DVD:
November 21, 2017
Copyright 2017 STX FilmsYes, the visuals and special effects in Luc Besson’s “Valerian and the City of the Thousand Planets” are next-level, dazzling, stunning, and themselves worth the price of a ticket (3D please). But let’s be honest. The best special effect in the movie is the lovely real face of Rihanna as Bubble, a shape-shifting alien our hero meets in an inter-galactic strip club.
That hero would be Valerian (Dane DeHaan), who has gone to the strip club in search of the disguise he needs to infiltrate an alien compound and rescue the woman he loves, his space partner Laureline (Cara Delevingne). She was captured as the two of them were on a mission to…oh, who cares what the mission was? It’s your basic save the universe stuff. You know and I know and they know you are not there for the subtleties of the space city that incorporates, “Zootopia”-style, every possible creature and culture, a veritable Pepperland of comity and the exchange of learning. In the opening scenes, we see the history of the place, as human astronauts welcome aboard an increasing variety of visitors with a warm handshake, first from other countries, and then from other planets and galaxies, still with something as close to a handshake as possible.
This is the movie Luc Besson has wanted to make since he was a teenager, base on a French comic book series from the 1960’s with a visionary aesthetic that inspired Besson’s own “5th Element” and George Lucas’ “Star Wars.” He had to wait decades until the technology made it possible to do the ravishing visuals justice. That is the good news and the bad news. The good news is that the visuals are indeed ravishing, worth a couple of viewings on the biggest screen you can find and then a couple more when you can watch it at home and hit “pause” to see every detail. The bad news is that the storyline has not held up as well over the years as the settings, in part because much of it has also been appropriated, too, over the years, partly because times have changed, and partly because it wasn’t that great to begin with. Valerian and Laureline banter back and forth about whether he can make a commitment to her as they try to save the world. It is supposed to be part of the fun of the story that they are cool and casual. Valerian even wears a Hawaiian shirt at one point instead of his spiffy spacesuit (they are undercover as tourists). But their characters are so bland, especially by contrast with the wildly imaginative world they are racing through, that it drags on the storyline. That’s disappointing because it distracts from some promising flickers of substance.
Parents should know that this film includes extensive sci-fi peril, action, and violence with many guns and blasters, characters injured and killed, sad deaths, references to genocide, corruption, brief strong language, provocative dance and references to prostitution.
Family discussion: Why do Valerian and Laureline disagree about the converter? How do you know when to break the rules?
If you like this, try: “Avatar” and “The Fifth Element”
My second day at San Diego Comic-Con 2017: I saw the actors from the new Amazon Prime series “The Tick” in a press room, and then interviewed Joseph LoDuca, composer for all of the “Evil Dead” movies about how to create scary sounds, Kris Bowers about composing for the “Dear White People” series, Rachel Keller about acting on “Legion,” and Blake Neely about writing music for “The Flash,” “Arrow,” “Supergirl,” “Riverdale,” (including the musical episode of “Flash”). I saw Donald Faison moderate a panel about “Buddy Thunderstruck,” the stop-motion animation series about the adventures of a dog driver and his ferret mechanic, a panel of storyboard and pre-viz artists from movies like “The Matrix,” “Game of Thrones,” the Marvel movies, and the Jackie Robinson movie, “42.” The topics ranges from the most practical (“Can he raise his arms in that uniform?”) to the most conceptual (the reality levels for fantasy vs. the real world).
Of course I also so some great costumes, and I will be posting photos later. To the guy I thought at first was a cop, until I saw the smushed silver disks on your chest and realized you were Terminator 2: well played, sir. I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to take your picture.
