I’m honestly not even sure how to review this movie for multiple reasons. For one, there’s about a million threads happening, and it would be tedious to go through them all. Secondly, SHOCKING things happen that will SURPRISE you. Nothing will EVER BE THE SAME AGAIN. (But not really.) I would love to just give them all away, but people would be angry.

If you haven’t watched the 112 other Marvel movies up to this point (I haven’t!) all you need to know is that Thanos, who looks like Dickbutt here more than anything, has two (I think) of the (6) Infinity Stones, and is working hard to get the rest of them. His motive is to wipe out half of all living things as a cure for overpopulation.

What follows is about 2 hours of superheroes letting all living creatures down by letting emotions get in the way of logic. Superheroes willing to sacrifice themselves in order to stop HALF OF ALL LIVING THINGS from dying in the universe are turned down. Well laid plans that are about to work get thrown askew because one person is sad, and screws it up. If certain annoying superheroes are about to die, another one does an inexplicable thing that puts an Infinity Stone right in Thanos’s hands. Time and again they make baffling decisions.

Most useless of all is Iron Man. I’m convinced Robert Downey Jr stopped caring about these movies around Iron Man 2, and his characterization of Tony Stark has him talking almost faster than ever. He reads the lines like he’s the Micro Machines guy. Not only that, the story has far outreached the limited abilities Iron Man has as a character. He’s just a dude in a suit fighting against and among gods. Iron Man is basically the comic relief, only he gets top billing.

Honestly, a lot of the movie is people with what are super powers on Earth, but not cosmically, trying to literally punch the strongest being in the universe* in the face and hoping that works. Most of the solutions are just three or four people/aliens/furry creatures trying to fist fight Thanos or his near invincible henchmen. It seems silly after awhile. It makes me think of Dr. Manhattan at the end of The Watchmen when he says “The world’s smartest man poses no more threat to me than does its smartest termite.” Only instead of smartest Thanos would say strongest. Or when Scottie Pippen said “I jam, therefore I am.” It really makes you think.

The movie, like all modern comic book movies, is overly long, featuring many characters who have outlived their usefulness on screen (Iron Man, Captain America), or were never useful (Bucky, Bucky again. Hawkeye if he appeared in the movie, Black Widow, Most of the Avengers really. All of the Avengers? Bucky) We’re really supposed to believe Black Widow or the Wakandan tribe that doesn’t use Vibranium would actually survive and onslaught of ravenous space monsters? It’s already a stretch that someone like Captain America could. Spider-man is fun, but Sony screwed him up so badly, and then Marvel decided to make their version of him Iron Man’s second fiddle (“Finally! More Iron Man!” said Robert Downey Jr’s agent.) is irritating. Iron Man and Spider-man are Abbot and Costello in Space for this movie.

Finally, I’d like to point out that Bucky is pointless, has a stupid name, and Iron Man is dumb.

*I know there’s more powerful entities in the Marvel Universe, but they aren’t in the cinematic one as of now.

Avengers: Infinity War as a comic book movie:

As an actual movie: