Space-Hopping 'Avengers: Infinity War' Raises The Stakes To Infinity — And Beyond
Avengers: Infinity War is — and truly feels like — the culmination of something.
Over the course of many years and many more Marvel Universe films — including some that proved to be hugely successful (Guardians of the Galaxy) and some that proved to be Thor: The Dark World -- the proprietors of that universe have been nesting glowy magical gemstones inside their heroes' stories. We nerdlings familiar with the 1991 Marvel Comics mini-series Infinity Gauntlet (written by Jim Starlin with art by George Perez and Ron Lim) have been waiting patiently for a certain big bald Marvel villain to come along and collect/hoard those sparklies like some kind of purple, cosmically powered space-tyrant/magpie.
Thanos is here at last — an alchemical blend made up of state-of-the-art CGI, an oddly wistful performance from actor Josh Brolin, and Violet Beauregarde's post-gum skin tone — and he's fixin' to cause Trouble. With a capital T, and that rhymes with C, and that stands for cosmic genocide.
Who can stop him, or at least try to? Pretty much every actor who's ever cashed a Marvel Cinematic Universe paycheck, is who. Which is still manages to feel overstuffed, crammed to the gills with characters and locations and events and stakes.
