As I write this AIW already has the biggest opening in movie history. It’s made 100 crores in India over the opening weekend. That itself puts many Bahubalis in Indian Cinema to shame. And this windfall is due to a meticulously crafted series of movies over the last decade. It’s no mean feat. Am wondering what the team creating this gargantuan plan would be feeling today. The sheer scale of it, the number of people involved, the number of stars made, the amount of money made is unparalleled. And for that itself you gotta give it to the visionaries behind it.
Infinity War is a challenging film to make – the converging plot lines, the amount of characters involved, the limited run time – but the Russo brothers come up trumps. They set up the 2-part epic finale beautifully for the last one to make even more money. And they take a page out of the DC world to do it!!!
Marvel films are generally fun films with very few emotionally charged moments. They are light, entertaining, crowd pleasing films. Yes, you have the odd Pepper Potts melodrama, but no real loss is felt in these films. DC movies on the other hand are dark, brooding, full of loss and grief. They do Emotional Atyachaar in SuperHero films and that’s partly the reason they don’t make as much money. Russo brothers take a dash of the Emo and pour it into the fun Marvel cauldron. And the result is even more moolah it seems.
The fact that so many things are happening in parallel makes the edit quite challenging. The story is simple. Thanos, is the Nirav Modi of this story! He is out to get all the Infinity Stones for himself. He doesn’t care about passports. He just apparates and disapparates from one planet to another to get his multi-coloured gem stones.
Apparently a Saadhu Baba has told him about collecting all colours so that he can finally save the world. And woh kehte hain naa… “Agar tum kisi cheez ko shiddat se chaaho, toh saari kaaynaat usse tumse milaane ki saajish karti hai”. Yeah, the entire world starts conspiring for him. Things start falling into place, coincidences galore occur, heroes go to him to hand deliver stones and he finds true love in his heart as well! Hai naa kahani poori filmy.... Aur toh aur, this time the gatekeepers (Avengers) know about Nirav’s fraud, but are as ineffectual as India’s extradition lawyers!
While the story is fairly straightforward, the screenplay has its pacing problems and the editing is choppy in some places. The fact that there are so many characters, means that the writers need to keep the scenes short. These scenes should also move the story forward in some way, hence things happen oh-so-conveniently. This makes emotional involvement, a little difficult. It goes from one scene to the other, one planet to the other, one set up to the other a little too quickly. And the fact that so much happens within that scene in so little time, makes you move on faster. So when there are deaths, of characters you have known for years – you have to move on fairly quickly. ( Yeah, be ready for some deaths)
But that's just one minor problem in this entertainment powerhouse. With set-pieces lighting up the screen every 10 minutes, you have more than your share of popcorn. It’s total paisa vasool. And if they had just deleted Star-Lord from the cast, this would have been perfect (He is the Pappu here)!
So go on. If you already haven’t spent money on this film, go ahead and give Disney your money for some Marvel-lous entertainment. Baaki….. Nirav Modi kya waapis aayega? Yaa sab kuch raakh ho jayega? For that we will have to wait for 2019. Until then, watch the film - the one in which Ramesh Babu finally finds out the Asli keemat of a Chutki!!
Rating: 4/5 - Despite its problems it deserves kudos considering the challenge of giving screen time to so many heroes and the fact that this is a culmination of something envisioned a decade ago. Staggering.
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