Infinity War Combines All the Best & Worst Qualities of a Comic Book Event Crossover

[Minor Relationship Spoilers for Infinity War]

I loved Infinity War, but I could see how some wouldn’t. It is all the best and worst of events storyline in comics. High stakes, big emotional moments, but a narrative that depends mostly on you caring about the characters because of better written stand-alone stories. An event rarely stands by itself as being satisfying. It is satisfying because it’s basically taking all your favorite toys together in the bathtub, filling it up with water and pulling the drain to see which ones get sucked away.

Now for me, that works a lot because I’m emotionally invested in these characters and the actors behind them. Seeing them hurt makes me hurt even if my smarter half knows this is an event story and the stakes only matter until it’s over.

That didn’t stop from screaming MY CHILD several times during the movie for a variety of different characters. In that sense, a lot of IW is highly manipulative because it relies heavily on wrecking your feelings in every way possible and playing into the fact that we love them and have cared about these character for years.

That being said, it is also super underwritten and rushed through some emotional moments in order to create those moments. Especially when it comes to the relationships between Thanos and Gamora and Vision and Wanda.

We have seen Thanos and Gamora interact once, but so much of their story in Infinity War is focused on their father-daughter relationships and supposed to give Thanos some level of humanity.

Wanda and Vision have been a couple for years in the comics and the concept of their coupling was introduced in Civil War, but again, because Vision possesses the Mind Stone, the relationship between the two is key in the film, except we have to basically rush through actually seeing any kind of relationship to just being like…okay they love each other here.

Seeing as how I dislike both of these characters in this universe, I could not even begin to care about them or their relationship. However, I know enough about comics and their characters to at least pretend to.

In that sense Infinity War signifies something better than a successful movie, it signifies that Marvel has managed to make us all feel more connected to non-mainstream Marvel characters more than DC could with Superman. Super-fucking-man.

While I was later bloomer to love Superman, in the almost 8 years I converted, he has become one of my absolute favorite characters. Yet, I felt nothing watching BvS when he died. I shed actual tears when I watched the Superman: The Animated Series version of the destruction of Krypton. Man of Steel‘s death of Krypton made me bored. Supergirl constantly reminds me what I love about that universe and the Superman mythos, while Justice League finally gave us the Superman we deserved personality wise…but that CGI mouth ruined every moment he was on screen.

I care more about Groot than Superman, which is a damn shame. I’m sure there will be some people who feel like Infinity War is messy and that it will get undo praise and that is a perfectly reasonable opinion, but it made us care. It made us care about these characters, this world and in Thanos gave us a real, threat to the team and the universe.

For a superhero movie in 2018, post-Black Panther so many people were ready to write this movie off, but it stuck the landing and accepted itself as a comic-book film in the truest, messiest and most glorious way possible.

(image: Marvel)

Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!

—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—