88Nine’s Justin Barney and Milwaukee Film’s Kristopher Pollard are buds, they like cinema—they’re Cinebuds.
This week on the podcast, Kpolly and Justin go all the way in about the new Avengers movie, "Infinity War" and they include a word on how long super hero movies have been the biggest blockbusters around and if they can continue to be.
Read more and listen to the full episode below.
The basics
In "Infinity War," the Avengers unite to battle their most powerful enemy yet—the evil Thanos. On a mission to collect all six Infinity Stones, Thanos plans to use the artifacts to destroy the world.
The Avengers movies have never lacked for hype, but "Infinity War" set a record with the biggest opening weekend in movie history. That's because practically every superhero movie before it has built up to this. And this is only half of it. There's a sequel in the works, too.
The cast list alone made this a must-see. Chances are, if you've ever been a fan of any Marvel superhero ever, they're in this movie. There are 23 lead characters just on the poster.
Making appearances are:
Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk, Black Widow, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, Vision, Winter Soldier, Doctor Strange, Wong, Star-Lord, Gamora, Nebula, Groot, Rocket, Drax the Destroyer, Mantis, Spider-Man, The Black Panther, Ant-Man, War Machine, Falcon, Shuri, Okoye, Loki and M'Baku.
Semi-spoiler alert:
We can't talk about this movie without this part. You've probably already heard, but we'll say spoiler alert anyway.
They all die. Well most of them. And, some are deader than others.
Don't worry though, comic books have always had a history of killing characters off and resurrecting them, well...a comical amount of times.
But, when it's no longer life and death, does it all lose meaning? It seems to take away from the impact when we know we have all these sequels coming. So, it's best not to think about movie news and enjoy these films one at a time, just like comic book readers.
Anyway, back to this movie, because we did like it overall.
It's pretty bleak when you go along with the belief that they're all gone for good. But, "Infinity War" actually does a good job with balancing these darker themes with lighter ones—something that a lot of superhero movies have been missing for awhile.
Instead, "Infinity War" reaches extremes on both sides. The villain believes he's doing good, while he's trying to kill half the world. The "teams" of heroes and their contrasting personalities were perfectly rostered and balanced. You know they are going to win eventually, but they lost first. And, in the middle of the world ending, it's still funny.
The future of superhero movies
This insane movie doesn't hold back. So much so that it's hard to imagine how these Marvel movies can continue for very much longer. Are superhero movies going to be over soon? We don't think so. Hear our debate by listening to our full conversation in the podcast above.
And, if you haven't seen "Avengers: Infinity War" yet, what are you doing? Get to a theater. It's still playing in Milwaukee.
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