Avengers: Infinity War: Good, but No Fight Club

WUndergound’s Arts & Culture staff was lucky enough to receive a press pass to the highly anticipated Avengers: Infinity War. Our spoiler-free verdict: very entertaining film, but does not hold a candle to David Fincher’s Fight Club.

Avengers: Infinity War is the culmination of an expansive, 10-year cinematic universe, that disappointingly, does not include Fight Club in its canon. The film stars Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans, and a bunch of other actors who are neither Edward Norton nor Brad Pitt. The plot sees Earth’s mightiest heroes take on Thanos, a power-hungry alien with a craving for destruction. While this villain showed promise, he is never revealed to be a figment of Captain America’s imagination, making for a rather lackluster conclusion.

The character count (who are, mind you, ALL real in the plot of the movie) is quite high, but at a runtime of of 1.15 Fight Clubs, the directors are able to give each one their share of screentime. However, NONE of the film’s runtime is devoted to ingeniously subtle subliminal messages that pop up on screen. Hopefully the Blu-ray release addresses this mistake.

While the themes of Avengers: Infinity War don’t point out the flaws in the culture of corporate America, there is a substantial amount of punching, which Fight Club also has. In fact, a punch is thrown in almost every scene! This was almost enough to save the movie, until the credits rolled and I realized Spider-Man had not said anything about how “the things you own end up owning YOU” (that’s a quote from 1999’s Fight Club, which I highly recommend).

Overall, Avengers: Infinity War is a fun summer blockbuster, but don’t go in expecting Fight Club. They took it out of theatres like 20 years ago.

Rating: 3/5 Fight Clubs