Marvel's Avengers: Infinity War Backlash

Updated: Apr 1, 2018

Trigger warning: This material may not be suitable for T&L’s “stick to sports” audience.

This week, Marvel released the newest Avengers: Infinity War trailer and pegged the movie as “the most ambitious crossover event in history.” This statement is so hyperbolic and incorrect that it’s actually laughable; Infinity War has now become a meme (which is admittedly low-hanging fruit).

While Infinity War is looking like it’ll be a fantastic movie––I can’t wait to see how it will reinvent the Marvel Universe—I really don’t think calling it history’s “most ambitious crossover event” makes a lot of sense. But first let’s look at the facts:

This movie will combine over 40 superheroes from the movies Ant-Man, Black Panther, Captain America: The First Avenger, Captain America: Civil War, Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy, Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 2, Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, The Avengers, The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Thor and Spider-Man. The superheroes who will appear in the movie are from both Earth and space, and the Guardians of the Galaxy will be joining forces with The Avengers and Co. to fight Thanos.

While it may seem that Marvel is accomplishing some big feat by utilizing almost every superhero they’ve implemented throughout the past 10 years of moviemaking, this sort of mixture really should have been expected––Marvel has been intermingling these characters in its comic series for years now, and they certainly have the budget to do the same thing on the big screen. So for that reason, calling it “the most ambitious crossover event in history” is somewhat of a slap in the face to other more ambitious crossovers in the entertainment business.

Twitter naturally took fire once Marvel made this decree; the memes went ablaze.