5 things standing between Avengers: Infinity War and total failure

Still from Avengers: Infinity War trailer (2018). Image via Marvel/Disney

The supersized cast can’t drag the movie down

This one is incredibly obvious, but it’s also the biggest hurdle for Infinity War to overcome. The directors have stated that this installment will feature 67 characters. Which, you have to admit, is kind of mind-blowing.

While it will undoubtedly be cool to get to see all the MCU characters packed into one movie, I have a hard time imagining that it will be anything more than a novelty at best, and an obnoxious slog of did-you-get-that-references at worst.

In many ways, the massive cast guarantees that Infinity War will be a unique experiment, even if it sucks. A movie with such a huge cast is a rare thing to begin with, and this movie will be banking on the brand recognition of many of its superheroes. What might become a problem is when that brand recognition becomes the entire basis of those characters in the story.

To conceptualize how Infinity War might handle so many characters, it might help to look to Marvel’s largely successful experiment with a larger than usual cast: Civil War.

Of course, Civil War is by no means a perfect movie. At best the plot is far-fetched, and at worst it is deeply convoluted. But the film succeeds in spite of that by the graces of its humor, its wit, and its solid foundation of character-driven momentum that makes its action sequences actually mean something.

However, Infinity War’s success won’t be as simple as copying Civil War’s formula. With five times as many characters in play and the stakes driven galactically higher, Infinity War is a bigger movie on every level. But obviously, bigger isn’t always better. After a relentless onslaught of world-ending films over the past decade, the threat of Earth’s destruction is hardly enough to warrant a second look.

Next: Check out Twitter's reactions to the new Infinity War trailer

Do we really need every single MCU character in one movie? What is it accomplishing, other than for the sake of a bunch of cameos? Is it actually possible to utilize that many characters in a way that justifies their presence in the story, when you only have a two and a half hour movie block to do so? I honestly don’t know. But I look forward to see how Infinity War attempts to answer those questions.