A worthy conclusion of a ten-year journey but no masterpiece

Rating: Null/10 (25 April 2019)

Considering that the writers had so many opportunities to mess this up they did a marvelous job of holding all the strings to so many story arcs together and leading them to satisfying resolutions worthy of the characters we have come to love and respect in the MCU.
Time travel always is a tricky business for a writing team and if you dig a little in this story you'll sure find the inevitable logical inconsistencies and paradoxes but they are handled well and don't distract from the storytelling. The emotions are injected just right and even though the final moment of triumph was to be expected they added enough plot twists and suspense to make an ultimate defeat at least plausible.
Why then don't I think that this isn't the best work in the MCU? Well, one reason might be that they walk back the character development of the main villain Thanos. In Infinity War he was presented as a villain who at least had a clear and somewhat logical motivation for his actions and he had to sacrifice to attain his ultimate goal. The Thanos we see defeated at the hands of the Avengers is one-dimensional and megalomaniacal like a cookie cutter comic book villain and his defeat hinges on several "changes of heart" by key characters which seem implausible considering their stage of development in the "time line".
All that being said, this movie leaves the MCU in an interesting state to go forward. I just fear that the movie will not stand the test of time very well.