Near-flawless action/space epic

Rating: 9/10 (25 April 2018)

SPOILER: 'Avengers: Infinity War' is the third Avengers film and the 19th Marvel Cinematic Universe film overall, serving as a culmination of the last 10 years. Will not a full-stop (Avengers 4 comes out next year), it does a great job of bringing the much-teased infinity stones/Thanos storyline together. Lots of knowledge of the previous MCU films is assumed, especially the two most recent films which lead directly in to this film - 'Thor: Ragnarok' and 'Black Panther'. It might make some sense if you haven't seen the others, but probably not too much.
The stakes are certainly high, with a number of deaths of key characters throughout (no spoilers) and the opening scene literally taking no prisoners. The vital part of this film is the villain, Thanos (Brolin) who - despite being large, ugly & purple - gets enough backstory and shows adequate ethos to almost empathise with his reasoning for wanting to destroy half the universe (via the infinity stones). While there's some deaths and plenty of tension/darkness in parts, there's still lots of laughs, mostly thanks to Thor (Hemsworth), Starlord (Pratt), Rocket (Cooper) and Drax (Bautista).
The CGI is fantastic the entire film, with plenty of scenes in space and on new planets, which is always great to see - as is Iron Man (Downey Jr.)'s inevitable new suit. The way the team-ups are handled is done really well, with Dr Strange (Cumberbatch), the Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-Man (Holland), Black Panther (Boseman) and the Avengers all split up, so there's always different scenes moving things along at a good pace. The third act battle is not predictable and the ending is hugely shocking - certainly no cop-out.