A real shocker

Rating: 10/10 (31 July 2018)

After 18 films and 10 years of building up to this moment, Avengers: Infinity War has finally been released. It is directed by Joe and Anthony Russo who also directed two other films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Captain America 2 and 3. The film is a huge culmination of 18 films and 10 years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Before the film was even released it was already bound to be huge as it had 2 unique selling points. The first is that Infinity War marks the first time that a feature-length movie has been filmed entirely on IMAX cameras. The 2nd is that the directors promised that several characters will be killed off which was something that fans wanted due to the argument that the films lack stakes if characters always survive.
There are over 40 main characters in this film with pretty much every superhero from previous films making a return. These include: The Avengers, The Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-man, Doctor Strange and Black Panther and others as well as a lot of their supporting casts. Despite it being an Avengers film, the primary antagonist, Thanos, has the most screen time and we mainly go with him throughout his plan. This has the positive effect of making us sympathise with him and could arguably make an audience slightly agree with his points and motivation. Honestly, I believe that this was the right idea as it added more depth to Thanos' plan to collect all 6 infinity stones in order to wipeout half all life in the universe as apposed to some villains who seem to just be evil because they are evil.
The film had a good level of balance. It wasn't trying too hard to be funny like some predecessors were however had some level of humor that we have come to expect from Marvel films by now. It was a joy seeing the mixture of some of the characters such as Iron Man, Doctor Strange and Star Lord's ego fueled arguments and the Guardians of the Galaxy swooning over Thor's physique. Also, who didn't cheer when Thor, Rocket and Groot landed in Wakanda. There were some things that I expected to happen that didn't. For example, I thought Iron Man and Cap would reconcile after their fight in Civil War. But I guess we have Avengers 4 for that. Which brings me to the film's conclusion... At first it had me speechless. I genuinely could not believe that it was over. It played with many peoples emotions and honestly, there were grown people crying in the cinema (admitedly myself included).
Another thing that I would praise is the soundtrack. There are some parts of the films where the original score from the first film appeared such as when Captain America, Black Widow and Falcon appeared. However the theme does change later symbolising the darker tone. This is especially seen during the end-credits with the slow sound of the piano ending the theme.
One negative thing I would say about it is that because of the amount of characters and amount of things going on, it is quite hard to keep up with it all. There were times when I forgot about certain characters and their motivation and I believe that this could put a lot of people off or make them lose interest. Another thing is that whilst some deaths were really heartbreaking, others were slightly less impactful as we can tell that they will return in the future which can lead you to wonder if none of these deaths actually matter. On the other hand though, we have to live with these deaths until 2019 when the currently untitled Avengers 4 is released.
I would 100% recommend this film to fans of comic-book films and also to people who have a problem with them being repetitive as this film changes the norm of what would usually be seen. I heavily enjoyed this film and it is en-route to become one of my favourite films of all time, partly because of the sheer scale of it and partly because of the shock ending. This was a Thanos movie at heart and I would go far as calling him one of the best film villains of this decade. It did a stellar job of putting together a storyline that they had been building for 10 years whilst also getting people excited for the future.