A fun, daring film, but with problems

Rating: 6/10 (30 April 2018)

Strengths:
Fight scenes were fun. All boom boom smash smash. THOR was badass, and so was Strange. Scar Witch was so great too.
Seeing corporation between heroes we've never seen interact with before was pretty refreshing.
The pace of the second half of the movie really set you to the edge of your seat. Very thrilling.
Sometimes, funny.

Weaknesses:
Some things just didn't make sense? Say, Loki's death. After seeing the Hulk unable to put a dent in Thanos, would Loki actually think that his knife would do anything to Thanos at all? Loki's clearly not an idiot.
And also, the asgardians are just gone now? What was the point of the hopeful note at the end of Ragnarok - that home is where the heart is. I guess no hearts needed either.
Above all, Thanos' motives make no sense. His answer to overpopulation is genocide. Great... buuuut, if a single infinity stone, the space stone, can bring infinite power (as we saw in avengers and in the first cap america movie), and a full gauntlet renders the user basically all powerful....? Surely there is a solution other than killing 50% of the universe's population. Can't that big purple head think of a single other solution lol?
Marvel tries to paint him as a villain with a cause, but that cause is pretty ridiculous. As a result, the serious atmosphere they keep trying to build around Thanos, what with his slow, dramatic way of talking etc. falls flat. Compare that to the conflict around the accords in civil war. At least that there was some sort of real dilemma there! It made civil war feel more urgent and tangible.
Not to mention, the whole thing with Gamora is meant to humanise Thanos but, as she says herself, this isn't love. She was abused by him, and they tried to say that all that brainwashing (aka training) he gave her to be his assassin is OK because he 'actually truly loved her'. I imagine the abuse survivors in the audience were feeling pretty great after seeing that.
You could've reduced Gamora to a literal doll, and her interactions with Thanos would barely change. Most of the time, she's just there. We barely see any of the Gamora that we've grown to love in the previous few films.
The plot is repetitive, and a few plot devices are repeated. The "threaten to torture one person to get the other to give up something" is used at least THREE times. The plot is: Thanos has stone 1, a fight, stone 2, a fight, stone 3, a fight, etc. until all 6 are on him and he snaps his fingers. The near misses were often just "the heroes got unlucky": the battle for the time stone, the final stone with vision (they should've destroyed it ages ago), Thor striking Thanos and "almost" getting him. The first time it was interesting, but then it just became annoying.
The idea that "one person comes before all others" was the heroic choice??? I don't think there is any reasonable explanation why this is the ethical or moral choice, and we should just accept that this is the basic moral code of every single hero.
Probable because of time constraints, but i felt that most characters were just *there*. They have one or two lines, maybe a one liner that a fan of their solo film will remember. E.g. I don't recall any memorable lines from anyone from Wakanda. It relies a lot on the fact that you've watched every other movie, or there is simply no emotional weighting to any deaths or fights. Feels a bit more like a TV series crossover, in that regard.
Humour was a hit and miss. I admit I laughed, but probably more from the overall tension than the actual humour. The skit with starlord and thor about thor being manlier wasn't very appetising, and dragged on. I missed the humour from Ragnarok. This movie is taking itself way too seriously, for something with so many problems in plot. Ragnarok was great because it dealt with weighty themes, but wasn't afraid to joke at the fact that it was a goofy comic book movie, this movie would've been more fun with a bit more of that added in.
Finally, clearly this was a 'part one' movie, but they should've advertised it as such. Many feel cheated that the ending had no closure at all. We can't mourn because it's likely that everyone's going to just be revived again and no one's 100% dead. some find this a good point, because it's making things exciting, but it's kind of - well, now it's another year before anything else happens.
OVERALL:
The Russos did well trying to get something cohesive together for a movie with dozens of characters, each with a backstory that an audience member cherishes. There are some problems overall, and it certainly wasn't the best possible MCU movie because of how loose it felt, but It was exciting and tense for the most part and so I don't regret watching it.