Wow

Rating: 9/10 (27 April 2018)

Wow.... Just wow.
Avengers Infinity War: 10 years in the making, this is what the whole of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been building to and boy is it a shocking, enjoyable surprise.
Directed by the Russo Brothers and starring... everyone, Infinity War finally has Thanos collecting the infinity stones, the most powerful items in the universe, together and all our heroes are in a desperate race to stop him.
There's so much that goes on in this movie it's almost impossible to go into detail without spoilers, right from the get go you know that Infinity War has stakes and hopeless stakes at that. They are pulling no punches and surprised me on multiple occasions with their choices. This is the darkest and edgy-est movie Marvel have made but they still kept their light heartedness for the most part, they turned that happy-go-lucky attitude off when it needed and man did it shock you.
Now, this is a big movie huge in fact. But they somehow managed to keep it very contained. Yes there's the big massive group fight, but for majority of the action and story telling its smaller groups interacting with each other. And that's one of the films highlights, there is not a huge team up of every single hero. Instead there's around 3 groups of smaller teams (with 3 different plot lines) and this allows us to see heros we wouldn't otherwise see work and fight together to great effect. And Infinity War does a great job balancing our hero stories with Thanos', yes Thanos has a story and an arc. Speaking of which.
Thanos. Big purple headed CGI Ron Perlman Thanos....
He works.
Everything that has been said about Thanos is completely thrown of the table in the first 5 minutes of Infinity War. He is incredibly intimidating and utterly compelling, whether speaking or letting his actions for him. But not only that you almost find yourself sympathising with him and understanding his motives and choices in the movie. You kinda get his thought process. This makes him a fantastic villain. I thought I'd never see a good CGI villian but Thanos definitely proves me wrong.
And I've unlike other marvel movies, I have no idea where they are going to take this. And that is Infinity Wars greatest triumph. Unpredictably. At no point did you know for definite what was going to happen. And you felt that in the cinema. There's of course an after credit scene. Normally around half the audience leave before this comes around, here no one moved an inch.
The only things going against Infinity War is the start can be a tad clunky. Because over the 10 years of Marvel so many different film makers and writers have worked on these characters pulling all that together at times didn't fit correctly.
Also the very fact that there's 10 years of pervious movies (18 not including Infinity War), am not sure if casual viewers will get the same impact as those who've seen every single one. Am sure they'll be able to understand the gist of Infinity War but they may have a few questions.
This movie is a blast and came as a complete surprise, which I have no idea where they're going to next. I give Avengers Infinity War an A.
And it was pretty damn cool seeing Edinburgh get punched like that.