It's OK but lets hope the sequel is better

Rating: 6/10 (15 May 2018)

It's not a bad film but its ultimately disappointing due to the sheer amount of plot holes and lack of believably I've not seen in a marvel film before. Also there isn't enough character development as the film is practically non-stop action.
I think one of the main downfalls of this film is mixture of the earth bound MCU and the space bound MCU. The guardians of the galaxy shtick works for them in the bounds of space whereas the relative seriousness of the earth bound marvel characters works for them partly because of their limited and sober earthly setting. Mixing these two just doesn't work in my opinion. This film lent too much on the former to its detriment. For example, comedy is regularly overused and occasionally seems out of place given the relative gravity of the situation. Non-stop comedy works well for the guardians and it worked well in Thor Ragnorak but it really is overused here. Don't get me wrong, the jokes mostly hit their mark, I laughed a lot. But this just takes away from the supposed seriousness of the threat they face.
One of the most irritating things in the film for me was Vision. He's one of my favourite characters but for some unexplained reason he seems extremely weak and powerless in this film. He's supposed to be one of the most powerful avengers but seems unable to put up much of a fight at any point. I don't recall him using his phasing or laser powers even once. Very disappointing.
Thanos has the most character development in the film. He's an emotionally complex and extremely powerful villain. But this is an avengers film not a Thanos film so it would have been nice to have seen more of the avengers interacting with each other and having little characters arc moments. They mostly come across quite shallowly as a result.
There are however problems with Thanos and the infinity stones in general. First, Thanos wants to kill half the universes population for quite a flimsy silly reason. Because there are too many people and he wants to balance this out? This doesn't seem like a very good justification. Why would the universe suddenly be better if there were less people? Why care about 'the universe' more than people? He feels justified because his own planet was overpopulated but how does he know that other planets have the same problem? And won't these planets just repopulate themselves in time? His plan doesn't seems like a very practical or permanent solution! Plus, if he has all the infinity stones which give him infinite power then why not think of a more compassionate or permanent solution!?
Thanos becomes way too powerful and so there is no fun watching avengers struggle to contain him, you already know he can only win as this is the first half of Infinity war and can only end badly for the Avengers to set up the next one.
Why does Thor waste so much time making a new hammer? It seems a bit pointless.
Do the avengers on Wakanda really need to open the force-field thus letting in the alien army in order to stop them circling around? This seemed like a massive tactical mistake. The force-field was one of the few things keeping them safe.
The ending of the film where so many heroes 'die' is cheap and empty. We all know that most of these characters will be coming back in the next film as so many of them already have their own sequels lined up.
Some of the cool things in this film:
Ebony Maw is genuinely creepy and his powers are really cool. The other children of Thanos weren't as fleshed out or their powers as interesting or effective but they were still malevolent antagonists.

The red skull appearance was a nice surprise. Totally unexpected.
As usual I love how Ironman fights and its always interesting to see how he has updated his latest suit.
The interaction between Stark and Strange is fun as the two egos butt heads. It would have been nicer to have seen more of this. It's also fun to see Strange using his powers in inventive ways but again not enough of it.
All in all, its fun but its pretty shallow, unless you're a big Thanos fan. Hopefully the real payoff will be in the sequel and there will be more space for the characters to breath. Well, since most of them are temporarily dead there surely will be!