It's good, but it's not Top 10 on IMDb Top 250 good

Rating: 6/10 (2 May 2018)

There are some films that simply can not be reviewed without going into spoilers. 'Avengers: Infinity Wars' is one of them, so fair warning. I watch roughly 150 films each year and yet this is the first MCU movie I have seen. Not a single one of them up until now appealed to me. What finally got me along to see this one? Well the fact that it is currently sitting in the top 10 of the IMDb Top 250 had a little to do with it. I had to see what all the fuss was about. There are some truly tremendous and groundbreaking films in that list and the top 10 in particular holds some of the greatest films ever made. 'Avengers: Infinity Wars' has no business being there.
There are a lot of characters in this movie to keep up with and it is frankly exhausting at times. Admittedly, the film actually does a pretty god job of balancing everyone and giving them sufficient screen time and a purpose for being in the movie. There are so many characters though and so many story arcs that it can become a little frustrating waiting for the good ones to role around again. What I've learnt is that there are some incredibly strong characters in this universe ('Iron Man' was the stand-out for me) and some phenomenally weak characters too ('Captain America' probably being the weakest from what I could ascertain).
The strongest thing the movie has going for it is the character of 'Thanos'. A genuinely intimidating, menacing and threatening villain is always the key to any superhero movie being good. Josh Brolin plays him brilliantly (as he always does) and this film owes a lot to that character alone.
Now let's get into those spoilers by talking about the ending. Basically 'Thanos' wins and with the click of his fingers kills half the universe. We then see roughly half of the superheroes crumble into nothing and "die" (supposedly). I suspect this has a lot to do with the film having such a high IMDb rating. It turns out people love an ending where the bad guys win. That makes me happy, because it doesn't happen anywhere near enough in Hollywood today.
My problem with the ending though is this. If you really think those characters are dead, never to be seen again, then you are sorely mistaken. So in that sense it is incredibly cheap. I hate movies (universes) where a character dying doesn't actually mean they're dead (DC is just as guilty of this sadly). As if this isn't obvious enough to 90% of people, the film actually reminds of you of this fact not 5 minutes prior when a character is killed only for 'Thanus' to go back a few moments in time and thus bring him back to life.
Enjoy this film for what it is. It's a great looking flick, with some excellent action sequences, funny one-liners and a menacing villain with a clear and simple plot that is easy to follow. It's done well no one could deny that, but don't try and claim that is something truly great and worthy of the IMDb top 10 because that is simply not the case.