Weak Entry in the MCU Series

Rating: 5/10 (7 January 2019)

The Marvel films are not high art, nor are they great entertainment, but they're fun for what they are: cheesy, brainless action fests with some shallow character development to make them feel like they have at least some microscopic depth. I love them, but I'm not under any delusion that they're something wonderful.
This film is even further from wonderful than the series has offered so far. The plot is piled high with so many concurrent stories, they all come out as underdeveloped. If you want just a hodge podge of fights and shooting, you'll love this, but there isn't much else going on, at all, and even that aspect of it is disappointing. At a certain point in the film, random Marvel characters just start showing up out of nowhere, as if they'd given up on creating a reason for them to be there.
The worst part of the movie is the ridiculous monster Thanos. He's unoriginal, uninteresting, and the animation of his absurd face, body, and clothing are so obviously fake, I felt like I was watching a cartoon whenever he was on screen. I didn't like him when I first saw him in Guardians: I thought he was a silly, cartoonish monster bad guy, and I was greatly disappointed that he headlined this film. Unfortunately, the goofy, kid-bate aspects of movies like Guardians and Ant Man have taken over the entire franchise because otherwise, they would have written a more interesting antagonist for this one. And what's with the beard, or the wrinkles that look like a beard; just another example of how silly Thanos is as a character.
Be warned if you haven't seen this one: it's got a "sad" and rather abrupt ending. I admire them for trying to break the standard a bit, but it felt forced and unfinished because, I'd guess, the writers aren't used to having such an ending for such a film. It doesn't work, by the way.