Some decent fight scenes and a few funny parts but that's about it

Rating: 4/10 (22 May 2018)

There's something odd about Infinity War and a lot of other Marvel films and it's hard to put my finger on it. But after thinking about it, here's an analogy. It's like watching a sports game where the top seeded team plays the lowest seeded team. If you're a fan of the top seeded team, then it's an amazing game. It's a very safe experience. You get to watch your team decimate their opponent. Every play is fun to watch and you leave feeling superior and satisfied. As an example I'll point out the first action sequence in Winter Soldier. Captain America jumps out of an airplane without a parachute like he's headed out to pick up the morning paper. When he lands on the ship of bad guys it looks like he's just in a casual daily sparring exercise. I felt no tension at all that he was in danger or that he couldn't take the entire ship down by himself. But here's where Marvel has it figured out. It LOOKS cool and impressive. Each kick and punch is thrown highly stylized and well choreographed. That is the problem there in general with Infinity War and others. I'd say I like about half the Marvel movies just to put that out there. To put things in contrast I'll bring up the show Agents of Shield(which sadly has been more or less cast out by Marvel). The writing on the show can be somewhat repetitive but what they do get right is the tension(and the amazing characters). Every season they put them through absolute hell over and over and over to the point where I don't know who is going to survive and even if they do, how will they recover emotionally? I'll frantically binge watch a season in like 2 weeks, staying up till 3 AM each night and then get mad at myself that I'm too tired to continue watcing. I don't feel this with the Marvel movies. But like I said before, Marvel has discovered that they don't need to make a tense storyline or deep relate-able characters. Really it's all about showcasing everyone's favorite character be dominant and show off their powers. One of the problems with Infinity War is that it felt like a sports game where they were giving out participation awards. Back in the day I was an avid comic book reader. And I knew that there was a wide range of characters with varying levels of powers. Some stronger, some medium and some without powers at all. It brought tension and interesting dynamics to the stories because why in the heck would Captain America take on Thanos head-on seriously? Cap is a smart guy. He's not that stupid. As far as super abilities Cap is on the lesser end. Similar to Batman in many ways. He uses his intelligence, speed and fighting ability most of all. But he knew his limitations and his comic book had a raw relate-ability that other comics didn't. The fact that Cap actually beat the crap out of Iron Man in Civil War is absolutely preposterous. So there were many moments in Infinity War where super heroes were treated on equal levels when they shouldn't have been. I have some other criticisms of the movie like how all minor villains were completely forgettable. I don't know their names or really much anything about them. And Black Widow continues to annoy me with her invincibility and the fact that she is so American it's cringe worthy. And Thanos' supposed sacrifice of Gomorrah and his inner pain that was trying to pull on my heart strings? Yeah not very believable. The movie wasn't terrible... just to clarify. But the main thing I wanted to point out is that many people are saying this is a great movie and well that's your opinion but maybe it's just a great looking movie and you enjoy it because you get to see your favorite heroes kick butt. But does that make it a good movie though? You could argue that it did have tension because at the end half of the characters die. By the time all that started happening I already knew that Marvel doesn't have the guts to kill of anyone major. They'll all be back in the next movie :)