Truly epic

Rating: 8/10 (29 April 2018)

This film does justice to the characters, the cinematic universe, the source material, and most importantly, the fans who've supported the MCU and have been waiting for this specific story to begin to unfurl.
It's a THRILLING cinematic experience. The first part of a five hour biblical epic in the skin of a galactic comic book space opera. This is studio film-making on the narrative and production scale of Peter Jackson's Middle Earth movies and old studio epics like Ben-Hur, Cleopatra, El CID, and The Ten Commandments (only with loads more CGI).
Selfishly , I only wished that the story could somehow have been presented in all of its five hour glory. Truth be told, I hate having to wait another year for its conclusion.
But anyway, here's a spoiler free summation of my thoughts:
The plot of the movie is pretty basic: Thanos comes to earth and a bunch of other planets in search of the stones needed to assemble the Infinity Gauntlet. The Avengers must stop him. You already knew that. But the execution was nearly flawless. Marvel studios and all the filmmakers did an amazing job of making a very coherent storyline from the countless characters and threads the movie had to weave together and converge with Thanos, played with fantastic intelligence and subtlety by Josh Brolin. Thanos isn't you typical mustachio twirling scene chewing bad guy. He's surprisingly quite and sensible giving him a really calm, almost Hannibal lector like sense of menace. And he looks great.
Actually all of the actors in the movie, namely the heroes, gave solid performances. But the real standouts for me were Chris Hemsworth, whose really has come into his own in the last year as Thor, and Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange. Those two characters have some of the best scenes in the movie and have some of the best repartee. On that note:
The humor in the movie mostly fell flat, even when it was amusing. The stakes of the movie were just way too big, the tension just too high, for me to laugh. But that's just me.
The action sequences were freaking phenomenal right from the gate. This movies action does NOT disappoint. And the movie doesn't go cheap with Thanos fighting...I'll just stop myself right there :)
What was much less exciting was the action involving Thanos' henchman. But that may be due to the fact that the filmmakers were very inconsistent with there power level and the power level of some of the other Avengers in the numerous fight sequences. Nothing takes me out of an action scene quicker than when characters who've I've seen portrayed on film, in some cases numerous times, have their powers nerfed or juiced up. In movies, like an many other things, consistency is key. But again, that's just me.
Now...at this stage I don't think mentioning that there were casualties is a spoiler. But i won't get into specifics, either in terms of a number or a name. What I will say is that even if you're a casual MCU fan like I am, and you've seen all the movies, nothing will, or at least should, shock you.
The biggest shock is in the way the filmmakers handle the key moment in the film... its darkest hour so to speak. That small moment, one simple action that was cleverly set up throughout the film, was incredibly poetic and haunting. I'm not lying when I say that you could literally feel the air leave the theater when it happened. Absolutely splendid. Made the movie for me. What followed in the last five minutes or so was a mix of good and okay. Nothing surprising to me.
That's really where the fact that the movie is only part one of a larger story came back to hurt my enjoyment of it. I would also say that the nature of Thanos' goal, which I won't spoil, also played a part in that. The movie tried to tug on my emotional heart strings but the loss Thanos inflected on the heroes simply didn't cut close enough to the spine of the heroes to really make me feel anything. I'm dancing around this point but in general, the better you know someone, the more you're emotionally invested in them, and the more it hurts when there gone. I'll leave it at that.

I'll close with stating that if your even a casual MCU fan you'll really enjoy Infinity War. It's a magnificent big screen sci-fi/space opera epic...just don't expect it to give you closure or really big emotional payoffs. Infinity War is as stated at the start, a part one film...and a damned good one at that. It's thoroughly entertaining and brilliantly sets the table for what promises to be an even grander Infinity War Part II... I mean Avengers 4 ;)