Thanos is Magnificent

Rating: 8/10 (27 April 2018)

Well, this seems as if it was the first Avengers movie where Tony Stark didn't hog the centre of attention. In fact it seems to be pretty evenly spaced between all of the Marvel characters, and with the number that have now come into the franchise, I was wondering how they were going to handle the huge ensemble. Well, it turned out pretty well, though of course when you have so many super heroes all gathered together the bad guy is going to have to be pretty tough, and they outline they quite quickly where he takes down the Hulk.
This is probably one of those movies that we don't need to say anything about the plot because it has been building up to it for the last ten years, and anyway it is actually based on a comic book series as it is. So, we have this Titan, Thanos (Titan as in an inhabitant of Titan as opposed to one of the old gods from Greek mythology, though Marvel hasn't shied away from borrowing from mythology as it is). He has this plan to depopulate the universe and to do that he needs these stones called Infinity Stones, and when he has all of them he will become invincible. Once again, the movies over the last ten years have been dropping hints as to these stones, and now we have basically come to the climax of that story arc.
So, the question that is raised, is where to from here. Well, I'm sure the avid comic book readers do have a pretty good idea since there is quite a lot of material that can be borrowed from. However, we also need to remember that this is actually part one of a two part series, so the story isn't over yet. The problem is that with the ending as it is, there isn't all that much room to be able place any movies between the two Avengers movie. However, it seems that we will be seeing Captain Marvel and Ant Man and the Wasp before the grand finale to this Avengers movie.
Okay, this may be a bit of a spoiler, but then again I have warned you, but characters do die, which is a bit of an oddity because if there is one thing with comic books and that is characters always seem to be able to come back. Well, that seems to be the case with the movies as well because Loki seems have have had some miraculous resurrections. However, I will leave it at that.
Now Thanos, they certainly have put a lot of effort into creating a villain that works. There are a lot of shallow villains out there, and Thanos certainly isn't one of them. Sure, he has a motive, but it isn't one of those 'I want to conquer the universe' type of motives. In a way he seems to just want a bit of peace and quiet, and the problem is that overpopulation certainly doesn't allow room for that. Sure, he is pretty powerful, and when you are going up against pretty much every single Marvel hero that has appeared to date (with the exception of Ant-Man - he is mysteriously absent in the film), you certainly are going to have to be of a special calibre.
As for the comedy, well, they certainly have toned it down a lot. It was starting to get to the point where the movies were simply turning into a collection of one liners, particularly with Thor: Ragnarok. However, this wasn't the case here, which did help quite a lot. I do hope they continue along that trend and continue to tone down with it. However, it was a shame that some of the really cool characters from Ragnarok went missing in action as well, but I think the opening scene pretty much explains that.