Wildly entertaining and surprisingly bold and unconventional (MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD)

Rating: 9/10 (30 April 2018)

Avengers: Infinity War is popcorn spectacle of the highest order, bringing action scene after action scene with barely any respite. It sounds almost exhausting, but because of the large variety of both characters and locations, it never gets stale. Almost all the Avengers gets their moment to shine, and all add to the plot in an organic and interesting manner, though team Captain America seemed to draw the short stick because they were easily the least impactful group. There are some really cool new combinations of superheroes (like Thor and Rocket, and Starlord and Iron Man) that actually feel earned after 10 years of build up. It reminded me a lot of Game of Thrones, that after scattering the main characters they're finally all being brought back together in interesting combinations that you did not think you needed but now can't imagine not existing.
Thanos is a suprisingly great villain, both menacing and in a strange way likeable and understandable. Despite his appearance, he's a lot more than generic bad guy that just wants to destroy the world for no particular reason #6. It takes a bad film like DC's Justice League to realize that such organic and cool superhero meetups combined with a good villain is really not all that easy to achieve.
The actions sequences are mostly great, because of the aforementioned variety in characters and locations. I love how every superhero has their own unique fighting style and it really shows on screen. You never feel like 'who exactly was that?'. Every character is distinguishable from the others and work together in a grealy entertaining way. You just got to love Spider-Man making use of Doctor Strange's magic portals to give a quick example of a great team-up.
The boldness comes largely at the end, with some really daring choices made by the writers. The biggest being that the villain actually wins at the end, in this weird The Leftovers meets Inferno (the book) kinda ending. Of course you know that there's going to be a reset of sorts and that most of the characters who died will come back, but at least in this movie, the unstoppable villain actually proved to be unstoppable for a change. That's very refreshing and resulted in some rather emotional scenes towards the end.
Of course there are still some flaws in the film. Despite the film's ballsy ending, the real death count is surprisingly tame and filled with relatively minor characters. Loki is the biggest one, but he kinda had it coming after several fakeouts. I really thought one of the original Avengers would kick the bucket, and was pervertedly unsatisfied when it didn't happen, again similar to Game of Thrones and the lack of major deaths in the latter seasons. Particularly Iron Man and Thor's potential death scenes were set up to a lack of payoff.
The scene between Vision and Scarlett Witch would have meant more if we cared more about these characters. As it is, we've barely seen them throughout the years and a few early romantic scenes between them didn't really add all that much to it. This is where the lack of own films for these characters really is evident the most. The parallel scenes between Thanos and Gamora were a lot more effective because we've seen a lot more of particularly Gamora, although I still think it would have helped if we had a bit more of that interaction in previous movies.
And as much as I loved the ending for having the bad guy be victorious, it really is diminished quite a bit by the knowledge that there will be a reset of sorts and the deaths aren't real deaths. It's once again really similar to Game of Thrones and the main character that died but we all knew would be back the next season. I'll admit it's a bit of a catch-22 though. If instead they would have killed off some more minor characters that might believably stay dead, you'd be left with the idea that conveniently it's only minor characters that perished, whereas the point of Thanos' plan is that anyone can be killed off regardless of importance. Still, because of it being the likes of Black Panther, Doctor Strange and Spider-man of whom we know there are sequels in the making, it does diminish the impact of these moments, though I still found them quite emotional.
Despite these flaws, I was highly entertained and captivated by almost all that transpired on screen. All in all, Avengers: Infinity War is one of the better superhero movies out there. It has so many great (action) moments and a surprisingly bold narrative for a superhero movie. I can't wait to see where they are going next, as long as they find a way to not make the events of this movie seem like a complete red herring and entire waste of time.