Excellent superhero ensemble adventure

Rating: 9/10 (6 January 2019)

The story arc continues as "Earth's Mightiest Heroes" face Thanos, their most implacable and powerful foe yet, whose goal is nothing less than the elimination of half of the universe's denizens. To do this, he must acquire all six of the infinity stones, colourful MacGuffins with a complex metaphysical backstory - a plot device that allows for a series embedded stories involving subsets of heroes and villains. The story is quite good and relatively internally consistent, and the characters interesting and well worked out (although I have my usual suspension of disbelief problem with The Avengers somewhat asymmetrical powers: Black Widow knows martial arts and is a good shot, Thor is an immortal God who can fly though space and withstand the focussed power of a degenerating neutron star, yet both seem to get equal hero billing). Even the most heavy made-up (or completely CGI) characters have a lot of personality, especially (IMO) chief villain Thanos, emotionally-expressive Mantis, and my personal favorite: giant dwarf Eitri (Peter Dinklage). The script manages to hit a good balance of action/drama and comedy (tricky to do and often a weak point in the genre). The ending is a set-up for the next film, in which we can expect Captain Marvel to put in an appearance (perhaps a harbinger for the next generation of Avengers). Given the God-like powers of some of the heroes and the fact that Thanos can now control reality and time (always a convenient plot gimmick), pretty much anything could happen.