An underwhelming climax to a phenomenal series

Rating: 6/10 (4 May 2018)

DISCLAIMERS:
1. I've watched every marvel movie, read many marvel comics and loved most of them.
2. Many people believe this movie is great simply because it is a culmination of all of it's predecessors. I agree. Well, at least that's the only reason I didn't rate it lower.
Review (SPOILERS AHEAD):
Fight scenes 3/10:
Given that this is an action movie, I'll begin with the fight scenes. It would take too long to explain why the choreography in this movie sucked but if you're interested in good choreography consider reading these.
A good example of the bad choreography in this movie was in the final scene. Just as Vision is about to die each avenger decides to take a turn stopping Thanos. Why the hell are they not fighting like a team if they are one? Marvel managed to do this so well in Age of Ultron so why did they fail so badly here? And quite frankly, even their individual fight sections looked stupid. No style, simply smashy smashy in the bad guys general direction and everyone goes flying.
Other than that the powers were simply too inconsistent. Why could Thanos simply obliterate the Guardians without even touching them with the reality stone in one scene and then in his fight with Iron Man and Doctor Strange he never even touches that power? (Side note, in that same scene, Will punching Thanos really irritated me. Oh look, the bad guy is going to be defeated, psych, the hero decides that would ruin the movies run time cliche sucks)
Finally poor comedy timing is the nail in the coffin. Comedy can be great in an action movie to lighten the mood or make a character less serious. But timing is key. A joke in an action scene removes the tension from the scene and makes it a lot less epic. If this is what you were going for great. But I have a feeling they wanted the viewers to actually fear and rever Thanos, not see him as an idiot with some cheat codes.
Music 7/10:
Despite actually good sound tracks, they don't match the scenes behind them at all and that really sucks, because I enjoyed the music. Looking at the final scene again for an example, it's slow and dramatic, yet the scene certainly doesn't feel like that. Star Wars 8 (Ship through ship) and Avatar (Zuko vs Azula) both used this type of music to great effect. Why does it work there? Because the colors are mellowed down, the movements are slowed to the pace of the music and everything works together. This is just one example in this movie but it's the same in every scene, the music just doesn't fit.
Plot 4/10:
Oh boy, the plot. Yes, this movie does have the benefit of 31 movies to replace the exposition. But that's all they are, exposition, not a replacement for plot. The fact the biggest tension I felt was due to a bet I made with someone over whether Iron Man will drop out of the universe for the next movie or not indicates there is a problem. I knew anyone who died in this movie held no real significant effects down the road.
The little plot there is suffers from bad writing. There is a reason there is a standard formula to all forms of story, because it works. A standard story has one climax to it, at the very end. This is because a climax is all the conflicts coming together into one important scene that holds a lot of emotional weight for the viewer. A good writer can fit two or even three climaxes in a story but any more than that and the viewer simply won't care anymore. That's what happened with this movie. Every single hero had to have their own climax scene and so I simply didn't care because that's all the movie really was.
Characters: 8/10
The movies saving grace is its characters. Everyone going to this movie should have at least one character they are already invested in and love. Also there was some decent character development, especially with Thanos.
Final notes:
I really wanted to love this movie and I'd heard great things about it before going. And yet, I simply didn't feel the emotional investment or the sense of epicness that other marvel movies have given me. Luckily they cut the cast down to the original avengers and now that they got every characters little moment of greatness out of the way with this movie, there is hope that phase 4 will finish off with a truly epic movie deserving of its place as the end of an era for MCU.