Action

Rating: 7/10 (11 May 2019)

The story is simple and even thin, but it's not quite shallow. It covers a lot, but can be summed up quite briefly. It is mostly about action and tragedy.
Like many of the Marvel movies following the Avenger story-line, it is full of cold blooded killing on a grand scale and this movie adds torture. Thanos is developed to appear that he is not sadistic. Instead he is insane and his motivation makes no sense. The film develops the appearance that he is thoughtful and self-sacrificial. To me this concept is insincere, even irreverent.
This movie is like so many other Marvel movies in that it is full of absolutely invincible villains. They control everything around them with a wave of their hands. It is magic with no limitations. And in this movie, it's not just Thanos, but some of his minions as well.
For so much of the early part of the movie, it had the feel of video name-dropping. Many of the Marvel movie characters are introduced one after another without dwelling on any.
We see perhaps the most romance of any of the movies where several couples have moments of affection.
For me the humor is stiff and inappropriate, not in a obscene or crude way, but the transitions between drama and tragedy vs comedy is clumsy, almost as if the comedy is it's filling a quota.
At first the tragedy is heart-rending, but then tragedy follows tragedy and then it becomes a flood and the impact is negated. The viewer has to strongly suspect that something is going to reverse it all and looking at the cast for Endgame seems to verify that thinking. (But I am guess since I haven't yet seen Endgame.)
I really dislike movies that end with defeat when you know that it is not the final outcome. It's half a story. A cliffhanger in the credits is one thing. A story has been completed and there is a teaser for the next one. But I don't like half a story when I've paid for a full movie and I know the completion may be a year or two away. (No, I don't like TV season finales that hang either.)
Despite my complaints, some of which are personal preference, I recognize that this movie is highly successful in telling the story it intended.