FX galore, plastic script

Rating: 6/10 (30 April 2018)

This movie has thousands of visual effects shots - and except for a few tiny moments, they are all designed, rendered and composited very professionally. You can't get much better.
But now for the bad part - I always had reservations that Disney corp. would make superhero films neutered of real menace, too franchise-ey and too polished/bland and that, in effect, is what's wrong with the film.
The script is frequently tone-deaf, as in totally unrelated to the onscreen action or dramatic conflict, which was an issue with previous entries, and the overstuffed "Civil War" (this film's ending is ripped from Birth of a Nation, but so are hundreds of titles in the action/adventure/fantasy genre).
Basically, the best parts of the film are supposed to be balls-out breathless action sequences between the Marvel hero's cast and Thanos, a demon-like intergalactic warrior, except Disney, in all it's marketing "wisdom", rob ALL the action scenes of drama with inappropriate, flat "quips" to carefully telegraph to parents that this is just a 'fun movie' with nothing more at stake than a bit of fun and some wiz-bang VFX. That, in a nutshell, is what's wrong with the film - in an attempt to please an audience who are increasingly exhausted from forty-five previous sequels in the tights-and-CGI genre, they put EVERYTHING into the movie from the Marvel comics canon, but then rob the movie of any real charm or menace with an awful script. Isolated scenes throughout play really well, but whenever the movie's supposed to hit overdrive and turn into a real "ride", the dialogue is annoyingly lame. I rate the film at a "six" instead of a "three" because of the artful VFX, backdrops, sci-fi props and digital camera moves.
Oh - I forgot to mention; the bad guys plan is super-lame also! Great animation, great costume, great backdrop. Lame dramatic goal, therefore the entire film is tainted with an undying lameness that you can't quite shake off, no matter how much key scenes impress. Worth pirating, if you can push a few buttons and it's raining outside . . .