This thread contains spoilers for Infinity War. If you don't want to see spoilers for Infinity War, it was kind of dumb of you to click on a thread which says it has them.
First off - DAMN!!!!! - I enjoyed this movie. I've been waiting for it ever since the mid credit scene of the first Avengers when I and the rest of the theatre yelled out "Holy shit, that wasn't a cosmic cube, it was the goddamned Space Gem! They're doing the frigging Infinity Gauntlet!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!". It was worth the wait.
First off, the ending was great. I can't recall a decent "bad guy wins" finish to a movie since Empire and they nailed this. Thanos just slapping down everyone coming at him like the insignificant bugs they are and then when Scarlet Witch wins at the last moment and denies him ultimate power by destroying the Mind Gem even though it means killing the man she loves, he just shrugs it off, reverses time and rips it out of Vision's skull, rendering all of her effort completely pointless. Then *snap*, half the population of the universe dies and everyone stands around stunned as the people around them just turn to dust and Thanos wanders off to sit down and watch the sunset, his mission complete. It was very emotional and impactful and the entire audience just sat there in stunned silence until the end credit scene. Strong kudos need to go out to the Marvel Studios marketing teams for this. When they originally announced that Infinity War would be a two-parter, I assumed that Part One would end right here and Part Two would deal with the aftermath. Then they said that they were scrapping that idea and Infinity War would just be one movie and they'd do something else for Avengers 4. Thinking that they'd actually dumped the two-parter plan and would resolve it all in this one made this ending unexpected and it wouldn't have had nearly the impact it would have if it had been assumed that this is where we'd end up before starting the next episode.
Now, that being said, all the deaths were emotional and impactful ... until Black Panther died. That just had me think "Hey, wait a minute. They've already announced his sequel. Ya ... Spider-Man and Doctor Strange also have sequels announced". It took me out of the scene and forced me to realize that all of these deaths are completely meaningless and everybody is coming back to life. I was wowed by the fact that they made the decision to completely scrap the ending of Ragnarok and kill off all the Asgardians they'd gone through all the trouble to save along with murdering the best villain the MCU has - but wait, no they didn't. I was shocked that the Starlord-Gamora storyline was abruptly ended outside of the Guardians movies - but wait, no it wasn't. I get that they wanted to have all the new people gone, so you're left with the original Avengers team to save the day and wrap up the plot and then have the franchise move forward from there, but it did undercut what they were going for by having all these guys die.
Thanos was great and Brolin did an excellent job with him. It took the whole superhero trope of "I'm the only one who can do the things which need to be done in order to save the day" and dialed it up to eleven to make it the bad guy's motivation as well. in a franchise with a lot of disposal gray villains, they made the henchmen the disposable gray villains and gave the main guy a lot of depth and character. The Soul Gem scene where you realized that he loves Gamora and needs to sacrifice her for the sake of the universe as a whole really made me feel bad for the guy and the heartache he had to go through for the greater good. I had to remind myself that he's actually a genocidal murderer who'd just tossed his daughter off a cliff and my sympathy wasn't warranted. I cannot imagine how they could have done Thanos better than this.
It was nice to see them actually use the Reality Gem to do ... something. It was a couple of years after The Dark World when they announced that it had been the Reality Gem in that movie and I was like "Really ... how do you figure that?". It was always the coolest Infinity Gem in the comics and I liked that they finally used it to do some reality warping stuff instead of just shooting off some red tentacles or whatever. Thanos did follow Ronan's example, though, and used the Power Gem's "knock them back ten feet" move as opposed to its more effective "blow up the planet they're on" move, which would have been a bit more effective at times. It would have also been nice to see him use the Soul Gem for anything at all after going through all that trouble to get it.
The fight scenes were great and the character interactions were fun, especially Thor and Starlord. The plotline was pretty choppy with their jumping back and forth between all the different groups, but they made it work. I liked it a lot.
What did the rest of you think?
First off - DAMN!!!!! - I enjoyed this movie. I've been waiting for it ever since the mid credit scene of the first Avengers when I and the rest of the theatre yelled out "Holy shit, that wasn't a cosmic cube, it was the goddamned Space Gem! They're doing the frigging Infinity Gauntlet!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!". It was worth the wait.
First off, the ending was great. I can't recall a decent "bad guy wins" finish to a movie since Empire and they nailed this. Thanos just slapping down everyone coming at him like the insignificant bugs they are and then when Scarlet Witch wins at the last moment and denies him ultimate power by destroying the Mind Gem even though it means killing the man she loves, he just shrugs it off, reverses time and rips it out of Vision's skull, rendering all of her effort completely pointless. Then *snap*, half the population of the universe dies and everyone stands around stunned as the people around them just turn to dust and Thanos wanders off to sit down and watch the sunset, his mission complete. It was very emotional and impactful and the entire audience just sat there in stunned silence until the end credit scene. Strong kudos need to go out to the Marvel Studios marketing teams for this. When they originally announced that Infinity War would be a two-parter, I assumed that Part One would end right here and Part Two would deal with the aftermath. Then they said that they were scrapping that idea and Infinity War would just be one movie and they'd do something else for Avengers 4. Thinking that they'd actually dumped the two-parter plan and would resolve it all in this one made this ending unexpected and it wouldn't have had nearly the impact it would have if it had been assumed that this is where we'd end up before starting the next episode.
Now, that being said, all the deaths were emotional and impactful ... until Black Panther died. That just had me think "Hey, wait a minute. They've already announced his sequel. Ya ... Spider-Man and Doctor Strange also have sequels announced". It took me out of the scene and forced me to realize that all of these deaths are completely meaningless and everybody is coming back to life. I was wowed by the fact that they made the decision to completely scrap the ending of Ragnarok and kill off all the Asgardians they'd gone through all the trouble to save along with murdering the best villain the MCU has - but wait, no they didn't. I was shocked that the Starlord-Gamora storyline was abruptly ended outside of the Guardians movies - but wait, no it wasn't. I get that they wanted to have all the new people gone, so you're left with the original Avengers team to save the day and wrap up the plot and then have the franchise move forward from there, but it did undercut what they were going for by having all these guys die.
Thanos was great and Brolin did an excellent job with him. It took the whole superhero trope of "I'm the only one who can do the things which need to be done in order to save the day" and dialed it up to eleven to make it the bad guy's motivation as well. in a franchise with a lot of disposal gray villains, they made the henchmen the disposable gray villains and gave the main guy a lot of depth and character. The Soul Gem scene where you realized that he loves Gamora and needs to sacrifice her for the sake of the universe as a whole really made me feel bad for the guy and the heartache he had to go through for the greater good. I had to remind myself that he's actually a genocidal murderer who'd just tossed his daughter off a cliff and my sympathy wasn't warranted. I cannot imagine how they could have done Thanos better than this.
It was nice to see them actually use the Reality Gem to do ... something. It was a couple of years after The Dark World when they announced that it had been the Reality Gem in that movie and I was like "Really ... how do you figure that?". It was always the coolest Infinity Gem in the comics and I liked that they finally used it to do some reality warping stuff instead of just shooting off some red tentacles or whatever. Thanos did follow Ronan's example, though, and used the Power Gem's "knock them back ten feet" move as opposed to its more effective "blow up the planet they're on" move, which would have been a bit more effective at times. It would have also been nice to see him use the Soul Gem for anything at all after going through all that trouble to get it.
The fight scenes were great and the character interactions were fun, especially Thor and Starlord. The plotline was pretty choppy with their jumping back and forth between all the different groups, but they made it work. I liked it a lot.
What did the rest of you think?