Someone had to start the thread!
I enjoyed it. “Love” would be too strong, and I’ve got significant issues with it, but man, degree of difficulty here was impressive - they pulled together a mostly coherent movie with a huge cast. I don’t know if that’s been done before.
If you don’t know the Marvel movies, don’t see this one. The film relies a lot on knowing who the different characters are. If you liked the first Avengers, you’ll probably like this one; if you didn’t like the first Avengers, cool, but why are you even in the theater at this point?
Warning: here be spoilers.
Spoilers. Got it? No blurring stuff out.
It’s both sad and glorious that movies are recreating mythology for our modern age. These franchises with immense history are able to refer to things in ways movies may never have been able to do before. When Captain America appears behind the train? I loved it! I wanted to cheer! And part of me hated myself for loving it. (Similar to The Force Awakens, when the Millennium Falcon first appears.) Of course other films are deeper, more artistic, more creative, etc. etc., but the weight of history in these franchises gives them a new sort of resonance in pop culture. It’s like what Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad have been able to do on television - there’s something different in our response when we’ve had years and years with these characters.
The opening: I only saw Thor Ragnarok a few days ago, and … ugh. The prologue to Infinity War retroactively demolishes that (very enjoyable!) movie, like the death of Newt at the beginning of Alien 3 makes it sort of painful to rewatch Aliens. I hope we’re missing part of what happens. From what we see in the film, it looks like all the Asgardians have been killed (woo hoo, let’s start the film off with complete genocide!). However, there’s no sign of a dead Valkyrie or Waititi’s rock character, Korg. Later Thor says Thanos killed half his people - so maybe there’s a missing scene of half the Asgardian refugees getting away.
Pairings of characters generally good. Who knew that Rocky and Thor would go so well together?! Plus Winter Solider swinging Rocky around was fun, as was Captain America’s ultra-serious first-contact almost-ESL voice for “My name is Steve Rogers” in response to “I am Groot!”. Putting Spiderman with Iron Man works well, because generally I find Tony Stark too snarky to be enjoyable, yet he’s grounded by the surrogate son thing (ha, “Is this your ward?”) he’s got with Peter.
Making Thanos the central character: bold move. Worked surprisingly well. A great success, no, but I feared Thanos was going to be a huge let down in this film, and he wasn’t. Stark and Strange had an OK amount to do; Rogers and Natasha had almost nothing, but I assume that’s going to be balanced in the sequel, which will presumably have a smaller cast for most of its running time. I wish they’d done more with Gamora in earlier movies, because her character didn’t quite have the weight behind it for her scenes and death to mean much - which makes me wish even more that the first two Guardians films had done more with her, and less with Quill.
Romances totally fell flat. I forgot or missed Scarlet Witch / Vision being a thing, and ditto Natasha / Banner. At least I care about the latter two. The first pair haven’t been around long enough for me to develop any feelings for.
There’s the usual nonsense with power dynamics in any kind of comic book movie. “I can remake the universe with my mind … but I’ll just punch this guy instead.” And Black Widow, who after all is just a normal human, can hold her own against demi-gods.
Ending: Bucky disappeared into ash first, right? That was working for me. Then T’Challa disappeared, and somewhat annoyingly, my reaction was “Oh come on! I know there’s a Black Panther 2 coming!” And after his death the other ones didn’t mean anything to me. Tom Holland almost sold it with his scene in Stark’s arms, but it still didn’t quite work - because of course Spiderman 2 is coming. I assume all of those deaths will be undone, and the sequel will somehow be the end of the line for more of the core Avengers of Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor.
After the ending: Nick Fury’s “Mother F-” may have been the biggest laugh of the film for me - Jackson almost got an f-word in there! (Metatextual knowledge helped that scene, unlike the earlier death scenes.) Like most of the theater, I’d spent the credits googling “Infinity War post-credits scene”, so by the time we got around to the pager and the Captain Marvel logo, I knew what it was. Good set up for Brie Larson’s film next year, but I was worried to read that Captain Marvel is apparently more powerful than any of the heroes so far introduced?! Isn’t Thor already a little absurd?
So, sort of like the movie, that post is somewhat longer than it should have been.