Avengers: Infinity War… where to start with such a rather big movie.

The movie really has a lot of everything… characters, plot threads, run-time, jokes, action… and for me it managed to not feel overly long. Neither the action nor the character moments dragged on too much while watching the movie.

Obviously someone new to the Marvel movies would be completely lost, especially during the beginning parts, the characters are not introduced again but just appear over the first several scenes. Which is to be expected, as the movie is the beginning of the conclusion to a longer running plot-line. Beginning? Yeah… the second part is set to air next year.

I really liked that they took the time to flesh out Thanos during the movie, we haven’t really seen more than a few clips of him so far. Because of this, he becomes more than a boring cardboard-cutout villain, we get to understand his motivation, misguided as it may be. We also get a sense of how powerful he is from the beginning, where he dukes it out with Hulk.

So overall, how much did I like the movie? Well… that’s a bit difficult to say, given the nature of it being the first half of a two-part story. The action was well done, the characters are portrayed well, even if not every one gets enough screen time or has a significant part (pretty much unavoidable with this many characters, so I don’t hold that too much against the movie), the story so far is coherent and moved along at a decent pace… so at this point I’ll definitely give the movie a thumb up, but final judgment has to be held until part 2 is here.

Not that any review is really gonna change if YOU will see the movie or not… if you’ve been a Marvel Cinematic Universe fan up to this point, you’ll be there or you likely already saw the movie. If you’re not so much a Marvel fan or haven’t seen a lot of the more recent movies… don’t bother, you’ll be rather lost, at most you’ll enjoy the effects and fight scenes. I think there are shorter (Infinity War clocks in at 149 minutes) and more self-contained movies around for that.