This is the big blockbuster it's all been leading to. OR at least, mostly been leading to. After 18 Marvel movies over 10 years, here's where everybody comes together to fight the teased-for-six-years intergalactic villain Thanos. Can all this possibly pay off as anything other than a collosal clusterfuck?
Well, yes, it can. Marvel has a base level of skill that ensures that even their worst film still gives a reasonably entertaining time, even if in retrospect sometimes the villains kinda suck and some of the character motivations don't entirely make sense. And this has characters combining in unexpected (and also expected) ways that make this a two-and-a-half epic that rarely feels ridiculously drawn out. Most of our regular heroes are pretty well served (the weakest served is probably Captain America, who just doesn't get anything personally particularly interesting to do beyond do a lot of fighting), and even the big bad Thanos who, coming into this, felt like a cypher, gains gravity, motivation and dimension to him.
I pointed out to someone the title is appropriate as this is a film that doesn't really begin (it's very dependant on at least 16 of those eighteen films to provide character background) and it doesn't really end either (there is a cliffhanger, and it does suffer slightly from comic-book-itis in that it becomes incredibly obvious that the cliffhanging event is going to have to be reversed within the next movie) - but it's a great movie to hang-out with favourite characters (and even a coupla new ones) in a big scale adventure. This serves most of the big comic-book-movie-buttons and serves its audience nicely. I have to kinda withhold some level of judgement as much of my impression of this will be shifted by how they do or don't resolve this next year, but for now ... yeah, as long as I can withold judgement about "the bigger picture", this is pretty darn good.
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