There’s a lot you could say about this movie. Here’s my sort of spoiler review. It was an amazing experience, the biggest cinematic experience I’ve ever had, certainly the most emotional. It’s the ultimate comic book movie and a great end to the MCU.
If I were to pick out my only tiny nitpicks, the plot is a time travel plot, so it raises technical questions. But I think you can just set most of them aside and enjoy it for what it is and assume that somehow it all works out, that somehow Cap fixed whatever plot holes needed mending. I think the momentum of the plot keeps you from getting bogged down in the details too much. It’s messy, but it’s fine. You make allowances because the film earns them.
Second nitpick, Thor is maybe just a bit too schlubby. I understand the choice, he was such a huge heavy hitter he sort of needed to be depowered a bit, and I’m happy enough with what they did with him. I just feel that maybe it went a bit too far. It unwound too much of what he went through and who he’s been and became. And also his fat suit just was a bit too much, so that it wasn’t that convincing. It seemed less real than skinny Tony or old Cap.
My third nitpick was Captain Marvel. It seems like maybe she should have been kept on ice in another part of the galaxy and and not brought into the wider MCU until after this movie. She’s too recent, not connected by story or relationship to anyone except Nick Fury, who is dead during this whole movie. She’s underconnected and underdeveloped for a movie that’s all about those things.
She’s also way too powerful (although I wondered, since her powers are derived from an infinity stone, mightn’t she have lost them when the stone was destroyed, and why is she stronger than an already powerful demigod who also has the thing from which her power derives?). She’s more like a DC hero, godlike in power, with no vulnerabilities (physical or emotional), so she’s a bit dull and stands out among a field of very human and vulnerable characters. She had no limitations, no relationships to anyone else, nothing to lose (no stakes), no development in this movie; she was definitely the weak point, character-wise. She was just a big blunt cannon, the deus ex machina who could be used to rescue someone from an unwinnable situation.
And in a movie where most people were acting like crazy and emoting a ton, she wasn’t given anything to work with, so she was just flat and stoic. Which wasn’t really her fault. She didn’t know any of the other characters in the movie, she hadn’t been around for any of the stuff that happened, she was just sort of stuck in there because she had just had a movie and expected to fit in. Her inclusion was my biggest nitpick because it was the only thing that took me out of the movie, the only really obvious mistake (I assume her inclusion was mandated by the studio and that’s why she was shoved in an unconnected way into a story she wasn’t part of, instead of bring saved for phase 4 or whatever they’re calling it, now that the Infinity Saga is over).
My last nitpick feels more like a bad call the directors couldn’t control that they just decided to work with as best they could, since they couldn’t go back in time and add her to the previous stories. It’s awkward, it takes me out of the movie a bit, but again, it’s something you just have to deal with and take it for what it is.
Also, a very minor complaint, the de-aging on Tilda Swinton was not as good as the effects on other people, possibly because she’s already a bit alien and odd looking. It was pushing her into inhuman territory during the closeups, which is too bad because I think she’s very striking and beautiful in a very unique way. But that’s not really a flaw, just an effect that was a tiny bit off.
I think there are also some confusing questions you could ask about relative power levels, especially when it comes to Thanos and the final fight, but again I think that’s just the price you pay, buying into the movie. You’ve got tons of heroes, tons of villains, lots of history, lots you want to happen now, so much to compare and work out and keep track of. If you get too technical parsing it all out, you can’t have the confrontation you just want to see play out.
So you just go with it. No, it doesn’t all make sense. A whole bunch of the time travel stuff doesn’t really make sense, either. But it is what it is. Ok, that’s the end of my criticisms.
There are too many good things about the movie to list. Too much great acting and great filmmaking. I loved the world they created. I imagine a lot of people found the first act a bit slow, but I loved it. I loved all the three parts in different ways. But that first act was wonderful, real new territory for the franchise. I can’t say enough good things about it. I loved who everyone become. The second act was a lot of fun. So many fun moments, a wonderful tour through the journey the characters (and us as viewers) have been on. And the third act was a crazy, – stakes, explosive, over the top, beyond belief climax. It was a scale not reached before, and literally brought everything together for a final showdown.
One thing I really appreciated was all the good subtext. There was actually a lot here, a lot about death and dealing with loss, and how what we go through, the mistakes we make, what we lose, becomes part of who we are. And the movie gives the characters a chance to really reflect on that, as well as the chance to literally go back and say the sort of goodbye they wish they could have had, given the eyes they’ve gained from living their future lives.
That’s great character material as well as great science fiction, letting people have the chance to reflect on their lives and talk to the people they lost who helped shape them. It’s a symbolic meeting that helps heal and strengthen those characters, giving them what they need from their past, from those who went before, to find who they need to be today. It gives you a nice taste of reality, seeing characters having to face change and death and consequences in a real, palpable way. But you also get the fantasy of getting that moment of being able to look back, of being able to see it one more time, of being able to say goodbye with the eyes of today, and occasionally to cheat and steal something back that had been lost. That gives it great emotional authenticity while also letting us explore our ideas as well as indulge in our fantasies a bit.
I think the message of the movie, if I could distill one, is just a reflection on life. It’s a messy tapestry of intertwining stories and lives and people. We lose things along the way, each of us in our time lives our struggle, and the people who come after live in the legacy of that struggle and the love and sacrifices of those before us and around us. We learn from it, we fight, we forgive, we love, we fail, we gain, we lose, we grow. Thanos is fundamentally a rejection of that process in this movie. The wonderful messiness of life.
In the end, the power of a titan can’t stand up to the ability of people to be human, full of love and loss and history and hope, willing to do anything and everything. Thanos wasn’t defeated by another godlike being. That would have been a dull struggle indeed, a mere battle between rivals for control, and would have lacked subtext. Thanos was defeated by humanity, essentially, by life, by the human heart, by a child and a parent, by a person, by a choice to embrace and defend and be a part of all that that means.
And it’s having all that human meaning that makes a story about robots and monsters stomping on each other actually mean something to us, as people. The characters in this movie became real people in a way that went further than any of the Marvel movies before it, and for that I commend it. And that’s what made it feel real and feel important and cinematic far more than any big effects or big plot devices or huge worlds ever could. Because nothing is bigger and more meaningful to us than the human heart. And that’s what this movie got right.
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