10 Major Thoughts Coming Out Of Avengers: Infinity War

Obviously, major spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War from here on in.

With pretty much everyone on the planet having seen it by this point, there is much to discuss about Joe and Anthony Russo's superhero epic. Many are praising the movie's sense of scope and ambition, while others are criticizing it for a familiar 'fate of the universe' narrative and predictable action scenes.

Infinity War undoubtedly lives up to the hype as a piece of blockbuster entertainment, but has it reached the lofty expectations placed upon it by both the fans and the key creatives? Is it really the end of the MCU as we know it, or a placeholder until next year's Avengers 4 reshuffles the deck again?

One thing is for sure, Infinity War raises a whole lot of questions about the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Balancing the fate of multiple franchises in a story as dense as it is rewarding, Thanos seemingly hits the reset button on everything we've come to expect from the studio over the last decade, with the future of many key characters still firmly up in the air.

In crafting Infinity War, the Russo brothers faced a much tougher task behind the camera than their Avengers predecessor Joss Whedon. The first two superhero team-ups were relatively Earthbound stories that didn't veer too far into the cosmic side of things, but the third installment's narrative spans the length and breadth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and as a result constantly finds itself in a tonal juggling act. Thankfully, for the most part the movie pulls it off.

Incorporating the mystical elements of Doctor Strange, the intergalactic buddy movie dynamic of Thor: Ragnarok, the wacky space comedy of the Guardians of the Galaxy and more into a story already bursting at the seams seemed like an almost-impossible task, but fans are now so comfortable with the Marvel formula that these tonal shifts never come across as overly-jarring, and even provide some of the movie's funniest moments.

Seeing Groot interact with Captain America in Wakanda seconds after watching the high school-aged Spider-Man team up with Drax to battle Thanos in space is an interesting sentence to read, and one that would have seemed impossible a few years ago. It is to Infinity War's immense credit that it manages to balance so many disparate tones and genres into a generally-satisfying whole, especially with how massively the mythology of the MCU has expanded in the three years since Age of Ultron.