8 Things Avengers: Infinity War Did Better Than Captain America: Civil War

5. It Illustrates Genuine Peril

One of the major problems about having heroes fight each other is that there's never a genuine sense of peril. Steve Rogers might've passed at the end of the Civil War event but it came in a completely separate storyline and at the hands of an unknown assailant. At no point, either in the comic or in the film, was a character imperilled to the extent they are in Infinity War.

Now obviously that could either be a massive plus or a minus depending on how you like your cinematic experiences (Infinity War, enjoyable though it may have been, was uniquely stressful to watch), but there is something to be said about making these characters feel vulnerable. Death shouldn't be utilised as a crutch for writers either, otherwise your left with just another imitation of Game of Thrones, but the fact remains that - from start to end in Civil War - neither faction would dare kill the opposition. There's a case of blue-on-blue, and the consequences are somewhat grave, but even when Tony's at his most incensed you can tell he'd never kill Cap - he just doesn't have it in him.

That brings us to Infinity War, and while it's equally true it can only accomplish what it does through the years' worth of stories built up from 2008's Iron Man, it's still true that the audience genuinely fears for the Avengers by the time Thanos comes-a-knocking. He's a threat unlike any other, and in reminding us that these heroes are human, the third Avengers film also returns to a core tenet of the Marvel Universe - the focus on the relatable, over the extraordinary.

Of course Infinity War is bizarre, but it's that human element that carries it from start to finish.