Avengers: Infinity War Vs Avengers: Endgame - Which Is Better?

4. Standalone Appeal

This might seem like a paradoxical criteria on which to judge the third and fourth Avengers movies, especially as they're part of a 22-film, decade-plus saga of loosely interconnected pictures.

But not everyone is a hardcore Marvel fan, and it's fair to say that many of the people who contribute to those billion-dollar box office triumphs - or in the case of these two movies, $2 billion - are extremely casual audiences simply turning up for the pure spectacle.

Infinity War is quite clearly a fine standalone film for the most part, because it has to fully introduce audiences to Thanos and also the new Avengers to one another.

You need a basis of the heroes themselves, for sure, but the simple narrative through-line makes it an easy film to follow in isolation. Though of course, with its cliffhanger ending, it certainly doesn't provide closure of any kind.

Endgame would meanwhile be a total nightmare to anyone going in cold, given how heavily it relies on the audience's affinity for prior MCU movies at even a basic level. Moreover, Thanos is decidedly less interesting in Endgame without the context established by Infinity War.

WINNER: Even accepting its inconclusive ending, Infinity War wins this easily. It's a simpler and more accessible film, while Endgame feels far more like a for the fans climax (and rightly so).

That's not even really a ding against Endgame, but in terms of the mainstream, Infinity War is unquestionably the more watchable of the two.