First, I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend watching all the MCU films including Black Panther before watching this film. This is, naturally, the biggest team-up film in the history of cinema, and most of the heroes get little to no character development. All their character development happened already in their own standalone films.
That being said, this is Thanos's film. This film revolves around the villain and he gets plenty of character development. He is surprisingly logical and understandable, not just a big purple "i'm gonna kill everything cuz i'm evil" dude.
For what screen time the heroes get, they are all in-character and interaction/plot events happen in an understandable and fairly organic manner.
It's a wild ride from start to finish, and the build-up is intense. I don't feel like there's any wasted screen time, and for a 2.5 hour film that's saying a lot. The pacing is excellent, although it cuts between tons of locations. The action is happening simultaneously with two dozen characters spread across the galaxy, what do you expect? So yes, it can be pretty confusing to people who haven't watched the previous films.
As for the bad parts... a joke here or there might fall flat, but for the most part it stays on-pace and it has plenty of hard-hitting moments. Some of the action scenes are a little dark and the camera whips around too much, making for some blurry and confusing action, but the majority of it is very well done.
The film has a strong conclusion, while at the same time leaving things very open and not too predictable for the future of the MCU.
I'd give it an 8/10. I'd give it a 9.9/10 for doing absolutely everything it could possibly do. But since it has to juggle so many locations and characters and events simultaneously, it's impossible for it to not be at least a little bit confusing and slightly disjointed. I don't think it's possible to have an enjoyable film while cramming more characters than this one did.
Marvel *still* has something new for us. (Non-spoiler review)
First, I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend watching all the MCU films including Black Panther before watching this film. This is, naturally, the biggest team-up film in the history of cinema, and most of the heroes get little to no character development. All their character development happened already in their own standalone films.
That being said, this is Thanos's film. This film revolves around the villain and he gets plenty of character development. He is surprisingly logical and understandable, not just a big purple "i'm gonna kill everything cuz i'm evil" dude.
For what screen time the heroes get, they are all in-character and interaction/plot events happen in an understandable and fairly organic manner.
It's a wild ride from start to finish, and the build-up is intense. I don't feel like there's any wasted screen time, and for a 2.5 hour film that's saying a lot. The pacing is excellent, although it cuts between tons of locations. The action is happening simultaneously with two dozen characters spread across the galaxy, what do you expect? So yes, it can be pretty confusing to people who haven't watched the previous films.
As for the bad parts... a joke here or there might fall flat, but for the most part it stays on-pace and it has plenty of hard-hitting moments. Some of the action scenes are a little dark and the camera whips around too much, making for some blurry and confusing action, but the majority of it is very well done.
The film has a strong conclusion, while at the same time leaving things very open and not too predictable for the future of the MCU.
I'd give it an 8/10. I'd give it a 9.9/10 for doing absolutely everything it could possibly do. But since it has to juggle so many locations and characters and events simultaneously, it's impossible for it to not be at least a little bit confusing and slightly disjointed. I don't think it's possible to have an enjoyable film while cramming more characters than this one did.