Avengers: Infinity War is the perfect climax to the Hollywood movie phenomenon of the past decade, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There is not a single dull moment throughout the entire movie. Constant action, amazing villain, high stakes, and a lot of twists that make you wonder,  “Where do we go from here?” Infinity War is the culmination of ten years of world building, ten years of setting up the dominoes for the writers and producers to topple over in a spectacular fashion. If you have not seen any of the MCU movies so far, or not any recently, this movie is probably not for you. Although you probably weren’t going to watch this anyway.

Thanos makes a thundering presence out of the gate and immediately becomes the most intimidating villain the MCU has ever seen. Thanos’ journey is one full of turmoil, philosophy, and emotion. Even though his plan to assemble the stones and destroy half the life in the universe is so big and grandiose, he is a very human character whose ambition is his biggest character trait. His backstory is not fleshed out too much, but the gist of it is felt and gives him motivation to commit mass universal genocide, and the scary thing is you kind of love to hate him. He is very sympathetic and you feel for him by the end of the movie. There are even three scenes where I almost cried for him. He has a point to his madness. This is Thanos’ movie. The most character development and scenes go to him. That is greatly appreciated in this day and age of superhero movies where the villains cannot be a generic evil person trying to take over the world anymore. We desire more from our villains and, luckily, Marvel has been stepping it up lately in their villain department. Killmonger, Vulture, and even Hela have been great, but even they are nothing compared to Thanos. Of course, a lot of this is because of Josh Brolin’s phenomenal performance. I would argue that his performance as Thanos deserves an academy award. Thanos is intimidating, thoughtful, and does things unimaginable in this movie. Without getting into spoilers, all I can say is Thanos deserves the title “Mad Titan.”

In addition to Thanos, there are a lot of other great characters in this movie. There are around 30-40 characters to jump between, all of them having to complete different tasks throughout the movie. The standouts are definitely Thor, Iron Man, Doctor Strange, and Gamora. This movie is so absurdly great that a scene where the Norse God of Thunder, Thor, has a conversation with a talking raccoon and a teenage angst-filled tree creature is one of the most emotional and grounded scenes in the movie. Now, the movie does fall a little short with its ability to give each character something to do. Characters that I thought would be front and center get pushed to the back, like Captain America, Black Panther, and Spider-Man. But that is understandable while trying to keep the story narrowed down to about four real plot threads. This movie does give a stand-out moment to each of the characters that don’t get that much to do. I was hyped, at least once, with about every character appearance. Even the ones that I don’t usually get hyped for, like War Machine and Black Widow. The amount of balancing directors Anthony and Joe Russo had to do was unimaginable, but they were able to pull it off and make it look easy.

My best advice is to keep quiet and away from everything until you can go see the movie yourself; it is full of surprises and the ending is the most dramatic and gutsy thing Marvel has ever done. Of course, this is a two-part movie, so some things won’t be solved just yet. All I can say is get ready, the end is near. Infinity War is fantastic and one of, if not my favorite, MCU movies and I can’t wait for Avengers 4 (whatever that’ll be called). I give this movie a 9.5/10. This is a masterpiece. AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!