I still have weird unresolved feelings about Infinity War. I didn't hate it. I really loved parts of it. But I can't shake that maybe we've fully emulated comics in movies now, including halting forward momentum for individual stories for the sake of a summer crossover.
I was actually pleasantly surprised that the Russos did such a good job capturing the Guardians of the Galaxy in the film, because I wasn't sure if they could manage the same tone set in their movies.
I loved some of the interactions between characters, like Tony and Doctor Strange and the Guardians and Thor. I liked that Thanos was oddly compelling, but there is a downside to that as well.
I'm still not thrilled that there were some things that felt like they should have had way more impact than they did. Steve, Black Panther, and Wakanda in general all felt like they were underutilized in the movie. Steve's best part was introducing himself to Groot.
I hated Tony and Pete's armor. I usually don't complain about CGI, but both sets of armor really jumped out as "not real," and their morphic qualities didn't seem to have any rules. Where does stuff get stored, whats the limit to what Tony can fabricate?
The fight on Titan, at least at the most furious point, almost reached Transformers 2 levels of "what's even going on here?" Everything can shift, everything was shifting, and there were no rules to anything, so colors, explosions and stuff happened.
This continues the side issue I have with Pete & Tony partially as a remnant of Spider-Man Homecoming. When you don't mention Uncle Ben as Pete's motivation his motivation becomes proving himself to Tony as a father figure & that's not any version of Spider-Man I'm familiar with.
He's a fun character in the MCU, but he could have been some kid that cobbled together some armor tech that caught Tony's attention, for all that the actual Spider-Man elements matter at this point.
Thor Ragnarok is a movie I dearly love, and it was greatly undermined by this movie. The last we see of the Asgardians, they are fleeing a ravaged world, and the first we see of them here, they get wiped out. Way to say nothing in Ragnarok mattered.
To some extent, the character development we got with Hulk from Ragnarok also got erased, because instead of seeing anything of his greater depth, he gets his ass handed to him and he refuses to come out again the whole movie.
