Avengers: Infinity War

Ideally, Infinity War and Endgame would be judged as a single work, considering this film was very clearly written as a Part 1 to Endgame’s Part 2. But Marvel released them as separate films, so we will address them as such. Infinity War is the culmination of everything the MCU had been building to at this point, but as its own movie, it’s mostly a bleak setup for a payoff that wouldn’t come for a full year. It is two-and-a-half hours of watching heroes that fans had been following for a decade face their greatest defeat at the hands of Thanos. Portrayed by the charismatic Josh Brolin, Thanos believes so wholeheartedly in the wisdom of his delusional plan to wipe out half the universe that some of the dumbest motherfuckers you’ve ever seen on YouTube are making videos about how he was right, actually. Infinity War feels like half of a film, but it doesn’t feel half-baked. It manages to bring disparate sides of the universe together in a way that is satisfying dramatically and comedically, and that paves the way for some of the most entertaining action scenes in the franchise. It was a huge pop culture moment to see the Avengers, the Guardians, and so many others come together to face a threat unlike any they’d ever faced. Even the most jaded filmgoer had to have felt something being in a theater with people who had watched every movie up to this point applauding as Evans showed up as a vigilante Captain America, or hearing the dead silence as, one by one, heroes were lost to Thanos’ snap. — Kenneth Shepard