The first part of the long-awaited finale to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s (MCU) third phase has been released. Titled “Avengers: Infinity War”, the movie centers around the villainous Thanos as he searches for the six infinity stones needed to complete the infinity gauntlet and crosses paths with our beloved heroes, including the Guardians of the Galaxy, Doctor Strange, the people of Wakanda, and, of course, the Avengers on his quest to wipe out half of the universe. But this movie had several flaws that we have to address.

Major spoilers ahead!!! If you have not seen Avengers: Infinity War or do not want it to be spoiled, turn back now! You have been warned!

The Black Order

The Black Order is the group that worked with Thanos throughout the whole movie. Their presence in the movie was cool but none of them had any depth. We had never seen them prior to this movie and they all died by the end of the film. Them not having depth was, at least in my opinion, a misstep on the part of the movie. Not only did it take away from their presence in the movie, but it wasn’t all that enticing to watch scenes with them. Yes, they were cool and mysterious but for the most part, we knew nothing about them and they served a minimal purpose at best, which diminishes their roles and actions within the movie. On top of this, I was left scratching my head as to who they were exactly because the movie never states all of their names and we only have a few scenes with them involved. The movie should have handled these four antagonists better than they did because it was done a bit carelessly and it takes away from the movie.

The Soul Stone and Gamora’s Death

The Soul Stone was a big subject of debate and highly theorized about before the release of both Infinity War and the movie that preceded it, Black Panther. Many believed that the stone was in Wakanda somehow. Maybe even having something to do with the vibranium-filled meteor that hit the area. Even I bought into that theory. But the movie surprised us with a total twist regarding the stone. The stone is guarded by Red Skull, who was banished here after touching the Tesseract in Captain America: The First Avenger. While the reveal of Red Skull was really cool and the Soul Stone was used in order to humanize Thanos, who had to kill Gamora in order to obtain it, it was a bit of an odd scene when all of the components of it are thought about.

Red Skull touched one infinity stone and instead of dying or being randomly warped, he was transported to another infinity stone. Why would that happen? Well, the movie doesn’t explain it and it doesn’t really seem to make sense. On top of this, the location of the Infinity Stone itself was kinda poorly done. There wasn’t much of an explanation other than Gamora knowing the location of it and being brought there by Thanos. Then there was Gamora’s death, which felt kinda cheap in the sense that we knew it was coming. The movie even foreshadows her death several times and talks about it very early on, taking away from the impact a little bit. Also, if her soul is trapped inside of the Soul Stone then maybe there is still a way she can be saved. It’s a comic, after all, anything is possible.

The Power Stone

Perhaps what should have been the original start of the movie was actually just a completely unseen event within the actual movie. In the first Guardians of the Galaxy, the Guardians defeat Ronan the Accuser and take the infinity stone he had, that, of course, being the Power Stone. The Guardians decided to leave the stone with the Nova Corps so that it would be safe but at the start of this movie, Thanos has that stone with the explanation of how coming up later on in the film. Apparently, Thanos attacked Xandar and stole the Power Stone, wiping out the Nova Corps. This was a huge event that would have set the tone for the whole movie and shown how far Thanos will go to achieve his goal, but instead, it was totally passed over and simply mentioned.

Doctor Strange and The Time Stone

Easily one of the most powerful infinity stones was the Time Stone, held onto by Doctor Strange since his standalone movie a while ago. Not only does it sit there with him the whole movie but he never uses it. All Strange had to do was get together with everyone involved in the movie, go back in time and kill or defeat Thanos before he manages to get the stones or even getting the Infinity Gauntlet. Cinematically, it would have been lame but they could have beaten him when he was at his weakest and it would have made much more sense than what actually happened in the movie. Thanos even calls Strange out for not ever using his strongest weapon against him, proving that it’s just a stupid choice all around.

Star Lord

One of the easiest “twists” to see was Star Lord and his actions within the movie. He told Gamora that he would kill her if Thanos was going to take her and then stalled before he could actually bring himself to do it. Then Thanos stopped him from doing so. Having finally cornered Thanos and about to take the gauntlet off of him, Star Lord learns from Nebula that Thanos killed Gamora and rather than waiting for the others to take the gauntlet off and defeat him, he attacks Thanos, screws up the whole plan, and allows the remainder of the movie to play out the way it did. Not only did he manage to free Thanos by attacking him but he essentially caused everyone that dies at the end of the movie (himself included) to die because of his own stupidity. Had he waited, Thanos could’ve been weakened and then Star Lord could have attacked him for revenge. I get it, the heat of the moment and they had to find a way for Thanos to not lose in this instance but that was so stupid and predictable and it ruined that entire moment because you had to see it coming.

The Hulk

In the opening scene, Hulk attacks Thanos and gets beaten very, very badly. Enough so that the movie’s writers, I mean “Hulk” prevents Banner from turning back into the green monster that would’ve done wonders in the fight to save the world, but ultimately couldn’t change because the plot demanded it. It was extremely lame and a big cop out for fans. It was not fun to watch at all.

The Collector

Having one of the infinity stones in a movie about a guy gathering them all, you would think that what happens to you would be a focus of the movie, maybe have your fate explained a bit, but the movie once again, glosses over how Thanos gets this stone, the only scene we get is him using the stone to trick the Guardians and kidnap Gamora. The whereabouts of The Collector aren’t explained. Is he dead? Is he alive? How did Thanos manage to get the stone? What kind of fight did The Collector put up, if any? What actually happened? None of those things were really answered but Thanos did manage to get the stone so that’s all that mattered in the film I guess.

Pacing

This movie saw the Marvel version of “everybody gets a trophy” by giving every character involved in the film their three to five minutes to “shine”, get a line, or even crack a joke. An issue I knew would come up in this film was the pacing. Knowing just how many people were involved in this movie, it was going to be a very badly paced movie. The movie tried hard to keep up with the numerous stories it had but it didn’t seem to work very well. We had the Guardians meet Thor and then split into two groups. One being Thor, Rocket, and Groot and the other being Gamora, Drax, Star Lord, and Mantis. Star Lord and his group went after Thanos to stop him from getting the Reality Stone from The Collector, which leads to Gamora being captured and taken by Thanos. Now we have three groups of people to focus on from just the Guardians alone. We also had Banner, Stark, Doctor Strange, and Wong at the beginning of the movie but after a fight in New York City, Wong leaves and Spiderman joins the trio. That’s the fourth group now. Then we get to Vision and Wanda, who has an encounter with one of Thanos’ Black Order that didn’t really need to happen and could have easily been cut from the movie entirely, then they meet up with Captain America and the group he has, bringing our count to five groups now. With five groups of people to focus on within the movie, it became very hard to watch everything play out because the movie is poorly paced to keep up with all of these different storylines and characters. Apparently there was supposed to be a scene between Captain America and Iron Man in which they discuss what happened in Captain America: Civil War, but this was cut from the movie in order to focus on Thanos, but that shouldn’t have been the case because this was a very big thing that was just missing in this movie, there is no “let’s put the past aside and stop this guy” speech or nothing, it was just glossed over.

The Ending

While the ending in itself wasn’t a bad ending, the very explanation as to how it will be solved was more than likely used by Thanos just moments before it happened. The Time Stone seems to be the likely way for Marvel to ex machina their way out of the situation and “revive” some of the dead characters, especially some of their newer characters like Spiderman and Doctor Strange. The people they offed were lesser characters and the others were their major money makers like Black Panther, so it seems unlikely that they will stay “dead” for very long.

Why Didn’t Thanos Just Do This From The Start?

I know that the true answers to this are that cinematically, this isn’t cool it wouldn’t allow for any of these events in the MCU to play out and Marvel wouldn’t have made a ton of money off of it like he did but if you think about it, it doesn’t make sense. Thanos, being a big and strong bad guy like he is and also have had some of the Infinity Stones already when the original Avengers came out, shouldn’t have trusted anyone else to do the job and done it himself. He even uses the Power and Space stones that he gave to Ronan and Loki in the start of this movie, further proving the point that if he had just done this from the start it would have been so much easier considering the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Avengers, and so on weren’t a thing back then. There would have been little to no opposition for Thanos and he would have won so much easier.