While the majority of major Hollywood franchises would come under fire for deliberately positioning a mega budget blockbuster as one half of an incomplete story, Avengers: Infinity War got away with it by delivering one of the most shocking endings in recent memory.
Most movies that act as all setup and no payoff are rightly derided for leaving so many loose narrative threads untied, but the penultimate chapter in the Infinity Saga was always touted as the final building block towards the epic Avengers: Endgame, so audiences and critics were understandably a little more forgiving.
149 minutes of table-setting that ended with a cinematic punch to the gut was an ambitious and risky strategy, but as you can see below, Infinity War has become one of Twitter’s top trending topics as fans debate whether everything leading up to the Snap has clouded the overall qualities of the film.
The general consensus is that Avengers: Infinity War stands on its own merits, and it’s largely down to the opening chapter of the two-parter effectively being Thanos’ movie. Josh Brolin’s big bad is the driving force and main character, which increased the desire to see him get his comeuppance the following year, but it’s still interesting to see how wildly differing the opinions are three years down the line.