Saw it yesterday, finally, as part of the conclusions of a fantastic and exhausting weekend. What a great movie. I have read through all the comments here, and a few articles in other places online. Without beating a dead horse, I'll just mention a couple of points I haven't seen talked up too much here (or at least, I'll try to add a little something different to points that may have been mentioned):
-Pacing and tone: What a seemingly impossible task to manage in something with a scope this big. Yet, somehow, it all basically works, and works pretty well. There was a point where it started to feel like it was just getting a bit too corny as just a giant McGuffin quest, and for me, that point was right around the time of the quest for the soul stone. But then the stakes got raised with Gamorra, and it all just felt right.
-Thanos' power and character: Yeah, this HAS been commented on a lot. I'll just echo what I have seen others say. The opening fight with him dispensing of Hulk and Loki strightaway removed any doubt about his power. The prior films left us guessing. In Guardians 1, for example, we saw a fair amount of him. But we were left not really knowing what to think, IMO. He was set up as someone to be feared, but all we really saw him do was sit in a chair and give order or issue threats. We never actually saw him DO anything. Here, we did. And it was all very cool. This definitely WAS his movie, and pretty much everything about him felt right.
-The stakes were high, and you actually FELT it. That was my biggest complaints with Ragnarok and, to a lesser degree, Black Panther. We were told that the stakes were high. But somehow, I just didn't feel it. Different story here.
-The children of Thanos/black order were so friggin' cool. Come on. They just were. There were definitely times when they seemed to blink back and forth from WAY overpowered to WAY too easily defeated. But overall, it was fine.
-Alien franchise references were HILARIOUSLY AWESOME.
-The overall plot and arrangement of scenes and locations was, IMO, VERY cool and well thought out. With so many locations, it is easy to feel lost. But I didn't. Not even a little bit. There was a really nice mixture of familiar and new, but nothing felt out of place, and there was always a good reason to be where we were.
-The ending and deaths: Mixed feelings about seeing characters like Spidey and Black Panther bite the dust. Yeah, I guess it is easy to feel cheated and feel like it is all just going to be unwound. But it was also a big "Whoa! What? But--THEY HAVE A MOVIE COMING OUT LATER WITH HIM! NO WAY!!!" moment that, for me, worked.
-The ending, pt. II: I expect to go into a Marvel film to have fun. I expect to have some nostalgia with some of the characters I grew up with. I don't expect to get dramatic chills. The ending here...it kinda got me. Seeing characters just suddenly leave us, combined with the music, combined with "The Avengers Thanos will return" at the end just all worked. And it got me. Big time.
I could nitpick the things that bothered me. But I have to say that, overall, this film worked big-time. It was everything it should have been. Too much "new car smell" to comment definitively, but I'll just go ahead and say that this feels like it will be my favorite thus far, taking the place of the first Avengers film.