Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Almost exactly one year after I sat down in the theater to watch this film I finally sat down to see it for a second time preparing for Avengers: Endgame and honestly I didn't expect much. Where I really liked the film my first viewing I wasn't overly blown away with it and definitely felt the length of the movie the first time through (probably why I never saw it again after my first watch). Still though I turned on Netflix and started this film and for the next 2 hours 40 minutes I was blown away with this movie, nearly all my faults I had with it during my original viewing had gone away and I was so impressed by this film I went ahead and moved it to be included in my Best of the Decade series as it has to be one of if not my favorite MCU film overall.
The main difference between my first and second viewing was its pacing. The first time through I found this film to be messy and paced poorly when it came to balancing its many stories and characters. Though now knowing what is happening that didn't bother me at all. This movie is so well crafted when it comes to the timing of switching between the stories and making them all engaging and interesting. These character arcs are all really well developed and seeing them intersect and come together has a real impact after all this time. It is these characters that add so much weight to this film. The scale of the visual effects also continues to blow me away in this film. Where the MCU still suffers from at least a few bad effects per movie but that is not the case with this film, they create multiple fully CGI worlds and characters yet they all look incredible.
There is not a single moment of CGI that looks bad in this film which is mind-blowing to me. The fact that this didn't win the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects is a crime as it is easily more impressive than anything else that was nominated last year. The visuals are also a huge reason why this feels so epic. This movie feels like a big deal and some of the action scenes are so big in scale that they feel special from size alone. This movie is not one to hold itself back in the action and it constantly feels like it is giving you 100%. The score is also a huge standout to me, drawing from various pieces previously established in the MCU there is a real weight to so many of the musical cues in this film as it serves as its own MCU quilt bringing everything together. My one issue that still remains with the film is its ending, I am not going to spoil it in case you are the one person who still doesn't know what happened but it does feel like there is no chance it will have permanent consequences in future films. There has never been even a minute of my life that I thought what happened wasn't going to be undone which does hurt the overall impact of it. Still though on a second watch Avengers: Infinity War blew me away and has easily become one of my favorite superhero films of all time.