Avengers: Infinity War (2018) ***

Well, it's all come down to this. After 10 years of Avengers and Avengers-related Marvel comics films, this is the big showdown. At least, that's how it was billed. If you are one of the handful of people in the free world who haven't seen “Avengers: Infinity War” yet, I think you deserve to come into it knowing that the story does not get resolved in this film. It ends in a cliffhanger, making this just the first part of the final story, with the second half, “Endgame” slated to come out this spring.

So if you've watched any of the Marvel Comic Universe (MCU) films over the years, you know that many of them feature some sort of shiny object, like the Tesseract or that green amulet Dr. Strange wears. It turns out these are called Infinity Stones. They were formed during the Big Bang, and they are incredibly powerful. A giant, bodybuilder of an alien, named Thanos, is collecting the stones so he can carry out his plan to cull the population of the universe by half. Up til now, Thanos and his army have had to go planet by planet, slaughtering half the population at random. With the combined, godlike power of the stones, he would be able to achieve his goal all at once, just by thinking it.

Big stakes. Big enough to bring (almost) all the MCU heroes together? You betcha, and there's some fun to be had in that, although most of them had already met in previous films. All that was really left was to bring Dr. Strange and the Guardians of the Galaxy into the fold and have them butt heads a little with the other Avengers.

Then the fighting starts, and we run into a problem of over-powered villains. Thanos and his minions are so ridiculously powerful, even without the stones, that it seems unlikely the Avengers could defeat them. Once he begins filling that gantlet with powerful stones, it becomes apparent that only the smartest, most coordinated effort by the Avengers could succeed. Unfortunately, the Avengers make one dumb decision after another, basically handing the stones over to Thanos.

Speaking of that gantlet, it sort of symbolizes my complaints about this film, which is just full of wasted potential. They spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the movie, but this cheesy, stone-covered gantlet looks like something a high-school theater troupe made using a hot-glue gun. The film, itself is full of good actors, but they are forced to make their characters do the stupidest things in order to make the plot of this mess lurch along to where it needs to go.

Now for the good stuff. The acting is actually good. The MCU characters have always been played by a relatively high-talent group, and these actors do the best they can with the material. My man, Peter Dinklage, even has a surprise role.  There's also some decent humor sprinkled through this thing. The best thing about this film, I think, is the villain. Thanos's plan is more evil and destructive than anything the Avengers have faced, but Thanos, himself actually has some humanity (or whatever, since he's not human). His concerns about overpopulation are based on his home planet's decline, and he genuinely believes that his culling makes life better for the people who remain.

The biggest thing to know about “Infinity War” is that it's just Part 1 of the final story. We'll have to wait until spring to find out how they unravel this conundrum, whether all those seemingly dumb Avenger decisions will lead somewhere good. As for the rest of it, it doesn't really matter what I or anyone says about these MCU movies. Some of us are simply compelled to watch them, the same way you are compelled to munch on chips and dip at a party. Sometimes it leaves you feeling bloated and disgusted with yourself, but you know that, come the next party, you'll eventually find yourself at the snack table, shoveling it in.

3 stars out of 5