Why Infinity War's ending was perfect

Thanos kicking everyone's butt during two and a half hours

SPOILER ALERT: Everything I'll discuss in the article will go over the ending of Infinity War and the many spoilers of character deaths throughout the film. If you haven't seen the movie yet, I suggest you do so immediately. Heck, watch it twice, maybe even three times. After, just lock yourself in a room and cry about it... and then after all that crying, come back here to read my thoughts below :)



Marvel Studio's Avengers: Infinity War is a cinematic experience worth 10 years in the making. Years of anticipation and excitement have built over the course of countless movies, 19 to be exact, which have pointed to an ultimate finale, a battle with Thanos for the fate of the universe.
 Coming into the movie, fans knew it wasn't going to be the typical Avengers movie. This movie was going to take a dark turn, and at times gritty and gruesome, but it was clear that some heroes were going to die.
Yet, Infinity War's ending has been one of the most surprising, confusing, and controversial endings in cinema history. The unpredictable twist left the future of the MCU uncertain, and while doing so, divided the fan base between those who loved the ending, and those who didn't.
The decision to kill half of the heroes was not an easy one, I suppose, but in my opinion, it was the perfect one.

Marvel's era of superhero dominance began in 2008, with the release of Iron Man, which was then followed by The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger, leading up to Marvel's The Avengers. Since then, we've had an explosion of new movies and heroes introduced by Marvel such as the Guardians of the Galaxy, Doctor Strange, Ant-Man, Spider-Man, and Black Panther.
Marvel took so much time introducing us to new heroes and characters over the span of 10 years, was it really worth it to just let the majority of them die?


Okay, so for the sake of this discussion, let's take a brief moment to analyze every basic superhero movie plot ever: Villain tries to take over the world, but inevitably, the good guy wins and the bad guy loses. Got it? Cool.

This movie, though, hit us with a complete 180 of our expectations for the typical superhero movie. I mean, how often does the evil villain actually complete his plan and rule the universe? Have we ever seen a villain so powerful that it makes the greatest superheroes look hopeless? Even though we expected them to die, did we REALLY expect them to die???
(I will never forget the scene towards the end of the movie when Thanos finally arrives on Earth and makes the Avengers look basically useless, as if the immovable object (Thanos) meshed together with the unstoppable force (Infinity Stones) and pushed them aside like a leaf.)

That's why I love the ending. For ten years, we've looked up to these characters as immortal, almost God-like figures, with otherworldly powers and skills that have saved the galaxy on more than one occasion. We've gotten so used to seeing them overcome every obstacle and challenge unscathed, that we expected the same to happen once more against Thanos, regardless of how strong he became. Yet, as the movie went on, you just became less hopeful as he kept stacking up Infinty Stones with relative ease.

Still, there was always this little hope inside me that they would come up with this huge plan, (according to Doctor Strange there was only one possible success out of 14,000,506 possibilities) while on Earth, Captain America and his buddies would figure how to fight off all of the minions. That child-like hope never extinguished for a moment until the snap of the fingers, in which my (very) small hope turned into surprise.
Throughout the course of the movie, my brain went from, "Alright, we still have a chance" to "Alright, it's not looking good, but he won't reach the last stone though", to "Oh shoot, this is really going on right now OMG". It wasn't until Spider-Man's death that it hit me emotionally and I thought, "Wow Thanos really won this time huh..."

Thus, the ending leaves us lingering emotionally. We just witnessed Spiderman die in front of us. We all thought he would be the last to die, or be in any sort of danger really. Black Panther, which crossed 1 billion dollars just last month, was also turned into dust. These gutsy moves were a brutal reminder that our heroes are mortal, just like us. We were left with just a small core of heroes, left with an impossible task.
A good movie is supposed to leave an emotional impact on the viewer and leave the individual wanting MORE. This movie's ending did just that and executed its mission perfectly, while creating a masterpiece at the same time. With so much at stake for Marvel to live up to the anticipation, they executed perfectly their biggest project yet.