What amazes me most is that this poster can exist, with the reasonable assumption that the average moviegoer already knows each of these characters and can tell you something about them all before even setting foot in the theater to see this film. Say what you will about these movies playing it safe and having lots of CGI fights. They have also introduced dozens of comic book characters into the popular consciousness. Did you ever imagine teenage girls walking around wearing THOR T-shirts? Or loving Groot??? "Inconceivable!"

You can say what you want about the films themselves.  Whatever your opinion of them may be, you have to respect what Marvel Studios has accomplished as a business entity.  They started out with a handicap, their parent company having licensed away what are arguably their most valuable IPs (X-Men and Spidey) to other studios.  So they are left with trying to make blockbuster tentpole films with their B and C list characters.  Sure, Iron Man, Cap, Thor, et al had their following.  But possibly with the exception of Hulk, none of those characters had the kind of mass appeal that was enjoyed by Spidey and the X-Men.  Characters like Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther, and Dr. Strange were even more obscure to the average joe. Yet Marvel found a way to make them household names.  I'll admit that I thought the Guardians of the Galaxy movie was going to be their first big flop.  That movie proved that Marvel can pretty much do whatever they want.  Makes me wonder what they could have done with the Inhumans had Marvel Studios chosen to do a film rather than having Marvel TV get their hands on it.    

I saw it again today, this time with my wife. She's not much of a movie-goer but chortled at plenty of fun dialogue moments. Things I noticed the second time out:

* Just as Captain America 3 was really Avengers 3, this film is more Guardians 3 than Avengers 3. The main relationship is between Thanos and Gamora. After Cap, Falcon, and Widow rescue Vision and Scarlet Witch, it's a long time before we see them again, first picking up Rhodey at Avengers HQ and finally showing up near the end of the movie in Wakanda for the big showdown. Thor gets a couple of scenes in the middle to build Stormbringer. But large portions of the film either are about Tony Stark and Stephen Strange (first with Bruce Banner and Wong, then later with Peter Parker), or else are about the Guardians (meeting Thor, going to Knowhere, fighting Thanos there, and doing stuff on Titan, plus the extended Thanos/Gamora/Nebula material). Out curiousity, I counted Black Widow's lines. She had exactly 13 throughout the whole movie, though her presence was also felt in two big fight scenes.

* The Captain America theme music played when he showed up in Scotland. The Avengers Theme was heard during the opening title, then not again until Thor returned to Earth with Stormbringer, finally reuniting the original team in one place. I suspect the next film will be more Avengers-centric, probably with Ant-Man, Hawkeye, and Captain Marvel on board as well.

* Sacrifice was a major theme. Gamora was willing to sacrifice herself to save the galaxy, but she needed Quill's help. Vision was willing to sacrifice himself, but he needed Wanda's help. Thor was willing to risk sacrificing himself to build the hammer. (Why didn't he ever try his lightning powers against Thanos in the opener? We needed that to fail, to justify the risk of building a new hammer.) Thanos was willing to sacrifice Gamora, which he considered a sacrifice on his part of the one thing he loved. Dr. Strange announced his willingness to sacrifice Tony and Peter, but then after seeing into the future realized that sacrificing himself was the right play, so he made it. Loki was unwilling to sacrifice Thor and thus gave Thanos a stone. Gamora was unwilling to sacrifice Nebula and thus gave Thanos another stone.

* Tied up in this sacrifice motif is a lot of biblical imagery. Thanos is called "Almighty" and "Father" by those who bow before him. He sits on a giant judgment throne in his spaceship. Thanos' testing of Quill to kill Gamora recalls God's testing of Abraham to kill Isaac. Thanos' killing of half the universe, with people disappearing out of cars and helicopters, recalls Jesus' Olivet Discourse ("Two men will be working in a field. One will be taken (i.e. killed) and one will be left behind (i.e. spared)") as depicted coming true in various Christian movies depicting the End Times. (Many Christians think the ones "left behind" are the ones being condemned, but that's not actually what Jesus says.) Obviously Thanos has been depicted as one of many evil deity-stand-ins in Marvel Comics for decades, along with Galactus, The Beyonder, etc.

* So... where's our stand-lone Black Widow movie? Is it that hard to come up with a cool spy plot that ties in with the MCU somehow? She and Hawkeye are an obvious pair for it.

Seen it three times now. I consider it a true event. I have never seen a movie like it. It reminds me more of a superhero comic than any movie before and less of other movies than any other Hollywood blockbuster.

I thought everything about it was just magnificent and I want to see it again.

I absolutely agree these are not Bruce Lee films, but they're really not supposed to be. It's something that other films have done well, but not really what these are aiming for. From a traditional perspective the action scenes aren't really action scenes. The goal of them is character and melodrama. The cuts focus on actor's faces, not how who they are punching affects the overall battle logistics. The movie thinks it's enough that you appreciate how Captain America is feeling at the moment in the story. And I tend to agree.

I can think of very few Marvel films that put much effort into fight choreography. Maybe the ending of Civil War comes closest. But even that is mostly interested in how the characters feel about battling each other.

Late to the party, but I finally saw it (while my wife was busy at a literal party, I took the opportunity to go to a film I knew she had no interest in. I can only cajole her into one or two superhero movies a year, so I'm reserving Ant-Man & the Wasp and Aquaman). Random comments:

While I applaud them for letting Josh Brolin actually voice Thanos reasonably naturally, rather than going for the generic super-villain voice (like JL's Steppenwulf, or the big bad robot in Transformers, whatever his name was), I did cringe a little when one of Thanos's lines included the phrase "snuck aboard the ship." OK, I've got no problem with "snuck" transitioning from slang to accepted conjugation in modern English, but it still sounds juvenile coming out of the likes of the Mad Titan. 

Maybe I'm just demonstrating some latent prejudice against New York accents, but Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner came across as a little dim. I remember him as being more sophisticated and academic-sounding in the first Avengers movie (the only other Ruffalo Banner film I've seen), but I wondered if this was an intentional foreshadowing of a merger between Banner and the Hulk, reverting to the mean of their two intellects? Was he like this in Ragnarok?

Strange's summary of the alternate futures made the implications of his last words (and the deal with Thanos) pretty obvious. But there was a more subtle aspect of Strange's actions that I hope will pay off in the sequel: the prospect that certain small details in the final battle were very intentional and will provide information critical to the inevitable Avengers victory. Or maybe not, but I hope so.