Avengers: Infinity War   2 stars

I finally got around to Avengers: Infinity War, the continued adventures of the Marvel characters that was in theaters two years ago.  This two and a half hour extravagant CGI production is about all the superheroes in the series joining forces to battle their greatest enemy ever, Thanos, a supervillain who has such great superpowers he aims to destroy half the universe to create his vision of what the universe should look like.  He can accomplish his mission by collecting all the special stones scattered throughout creation and putting them in his gauntlet, a special weapon created just for him.  This story is scattered through so many different worlds and includes so many different characters that many of them seem to get lost and buried in the background.  There is the usual wit and personalities that we remember and the usual giant set pieces of battles between the heroes and the various villains.  Why do stories like this have to threaten the entire universe?  The writers pretend that we have no concept of how vast the universe is, like one individual could affect all of creation.  In my view there is only one franchise/science fiction story that could involve the whole universe and that is of Doctor Who.  All others need to limit themselves to a portion of the universe.  Infinity War is memorable for its overblown special effects and super-being battles, but I don’t recommend it for much beyond that.  Everybody probably knows how it ends by now, but I won’t mention that, except that there is a sequel after this.