The Thing Is... Avengers: Infinity War works,
and Justice League doesn't

Almost every member of the Avengers (yes, bafflingly Black Widow still doesn’t have a solo film), got their own stand-alone film, giving us their own personal story arc. This allowed each of them to come together in Infinity War, without any need for exposition or explanation. We knew these characters already, and we were ready to jump straight into the action with them.

Over the course of a decade, the MCU expertly teased and foreshadowed it's future characters and villains, with name-drops, hints and elaborately planned post-credit scenes. It all snow-balled into the perfect build up, that left fans guessing and speculating as to what each tease could mean, and Infinity War was the ultimate reward.

There's an obvious master plan at work within the MCU, and their confidence in the plan is evident in their unwillingness to be too flashy with it. The setting up of the Infinity Stones as objects of interest in Infinity War, was carefully played out over multiple movies. But the stones themselves were hardly ever the focus. More often than not, they were hiding in plain sight, and the audience were more invested in the story surrounding the hero, than the stones themselves. When we finally reached Infinity War, suddenly we all felt the true weight and importance of these immensely powerful objects. Even the scattering of the stones across multiple locations in the galaxy was a genius move, allowing for a neat scavenger hunt type story, and gave the film an excuse to break up the huge MCU roster into little mix-and-match teams that we could digest easily.

Here's an area where the MCU has previously faltered in. The complaint has always been that the characters never really feel like they're in danger. Infinity War course corrected this in a huge way. Watching the film, it was apparent from the get-go that no one was safe. One wrong move could literally mean the end of life as we know it. And with every mistake and setback, we as an audience felt the tension and weight of impending doom. Infinity War set up some massive stakes, and then committed whole-heartedly to them.

There's no denying that Infinity War was Thanos' movie. This was another course correction for the MCU, which, in the past, had suffered from a slew of forgettable villains, not counting Loki of course. But Thanos delivered just the right amount of backstory to let us see some depth to his actions, but maintained enough mystery that we were never really ever sure what his next move would be. Also, he felt like a real person, with emotions, complex motivations, and convictions. It's easy enough to watch the film from Thanos' perspective and see him as the hero of his own story.

MCU movies for the most part, have never really garnered much praise for stunning visuals or ambitious cinematography, and that's because they've always kept their visual effects streamlined to depict our real-world as much as possible. They always felt grounded and dare I say, even a little boring visually. But that philosophy paid off in spades for Infinity War. When your story takes place across multiple planets, and mythical locations, it can be hard to keep the audience feeling like their still watching something real. The grounded-ness of the visual effects really helped to balance things out, so that the surroundings never felt like a distraction.