There have been many reasons why I have been suffering from a severe obsession with the third installment of the Avengers movie. Between reading the initial comic book over 25 years ago, obsessively watching and crying the first official trailer released in late November, reading hundreds of articles about the movie, and buying not one, but two pre-sale tickets for the first weekend (I’ve never bought pre-sale tickets before), it’s no doubt the most-excited I’ve ever been to see a movie.

Tempering Expectations and Excitement

This far into the game, on the week on the movie’s release, there’s only two things that could temper my excitement 1) if I accidentally read a spoiler for the movie and 2) Infinity War’s Rotten Tomatoes score.

Over the last few months, the first thing I would do in the morning was to check Google News for any new developments in the movie. Knowing that not even the primary actors had read the full script, I knew that any news was probably speculation, rumors and theories. Since the film premiered on Monday, I’ve purposely scaled back on the amount of articles I’ve read; not wanting to have too much real information going in.

Banning myself from reading Infinity War articles hasn’t been easy, but I knew that was completely under my control. I could click on the link or scroll through the news if I wanted to — it was my choice.

However, how critics would review the movie wasn’t in my toolbox. After Avenger; Age of Ultron (75%) and X3: The Last Stand (58%) both received relatively bad scores on Rotten Tomatoes and I walked out being severely disappointed in both sequels that followed great movies that preceded it, the stakes were high for me when it came down to Avengers: Infinity War.This entire week, I waited for social media embargo to be lifted and for the first Rotten Tomatoes reviews to be uploaded.

In my mind, Infinity War was foolproof if it received an 87% or higher on RT. However, if it scored anything below 80% my excitement would be muted due to the trauma I suffered after huge expectations came crashing down with Avengers 2 and X-Men 3. Yes, it’s that serious.

Avengers: Infinity War ~85% on Rotten Tomatoes

After flirting with 90% as early reviews rolled in, Infinity War currently sits at 85%. I know this because I refreshed the page dozens of times over the course of several hours to see where the percentage was trending as reviews dripped in.

As of this post, Infinity War has 116 reviews, which is approximately a third of the reviews it will ultimately receive during it’s inevitable long run at the box office. For example, the last two Marvel Movies Black Panther had nearly 370 reviews and Thor: Ragnarok had 333 reviews.

I know that Rotten Tomatoes isn’t the end all, but the aggregated reviews is a signal that helps me set expectations. Personally, a movie in the mid-80 percentages is usually pretty good, but as mentioned earlier, I really hoped (and still hope) that it hit 87%, 88% or even 90%+ (which is unlikely now). If it stays where it is ~85%, then it’s more of a crap shoot for me. It’s probably going to be just fine of a movie, but my excitement will have been slowed. Which considering how obsessed I’ve been, might not be a bad thing.

So here’s to low expectations and Avengers: Infinity War surpassing those by a mile.