I spent all last week concerned with what the critical response to Avengers: Infinity War would look like. I am willing to admit that I spent the last three days spending an abnormal amount of time refreshing the film’s Rotten Tomatoes page to see where the overall score was.

Not that the score was going to keep me from watching the movie, that was happening no matter what, but more so I could temper my expectations. You see, I’ve never been this excited for a movie ever; it’s loosely based on my all-time favorite limited series graphic novel and takes my affinity for team-up movies to the next level. So if Infinity War turned out to be a clunker, I wanted to know; that’s because I was pre-concerned with my well-being after.

After the high expectations that turned into utter disappointments of X-Men: The Last Stand and Age of Ultron, I wanted to be sure I came down from the clouds in case the movie was going to be less than stellar quality-wise and not fall into a deep depression and anger of what could have been

Walking into the theater on Wednesday night for the 7PM showing, the film sat at a very respectable 86% — a pretty good score, so my expectations were only tempered somewhat, but no amount of page refreshes or daydreaming could have prepared me for the next three hours. In short, I LOVED Avengers: Infinity War.

Somehow, Infinity War Came Together and It was AWESOME

All throughout the first third of the movie, my brain kept trying to protect my fragile psyche. My brain kept saying “This is very good so far, please don’t start disappointing me.”

It didn’t, everyone. Halfway through the movie, I just let go. For all the concerns and pressure that the film had on its shoulders coming in, it delivered as best it could on the potential problems of too many characters, a lot of story lines, reminding the casual audience what the infinity stones were, whether Marvel could develop a worthwhile villain and the run time that neared three hours.

I had all those concerns dancing in my head, too. What sat in front of Anthony Russo and Joe Russo to untangle wasn’t easy, but the brothers pulled it off with humor, excitement, investment and an ending that not only shocked but left us wanting more. The Atlantic put it best:

It is far from a perfect movie, but it is probably close to the best movie it could have been. There are a few unforced errors, but the film’s number of actual missteps is a tiny fraction of the potential missteps inherent in an undertaking this vast.

That quote, in a nutshell, captures how I feel about Infinity War save for one thing: I wouldn’t have said “It is far from a perfect movie.” Infinity War is actually very close to being perfect when considering all the obstacles and all the items they had to juggle to make a cohesive film. .

What Marvel Studios (and superhero movies) has done has changed what audiences expect from a movie. The expectation of a comic book movie isn’t just the film itself, but it’s a piece of a larger universe that is there so it moves that universe forward — it serves both. If you can’t buy into that new idea of storytelling, you’re going to dislike most Marvel films. It flies in the face of the traditional movie critics and their point of view of what a movie should be. As a comic book fan that understands that it’s one of the pieces that makes up the genre, I not only accept it, but I look forward to it.

The Russos and the writers somehow juggled everything so well that the 2 hours and roughly 40 minutes went by in a flash and I found myself wanting more when I sensed that the ending was near. Speaking of the ending, the way that Infinity War ended, I don’t think any comic fan or casual viewer could have left fully-satisfied. And that’s what they wanted, you’re supposed to leave wanting more;It’s two-parter and a comic book movie after all.

As far as infinity War was concerned, I was more than satisfied with the film and so happy with what they accomplished with Infinity War. Like the story line itself, I placed the weight of the universe on Infinity War and thankfully, it completely delivered.