Infinity War is an epic. It has a huge cast, a truly menacing villain, drama, heartbreak, loss, hope, and battles to determine the fate of the universe. It isn’t my favorite Marvel movie, but it does live up to everything they were hyping this movie to be: a movie where all the characters we’ve come to know from the Marvel Cinematic Universe have to come together to try and stop the Mad Titan, Thanos, from finding the Infinity Stones, assembling the Infinity Gauntlet, and wiping out half of all life in the universe with a snap of his fingers.

  This movie represents a build-up of 10 years of film and universe-building, and it delivers a huge, sprawling story we’ve come to expect of Marvel crossovers, and then multiplies that epicness by a factor of 5. This is a story spanning from the far edges of the cosmos to the small African nation of Wakanda, and where every character has some role to play. Even characters with small roles in previous films, like Scarlet Witch, are given larger roles in this movie.

  The thing about the MCU is it has found a magic sweet spot. Its movies always become guaranteed blockbusters, but they give each movie its own unique feeling so it’s not just an assembly line of a couple movies coming out every year. In Doctor Strange, it was the trippy magic and dimension-manipulating scenes, in Spider Man: Homecoming it was the younger Peter Parker starting to grow into a bigger hero role, and in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies it’s the renegade, zooming-through-space-shooting-first-asking-questions-later attitude of the Guardians. Infinity War combines a lot of these elements, especially the feeling of Guardians of the Galaxy, but they all sort of interlock like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

  Speaking of the rest of the MCU, it has always had a bit of a villain problem. Sometimes you have really cool villains that can find the magic balance of menace, charisma, and threat (Loki and Ultron are my personal favorites) that create something truly memorable, or you get a villain that feels generic (Whiplash from Iron Man 2 comes to mind). Thanos, played by Josh Brolin, however, isn’t merely a villain in this movie. He is a force, a presence. His influence and coming to Earth looms over the heroes, creating a sense of pressure and of a ticking clock. He swats away heroes like flies, commands a group of some of the galaxies most powerful warriors, yet the movie can make you feel for the guy on at least some level by giving him a solid backstory and reasons for why he does what he does. Mind you, it isn’t a noble backstory, and he truly is villainous, and is probably the best villain the MCU has made to date.

  The visual effects are stunning. It isn’t on Doctor Strange levels, which featured some of the best visual effects I’ve ever seen in a film, but the sets, fights, and costumes all look as stunning as we’ve come to expect from a Marvel movie and then some. I would actually recommend watching this movie on the biggest screen you can. It really is that spectacular to watch.

  However, I would NOT recommend seeing this movie as a first dip into the MCU. This movie is a payoff for fans who have been following the central story arc involving Thanos and the Infinity Stones, and not for casual viewers of the Marvel movies. Anyone who doesn’t understand what has been happening in the MCU involving the central story arc is not going to understand a lick of this movie. But while it will seem confusing to casual fans, it is an absolutely MASSIVE payoff for fans of the movies who have been following or understand the Infinity Stones Arc.

  The movie also ends on a heck of a twist, and then like 10 seconds after that twist, the movie ends on a major cliffhanger. That’s right, this movie is merely a Part 1, and the story they have begun in this movie will finish in the untitled Avengers 4 coming out in May 2019. And the post credits scene sets up a whole new major part of the story of the MCU.

  Luckily, between now and Avengers 4, we have Ant-Man and The Wasp and the Captain Marvel movie, which will star the MCU’s first solo female lead. It’ll be interesting to see how those movies perform after the massive success of Infinity War.

  In conclusion, Infinity War gets 10 howls out of 10; A massive, sprawling Marvel epic that is a culmination of all that Marvel has been building up that is everything they hyped it up to be and more.