June 13th, 2008 is arguably the most important date for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Why? Because it marked the release of the most unforgettable marvel movie of all time: The Incredible Hulk. This movie’s post credits scene showed us that these heroes, Iron Man, Hulk, and many others, all coexisted in the same universe. This also marked the first time that we, the audience, asked what it would look like to see all these heroes we grew up with together on the big screen in a way that only previously had been seen in 20-page comic books. At this point, the hype for Avengers: Infinity War had begun.

Infinity War stars the characters from all the previous Avengers films, Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man– but also stars new and lesser known characters from the Guardians of the Galaxy, Dr. Strange, and War Machine. Details for this movie have been kept under lock and key, almost nothing has gotten out. All of this has contributed to the ever growing hype for this movie.

To be completely honest, even with all the hype surrounding it, my expectations were fairly grounded. I didn’t expect this to be a phenomenal movie. I just didn’t understand how Marvel, who had spent the past decade making this universe as big as possible, could suddenly condense 64 major, complex characters into a two and a half hour movie and still give a compelling story at the same time.

All my doubts, however, were completely unnecessary. This movie met all my expectations and then some; it delivers on all fronts. Not only is it one of the most visually appealing movies I have seen in years, but it also featured an unconventional plot line that was refreshing and unpredictable.

One of the knocks on all superhero movies is that regardless of how dire the situation may be, the good guys always win. And after 10 years of films in this fashion, many expected directors Joe and Anthony Russo to follow the same general plot line. That general idea of a plot line was flipped completely on its head. It was like watching a heist movie with Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans instead of George Clooney and Brad Pitt. Besides that, one of the most important factors to this film is that it establishes real stakes from the very beginning. You feel as though anything could happen. As a result, I sat there completely engrossed knowing that anyone could die at any moment.

My favorite part of this movie is without a doubt, the characters. Over the course of the movie we see character interactions that seemed impossible until now. Chris Hemsworth revitalized Thor and brought in more of the emotion, humor, and drive that we saw in Thor: Ragnarok. While Robert Downey Jr, was amazing as usual and gave us a more developed Tony Stark that is struggling to balance the life he wants to have with his now fiance Pepper Pots with the other half that wants to prepare for the threat he knows is coming. However, the prize goes to Josh Brolin as Thanos. He was amazing, I would say that he’s the best villain we have seen since Heath Ledger’s Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight. This story made him the protagonist. We follow his quest for power and all the while, we see his emotional love for his daughter while we understand why he believes genocide on a universal scale is necessary and why he’s the one who needs to do it.

However, as great as the characters were, there were some faults. Even though we did have some amazing character development, there were characters who just didn’t have enough screen time as we would have liked. The other issue was that some characters, like Star-Lord and Black Panther, didn’t have very interesting or big storylines. Star-Lord, especially, was eye-rollingly bad.

The other knock on this movie was just that there were times when we would jump from different characters and it felt choppy. It felt discombobulated at times and there were moments where you completely forgot about some of the characters and their stories. However, these problems remained insignificant. This film reaches well beyond expectations and delivers arguably one of the best Marvel movies I have ever seen.