Avengers: Infinity War hit theaters last week, giving fans all over the world the opportunity to see ten years of planning and world building come to fruition.

Starting way back in 2008 Marvel Studios set the stage for the Avengers to be introduced to the movie scene when Robert Downey Jr took on his iconic role as Iron Man. With the success of this first movie Marvel kept the onslaught going, releasing movie after movie, building the Marvel universe and lore; all the while dropping hints and clues to the eventual arrival of Thanos, the main antagonist of Avengers: Infinity War. So, with a base understanding of the deep and careful planning that Marvel Studios has put into its characters and universe, let’s take a deeper look into this film.

To be clear, you do not need to watch any of the previous Avengers or Avenger related movies to understand what is going on. That being said I would recommend  watching most if not all of the previous Avenger movies to fully appreciate and understand the movie (watching The Avengers, The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, and Thor: Ragnarok in that order would be the very minimum list of movies you should watch before going and seeing Avenger: Infinity War). If you do take the time to go and watch these four movies you’ll get an understanding of why characters act a certain way towards each other and why some still hold grudges. The only reason I mentioned needing to watch Thor: Ragnarok is because Avengers: Infinity War picks up right where Thor: Ragnarok leaves off; with Thor, Hulk, Loki, and the asgardian refugees being attacked in space by Thanos.

Like I said previously, Avengers: Infinity War opens up to Thanos beating the living snot out of Thor, Loki, and Hulk. This is this first time audiences have ever seen Thanos fight on screen before, and it was definitely a treat. In the first twenty minutes or so we see just how powerful Thanos is, clearly establishing him as the biggest bad guy the Avengers have ever faced, and making the stakes real by *spoilers* killing Loki. Overall I thought Thanos was handled very well considering how many main characters the directors had to juggle. Thanos was given more than enough screen time to make him feel like a real person, not just a random evil guy who wants to kill half the universe for no reason. The directors take time to show Thanos’ emotions and the reason for why he’s doing what he is doing, humanizing him and making the audience fully understand why he is trying to kill half off half of the universess population.

While some fans didn’t appreciate the divergents from comic books reasoning for Thanos trying to kill so many people, I think the change works. In the comic Thanos is dating death. Yes, Thanos is dating the physical embodiment of death. Anyways Thanos decides to impress her he’d go and kill half of the universe. Pretty romantic huh? Well as romantic as it sounds this wouldn’t really translate over to the movie too well because there are so many character already in this movie that if they wanted to add the character of death they would take too much time away from Thanos, causing him to be an underdeveloped and one dimensional character.

Avengers: Infinity War boasts a very large cast of all star actors, and for the entire movie, the directors were able balance the entire cast and make each seem equally important to the overall plot. One of the best ways they did this was to break the team up into different groups, each set on their own intertwining objective. Each groups mission felt important, pushing not only the plot along, but also developing the characters as well. This is what really impressed me about Avengers: Infinity War, the ability to make every character feel important and have a critical role in the plot.

Overall Avengers: Infinity War is a very good movie, developing the story of the Avengers, pushing the plot forward, and building upon its already well created characters. To any superhero fan, or anyone who just enjoys a really well done and well written movie I would highly recommend going out and seeing this movie. The set pieces were beautiful, the acting was amazing, the humor was spot on, and even though I only saw it last week I want to go and see it again already, it was that good. So, go out and see the new Avengers: Infinity War, you won’t be disappointed.