Avengers: Endgame is already breaking international box office records, including in New Zealand - and it deserves to.
The climactic Marvel movie is relentlessly entertaining and consistently delightful, pulling off a bit of a magic trick in how well it concludes this huge hydra collection of connected stories.
The film opened in several territories around the world this week and promptly pulled in a reported US$169 million.
In New Zealand, it raked in a little more than $1.7 million on Wednesday alone - said to be this country's biggest box office day ever.
Those sorts of figures indicate an enormous fanbase and a wild amount of anticipation.
Surprisingly, Endgame delivers on the hype.
I went in fairly cynical, having started to feel Marvel Cinematic Universe fatigue. Sure, all these movies are fun, but after 22 of them in 11 years, they're getting a bit samey.
I also didn't enjoy Infinity War all that much, so my expectations for Endgame were more muted than many people's.
But man I loved this movie. It's far from perfect and does suffer from being sprawling and convoluted - but that is simply impossible to avoid when you're handling dozens of characters and sub-plots all coming to a head.
Balancing all those narrative factors is handled remarkably well - far better than I had expected. And the way the film dances from emotional character beats to light humour to epic action and back again is hugely admirable.
One thing the Avengers movies in particular do great is those awesome, quintessential comic book moments; like the first time Captain America and Iron Man combine their weapons, for example.
Endgame has plenty of them - but the absolute best goes to Thor. If you're a fan of the weapons and powers the Norse god has used over this franchise, prepare to leap out of your seat pumping a fist in the air when this moment hits.
There's a lot to love about this movie and the emotional responses it's triggering in fans are totally understandable.
For a comic book ensemble film, this is as good as it gets.
It's going to be interesting to see how the Marvel Cinematic Universe tries to top this.
Five stars.
Newshub.
