Is it okay to dislike ‘Avengers: Infinity War’?

Is Avengers: Infinity War the greatest film ever made? Maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement. But Infinity War is certainly one of the greatest superhero films ever made, right? An astounding cinematic accomplishment on par with or surpassing Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight even.

Is this hyperbole? Maybe. But there’s a wide swath of fans who genuinely feel this way about Marvel Studios’ star-filled epic, which—along with the untitled Avengers 4—serves as the culmination event of the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe thus far. In fact, the majority opinion is that Infinity War is great from beginning to end, and given the immense weight of the MCU on its back, dissent is not necessarily welcome. Begone ye nitpickers, wet blankets, and haters! Except, isn’t the point of art that not everyone sees or feels the same thing? Isn’t art subjective? In which case, well, I’d like to get something off my chest: My name is Adam Chitwood and I don’t really like Avengers: Infinity War.

Merely typing that statement has no doubt put off a not-insubstantial number of readers who’ve already clicked away to something else. But hear me out—I promise to be as sincere as possible, and by the end of this I’ll have explained why, really, me disliking Infinity War is part of what makes the Marvel Cinematic Universe is so great.