'The Walking Dead's Robert Kirkman Says 'Avengers: Infinity War' Was Not Even A Movie

Avengers: Infinity War didn't waste any time getting started, forgoing some of the familiar movie trappings in favor of getting right into the central conflict, and that's something that Robert Kirkman loves about it.

Kirkman ended up on the topic of Marvel Studios' latest epic on the latest Smodcast with Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier. During the show, Kirkman discussed how Infinity War just cuts out some of the things moviegoers have come to expect from feature films, though that's not necessarily a bad thing.

"I love that Infinity War was not even a movie," Kirkman said. "They were just like here's a series of events that are important to you because you know these characters. It's going to go from A to B to C to D because it's not a three-act structure, it's like 'whatever man, you're paying for an experience'. There's no recap. There's no explanation as to who anyone is. You sit down in the movie and they're just like 'guess what? You've earned this. We're at like movie 21 now and here we f****** go' and you're like 'oh my god! Like this is so great!'

Smith compares it to something comics fans are innately familiar with, annuals.

"They treated it like a giant-sized annual," Smith said. "Like our audience knows exactly where we are. Like we don't have to explain to your mom anymore who Tony Stark is. We're going to start this movie after probably a scene that would've explained a lot of s***, like with the Asgardians f****** dead and then there's Thanos himself. They have that much faith in the audience that they're like 'No. They're following very closely."

While Kirkman has come to appreciate Infinity War, it didn't always start out that way upon first viewing.

"At the end of that movie, I got my arms crossed and I'm going 'Oh yeah, Black Panther's dead. You f****** kidding me? Oh really? You're in a production for a second Spider-Man movie right now so I'm supposed to now be upset that Tom Holland is dying in this really emotional way?' And then the movie's just over and it's like 'oh f*** you! I'm not buying this, they're all coming back in the next movie. It's like I've read the comic. I know that they disappear and come back...like ah f***. Whatever. Bah!' I can't believe he ended it this way," Kirkman said.

It would take another viewing of the film with his daughter to change his mind.

"But then, I see every Marvel movie two or three times in the theater cuz I have free time, and my daughter didn't go with me to the first time because she had something going on, and so I bring my nine-year-old daughter a second time and she's sitting next to me," Kirkman said. "And when those people start to disappear, I look over at her and she is not crying, but it looks like she could cry. Her mouth is agape. Her eyes are open. She has her little tiny nine-year-old girl hands like clutching her heart and she looks at the screen going (breaths), like taking these breaths. And the emotion that I saw in her...I almost wept in the theater. I was like 'oh my God. This is like a movie."

"Seeing how it affected her I was like 'just try to not be so god**** cynical Robert.' Like, let people enjoy a thing, ya know? And that's something I think, every comic book fan on the internet should f****** realize, like quit being smarter than everyone else, quit being mean to people, like calm down. Let people enjoy a thing sometimes," Kirkman said.

Fans will get more answers in Avengers 4, which hits on May 3rd, 2019.