It’s not just the screen size, either. Bonnick says that IMAX goes to great lengths to ensure pristine moviegoing: “Every morning when the system powers up in a theater, there’s custom camera that looks at the screen, there are microphones in the theater that listen to the sound, and we run full diagnostics and calibration checks to make sure the sound is playing back exactly as it should,” he said. It might seem like overkill, but it’s the only way to make sure that the brightness, projection quality and sound are all up to snuff. Whereas other theaters tend to degrade over time, the daily calibrations help IMAX theaters to maintain their overall quality.

While IMAX doesn’t use object-based surround sound like Dolby Atmos, Bonnick notes that its 12-channel system has its own benefits. Its loudspeakers are designed to create sweet spots across large areas of the theater, rather than dead center like most cinemas. They’re also able to create “phantom imaging,” meaning sounds can appear to come from specific points without actually having a speaker there. Instead of investing in 30 to 40 speakers, Bonnick says IMAX screens can rely on just 12 custom ones with low distortion.

Additionally, their amplifiers can pump out thousands of watts of power, but most of the time they’re only using 300 watts. That gives them head room to pump things up for dramatic moments, Bonnick says. “We want to have extended dynamic range so that you can hear a pin drop. If a rocket ship is roaring off, we have the power to give that sound to you without it experiencing distortion.”

Of course, not every IMAX screen offers an immersive 70-foot plus experience. A decade ago, comedian Aziz Ansari started an online firestorm when he realized IMAX digital screens were significantly smaller. These days, the vast majority of IMAX auditoriums in multiplexes are retrofitted, so they can only get as large as the size of the room. Still, these so-called “Lie-MAX” screens offer larger images than the average digital cinema, and they have the added advantage of IMAX’s sound design. And in the case of Avengers Endgame, you’ll still get to see much more of the film.

If you’ve been following the Marvel films since Iron Man, Endgame will feel like the end of a pop culture era. It’s a punctuation mark on a bold experiment, one that finally brought the joys of comic book-style serial storytelling to films. For that reason alone, it deserves to be seen on the biggest IMAX screen you can find.

Images: Marvel