If there’s one big takeaway from Avengers: Infinity War, it’s that Joe and Anthony Russo – not to mention screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely – followed through on their original finale with courage and conviction.
Granted, it’s a third act that had the full support of Marvel chief Kevin Feige from the very beginning, but take nothing away from Infinity War, which was able to achieve the impossible by combining all of the many facets and characters that make up the MCU and produce one coherent, wildly entertaining blockbuster. And it’s one that ended on a rather grim note, given Josh Brolin’s Mad Titan managed to round up all six Infinity Stones and – whisper it – snap his fingers.
Yes, in this particular MCU movie, the bad guy actually won, sending out a cataclysmic shockwave capable of reducing half of all life in the universe into a pile of ash and dust. It’s at this very moment where we see the likes of Black Panther, Doctor Strange, and the young Spider-Man vanish before our very eyes, and after warning fans that Avengers 4 won’t simply retcon all of the deaths that make up Infinity War‘s story, Markus and McFeely told BuzzFeed that they’d do it all over again.
First of all, we would do it all over again. But remember, when we’re writing [Infinity War], and even shooting, there is no Black Panther movie. We don’t know it’s going to be so good, so effective, so resonant. And we had to treat all these characters the same. People who leave us [in Infinity War] are the leads of their own franchises. And Black Panther’s no different.
Like Doctor Strange said, we’re in the endgame now, and Markus stands by the decision to (temporarily?) erase big-name characters like Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sorcerer Supreme and Tom Holland’s Web-Head, as it helps amplify the emotional gut-punch hidden within Infinity War‘s third act.
We wanted that thing that happens at the end of that movie to have as much impact as possible. If you’re very carefully getting rid of your supporting cast, then it does seem like you’re pulling your punch.
McFeely concluded:
We can’t make movies assuming you know how movies get made. We can just tell the best version of the story we can, and hopefully you are investing in that story while you’re in it, and you feel appropriate sadness or joy while you’re in it. We can’t account for having one step outside the movie theater while you’re watching it. We would be terrible storytellers if we did that.
To their credit, Markus and McFeely never once shied away from the sky-high stakes of Avengers: Infinity War, resulting in one of the most satisfying Marvel movies to date – even if it left us itching for the so-far untitled Avengers 4.
