I’d be pretty miffed if someone paralyzed me, even if that somebody was a super-intelligent robot and I was flying through the air in a mechanical war suit.
Rhodey’s fall during the airport battle in Captain America: Civil War was the moment you knew things had gone too far, with Tony Stark’s eminently sensible buddy smacking into the ground with a hideous thump. Fortunately, this being the MCU and his best friend being Iron Man, he’s already walking around on some shiny robot legs. But surely, when he ran into Vision in Avengers: Infinity War you’d have thought he’d have been more than a little cheesed off with Bettany’s android. So why wasn’t he?
Well, Infinity War director Joe Russo has you covered (via the commentary track on the film’s digital release), explaining the following:
“Rhodey is once removed from that conflict. He is also an extremely heroic character, a military man and understands that his sacrifice needs to be put aside for the greater good of the universe. …Â “But off camera, since Civil War, he and Vision obviously have been working together until Vision went off the grid and disappeared. So they must have made amends.”
Fair enough, I guess. I mean, Vision wasn’t strictly aiming at War Machine, his beam just happened to clip him by mistake. Of course, if it’d hit his intended target we might be talking about Falcon being crippled instead. The lesson I’m taking away from this is that you don’t shoot high-powered laser beams at guys in flying suits unless you know you’re going to hit what you’re aiming at and you either want to kill or maim them.
Aside from this narrative explanation, Russo pointed out the simple fact that there’s a lot going on in Infinity War, and it’s difficult to find time for characters to talk about anything other than the world-ending calamity that’s befalling them:
“Nobody gets to rest in this film. They literally get Strange, Tony, Banner and Wong get about two minutes of exposition out before the story comes to them, and now they’re in motion. Inciting incidents happened and characters are in motion. And you’ll watch each sequence, as we introduce characters, each one has his own inciting incident that sets them off on the path towards Thanos.”
It’s a fair point, though they maybe could have filmed a little scene with the intention of putting it on the home video release of Avengers: Infinity War. After all, we’ve already been treated to a number of other deleted scenes.
