If you’ve seen Avengers: Infinity War – and, let’s face it, by this point you have or you wouldn’t be reading this – you know the moment in question. Over the film’s two hour plus runtime, we’ve watched as the Mad Titan swatted our favorite heroes aside in his quest to “balance” the universe. To do this, he attempts to kill half of its population using the power of the Infinity Stones, thus (supposedly) improving the lives of the living remainder.
As the battle of Wakanda reaches its climax, Thanos finally completes his mission – at the cost of Vision’s life, might we add. Then, despite the God of Thunder’s efforts, the warlord manages to snap his fingers and innumerable beings fade out of existence, including our many of our favorites – RIP Groot, T’Challa and Doctor Strange.
But the worst is yet to come…
Over on Titan, the Guardians of the Galaxy turn to ash, and the same begins to happen to Spider-Man as well. Peter realizes that his death is coming, too, and starts a much slower disintegration. He grasps at Tony Stark, tearfully pleading “I don’t want to go!” Yet the wounded Iron Man can only watch in horror as his protégé fades away in his arms. But why did the young hero take longer to die than the others?
It’s a question that fans have been asking for a while now and in a recent interview with The Huffington Post, the Russo brothers have confirmed what seems to be the common theory. That being that Peter Parker’s Spidey sense was able to perceive the danger before it hit.
“That’s correct,” Joe Russo said when HuffPo asked if the Spidey sense was behind the early warning. “He was aware of something.”
Of course, the fact that it took longer for Spider-Man to go only made the whole thing that much more tragic to watch. Not to mention that the moment also showed off some terrific acting on Tom Holland’s part, as he was was only informed about Spidey’s death on the day it was filmed.
Through a combination of ad-libbing and sheer talent, though, the character’s final scene reduced every Marvel fan into a blubbering wreck. Hell, even those at Weta Digital shed a few tears for the fallen Spider-Man, according to VFX supervisor Matt Aitken.
Nobody at Weta could watch that. The first few times we watched that we all choked up, it’s an incredibly powerful performance and a key moment in the film, I think. There was less room to kind of ‘smoke and mirrors’ it, if you like. We had to make sure that it worked really, really well, because it was so drawn out, and so it had to withhold very high levels of scrutiny because we were holding right on Spidey’s face over Tony’s shoulder. It was just making sure that it worked seamlessly through that trauma process.
Avengers: Infinity War is currently screening all across the globe, with the so-far untitled Avengers 4 primed to close the book on this current Marvel chapter – and herald a “turning point” for the entire MCU, if that recently leaked synopsis is any indication – come 2019. The only question that remains, is, on how Earth will Iron Man, Cap and the rest of the gang manage to reverse Thanos’ devastating actions from the last film?
