Avengers: Infinity War is set to be the biggest movie in the MCU yet, so you can bet that it’ll have major repercussions for the franchise going forward. In particular, there are two Marvel films coming out in between the third Avengers installment and its currently untitled sequel Avengers 4. Namely, Ant-Man and the Wasp and Captain Marvel.Â
In a chat during a set visit last year, Infinity War screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely talked a little bit about how the film would affect the following entries in the MCU. As their comments date back to 2017, they refer to Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther as well, but the mentions of the movies yet to released will be of most interest. In particular, the duo opened up about the challenge of balancing their story with other MCU efforts.
“Well there’s a lot of conversations. But we have had to juggle both Marvel– Black Panther, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and Captain Marvel— specifically because they all exist in various ways in and around these two movies.”
“Well at least [Thor: Ragnarok is] before this first movie. Black Panther is too. So we think we handled it and solved it in fairly clever ways, but it certainly was an issue. If you wanna do what you wanna do here, how does it affect this movie and not just make this movie. Why is Ant-Man and Wasp not Infinity War Part Two? So we gotta work on that and figure it out.”
On the flipside, how much did Ant-Man and the Wasp and Captain Marvel have to be adapted to fit in with what happens in Infinity War? Christopher Markus went on to say that he and his co-writer were careful not to impose too much on these other movies, but did request that certain things be tweaked or moved into some place or other in order to match up with what they had planned for the tentpole Avengers films.
“How do you not fall into the trap of what these movies are sometimes accused of which is just sometimes feeding each other and not being standalone things. You can’t make them overly dependent on each other, and yet you still want to have this bloodstream flowing through the universe.”
“Peyton Reed and his group of writers are going to make whatever movie they want. We had very small requests like, ‘It would be great if right there that person was—is that okay? Good?’ You always make the best movie you can. Same thing with Black Panther and same thing with Captain Marvel. They’re gonna make the movies they’re gonna make and in this unique case, very small tiny suggestions for beginnings and endings like that.”
We know that Captain Marvel is set back in the 1990s, so that should mean it can stay largely standalone and free from having to mold around Infinity War for the most part. Ant-Man 2, however, will continue on from the events of the upcoming event movie. As such, it should be interesting to see how it manages to tackle its own Earthbound story with the ongoing cosmic battle against Thanos.
Avengers: Infinity War smashes into theaters on April 27th.
