In a movie of Avengers: Infinity War‘s size, there will always be one or two characters who are unfairly shoved to the sidelines.
It’s the nature of the beast, really, particularly when that beast takes the form of a Marvel event film with close to 25 big-name stars on its docket. But perhaps more than anyone else, Avengers: Infinity War gave short shrift to both Captain America and Black Widow, two of the most beloved characters in the entire MCU. So what gives?
Well, according to writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, when the time came to weigh each hero’s respective screentime and, perhaps more importantly, how they fit into the sequel’s overarching story, some tough decisions were made.
Speaking of which, Infinity War‘s grand finale featured the moment when Thanos got his wish, snapped his fingers, and wiped out half of the known universe. But as the, ahem, dust begins to settle, Markus told The Hollywood Reporter that there are still questions to be answered.
There are still questions. What are they [The Avengers] going to do, and all those sorts of things. But if you had stopped it before he snapped his fingers, or with four stones, that really is just a pause button. That really is just going, ‘What’s he going to do?’ ‘Will your hero stop dangling from the cliff?’ And we wanted to put a much more definitive ‘Yes, this happens. Deal with it,’ tone at the end of it, rather than jerk you around.
When it comes to the screentime devoted to each hero, Markus told THR that it’s really a question of character, and warned fans that there are actually fewer scenes featuring Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff – Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson, respectively – than many had come to expect.
Some of the people, when you weigh up who you are seeing, seem to take a little bit of a back seat in this one. When we did crack them, what we realized was they had far more potential in the movie coming next year, just in terms of how their character would be tested by the story. I’m not telling you what the story is. I will say there is less Steve Rogers and Natasha (Scarlett Johansson) than you might expect in this movie [Infinity War].
He concluded:
Because they are such hard-bitten people, when a threat comes, they stand there and they take the threat. They don’t crack. They don’t whimper. They don’t start talking about all their failed opportunities. So, there isn’t that much to explore, especially when you don’t have a lot of time. But there’s a lot later.
It’s disappointing, of course, as Chris Evans is said to be mulling over his MCU future – or lack thereof – now that his contract is nearing its end. Nevertheless, Infinity War left the door open for Marvel’s Phase One heroes (Hawkeye included!) to come in and save the day during Avengers 4 when it touches down next year.
