Why One Avengers: Infinity War Character Withstood Death That Little Bit Longer

Now that the, ahem, dust is beginning to settle from Avengers: Infinity War, it’s fair to say that Marvel’s historic crossover ended on a rather glum note.

Having successfully obtained all six Infinity Stones, Thanos was able to carry out the universal genocide he had been blabbering on about the entire movie. And so, with one snap of his giant, purple fingers, the Mad Titan eviscerated half of all life in the cosmos, leaving only a skeleton crew of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes left for Avengers 4.

Among those to fall at the hands of Thanos was Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, paving the way for one of Infinity War‘s most gut-wrenching scenes. But it seems the Web-Head was able to resist that snap of doom for a little bit longer than his superpowered allies, as Matt Aitken, VFX supervisor at Weta Digital, tells Screen Rant.

“Spidey’s really fighting it. He definitely doesn’t want to go and he’s fighting… he’s incredibly powerful, so he’s able to withhold it for a lot longer than some of the others, but in the end, he can’t withstand it.”

It’s a scene that’s made all the more impressive by the fact that Tom Holland was only informed about Spidey’s death on the day it was filmed, though a combination of ad-libbing and sheer talent was enough to reduce every Marvel fan into a blubbering wreck. Hell, even those at Weta Digital shed a few tears for the fallen Spider-Man, according to 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.

So whereas Avengers: Infinity War‘s other major deaths were shot from afar – relatively speaking, of course – the creative minds at Weta Digital reined in the focus to Peter Parker’s shocked face as our hero slowly began to realize that he was out of luck…and out of time. We’re not crying, you’re crying!