On the whole, the MCU joins up surprisingly well as one big shared universe, though there are some glaring continuity errors now and again. Of course, these are always going to happen when a franchise is made up of so many different films each put together by different directors, writers, etc., so it’s understandable. But once fans point them out, they’re hard to ignore.
One of the major ones come from a discrepancy between Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers: Infinity War. In the former, Gamora references the fact that she’s the last of her kind because Thanos slaughtered her people. In the latter, however, we get a flashback to how she came to be adopted by the Mad Titan and it’s revealed that he only – only! – killed half of her kind, the Zehoberei. So, how are we to square these two accounts?
One fan asked the Russo brothers this taxing question recently and they answered back that it all comes down to which of the two characters you believe: Thanos or Gamora? As /Film’s Peter Sciretta reported from a Q&A event in Hollywood last night:
In Infinity War, Thanos says that all the children on Gamoras planet eat well after the purge but in Guardians, Gamora says she was the last of her race. The Russo Brothers were asked about this nitpick and they responded “Who do you believe? Do you believe Thanos or Gamora?”
— /Film (@slashfilm) November 29, 2018
This is a fun way to twist the problem by the Russos but, honestly, it doesn’t quite hold up. The fact is that the Nova Corps’ rap sheet on Gamora stated that she was the last of her kind, too. Likewise, Thanos confirmed to Gamora in IW that the Zenhoberei are now prospering due to his massacre, meaning there are more resources to go around. As such, there’s no real way to merge the two explanations.
Like I said above, though, this is just an outcome of the different approaches. James Gunn wrote Thanos in line with his bloodthirsty depiction in the comics, while the Russos and screenwriters Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus reimagined the villain as obsessed with balancing the universe in Avengers: Infinity War. It was a terrific idea, but it does make it hard to gel that with his appearances in The Avengers and Guardians.
