Avengers: Infinity War‘s groundbreaking storyline is sure to send shockwaves through the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as the movie ends with Thanos reshaping reality with the power of the Infinity Stones. The casualties of this are enormous, but fans remain unconvinced that the likes of Black Panther, Spider-Man and Doctor Strange will stay dead. One character who could, however, as they were killed earlier on in the film, is the Mad Titan’s adoptive daughter, Gamora.
Given that she’s a lead in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, you’d think that the idea of killing the fiercest woman in the galaxy off would undergo a lot of discussion. As it happens, though, it was freely dreamed up by Infinity War‘s writers Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus and directors Anthony and Joe Russo. Surprisingly, Guardians writer/director James Gunn wasn’t even consulted on the decision to murder one of his characters. In fact, the Russos still aren’t exactly sure what he thinks about it.
The brothers dropped this surprising tidbit while speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, where they praised Marvel Studios’ hands-off approach which let them take the story where it needed to go without worrying too much about the bigger picture.
Joe Russo: Marvel is very good about allowing every director to have their freedom.
Anthony Russo: We said a lot of story that we wanted to tell. And we present that to Marvel. And we got no pushback from that choice. I’m sure that Kevin has a… we didn’t have a direct conversation with James about the Gamora choice, but I’m sure that certainly Kevin did. And there was no pushback on it, so it was…
Joe went on to clarify that he thinks Marvel are getting better at trusting their directors to tell their own stories, as they’re now more comfortable taking risks. This is in contrast to the earlier phases of the MCU, as directors such as Joss Whedon have detailed tussles with studio brass over how a movie should be. It seems that after a decade of wall-to-wall successes, Marvel have learned that it’s best to let their filmmakers do their stuff.
“For us, I think, again, at the end of the day, and part of the reason why we made four movies with Marvel is that they’re very good at like allowing each movie to be what it needs to be. And nothing is sacred. They take risks, and they’ve gotten better at taking risks, illustrated by their run of Ragnarok, Homecoming, Black Panther and now this movie.”
Of course, maybe Gunn wasn’t notified of the plans for Gamora in Avengers: Infinity War because she’ll simply be resurrected in Avengers 4 and handed back to him in time for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. As things stand, though, the director will only have one Guardian to play with in the upcoming threequel – Rocket.
Published: May 7, 2018 12:45 pm