Kevin Feige Explains How Star Trek Influenced Avengers: Infinity War

As we’ve heard so much about how Avengers: Infinity War will act as the grand finale of everything the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been doing over the past ten years, fans are expecting some Earth-shattering things to happen in the event movie. Mostly, this means they’re anticipating at least one or two of the founding Avengers to die.

But should we really go into Infinity War and its untitled sequel expecting a blood-bath, or a realization of Tony’s nightmare from Avengers: Age of Ultron where everyone’s dead? Entertainment Weekly asked Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige about this very thing and he revealed that, actually, he’s not sure that lots of death is the only way to create a strong finale. To illustrate his point, he referenced another landmark of geek culture – the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation: 

“People always will jump to that but that’s not necessarily what we’re talking about. I talk a lot, because I’m a big-ass nerd, about Star Trek: The Next Generation, ‘All Good Things.’ That to me is one of the best series finales ever. That wasn’t about death. Picard went and played poker with the crew, something he should have done a long time ago, right?”

One of the show’s best episodes, “All Good Things” – as Feige says – is not a doom-laden finale as such but acts more as a celebration of what’s come before. Tellingly, it involves time travel to explore the past, present and future of the characters’ lives. Remember all those set photos that suggested Avengers 4 might revisit the events of past MCU movies like The Avengers? Maybe Feige was more inspired by TNG than he lets on.

After all, the producer has previously revealed how he and the Marvel team have been influenced, even at a subconscious level, by the Star Trek franchise. Feige pointed out that most of the MCU’s threequels have seen the hero’s home or base destroyed, which echoes the destruction of the Enterprise in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. 

Avengers: Infinity War blasts into cinemas from April 27th, at which point we’ll get to see just how much inspiration the studio took from the classic sci-fi series.