I fully expected to see Thanos kill some of the Marvel superheroes in Infinity War. I also believed that at least Captain America would be killed for good at some point during the movie, since Chris Evans suggested that he’ll soon retire from the role. What actually happened in the film was a lot more interesting and more shocking, but the shock only lasted for a few minutes.
You see, I was fully aware that nearly all of the fallen will have to rise from the dead so they can appear in other Marvel movies that would likely take place after Avengers 4. With all that in mind, I’m going to give you a spoiler for the Infinity War sequel: prepare to be shocked. Again.
We now have an awful lot of extra information to work with compared to back in early April, when Infinity War premiered. We know that many of the superheroes will be resurrected in Avengers 4 because we’ve been going over plenty of evidence that proves it. We also know how it’ll happen. Some of the survivors will go back in time to prevent Thanos from snapping his fingers — but we do expect some of them to die for real this time.
I’ve also just realized that Avengers 4 will shock the audience no matter how many spoilers or fan theories we go over ahead of the sequel’s premiere in early May — or late April if you’re in Europe. That’s because the Russo brothers keep telling us that’s their M.O. when it comes to making Avengers pictures. We have to start paying attention.
Joe and Anthony Russo spoke to Deadline about their most recent projects, and Avengers 4 came up as well. The directors revealed their progress with Avengers 4 and reminded us of their way of crafting the Avengers stories they’ve been handed. The short version of it is that the directors want to shock the audience every chance they get, push the limits of what can be done with these movies, and deliver stories that are controversial.
Here’s Anthony’s take on the Avengers 4 editing process and what happened in Infinity War:
We’ve worked on the edit all summer and we’re excited to finally get these missing pieces in the film and then we expect to be in post through the fall and winter. We hope to be done by March.
It was so gratifying that in a movie with this scope and scale and that wide of an audience, that we were able to end with a gut punch and yet the audience stayed with us and found value and kept coming back. It’s a rare thing to find in commercial filmmaking and we know it had a lot to do with the capital that’s been built up around these characters for the last ten years of Marvel filmmaking.
The audience is so invested in these characters that they’re willing to stick with them even through the hard stuff. It has been out great pleasure as storytellers to take them through that hard stuff and have it be a cathartic and even entertaining experience at times.
Joe’s comments are equally interesting, as he reminds us that they’ve been shocking us for a few years now:
The best reaction was probably that 10-year old kid crying and asking us why we killed Spider-Man. From the time we came to Marvel, our goal was to surprise the audience and not give them the same thing but rather to challenge them.
That was our view on Captain America: Winter Soldier, and Civil War was also very controversial internally with the powers that be in turning Iron Man into the antagonist and severing the relationship between Cap and Tony Stark.
Every Marvel film we’ve created had this controversy, like are we pushing this rabid audience too far? Are we making movies that could perhaps be too emotionally complex for the genre? That the audience has shown up wanting more is a testament to the hard work everybody has put in over those last ten years of films.
With all that in mind, we should all be prepared for one more massive shock next year. We may feel like we know some of the deaths will somehow be undone, but there are still going to be surprises in store. Unless the film or script leaks ahead of the premiere date, it’s unlikely that we’ll figure out what the Russo brothers have planned for Avengers 4, a movie that will set us up for the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
