Infinity War might be the third movie in the Avengers franchise, but it’s also very much a Thanos (Josh Brolin) movie. Marvel hardly showed the Infinity Saga’s big villain before then, but Infinity War made us understand what he was all about. It also made us appreciate Thanos as one of the best villains of the MCU. And it turns out that Marvel might have shot a massive 45-minute Thanos sequence for Infinity War that it decided to scrap.
The mind-blowing detail comes from Thanos creator Jim Starlin who was privy to what Marvel had planned for Infinity War and Endgame. Marvel decided to cut the sequence because Infinity War would have been too long and the VFX would’ve been too expensive. But all MCU fans would probably love to see that sequence, and maybe there’s a way we can still enjoy it.
Mind you, some Multiverse Saga spoilers might follow below.
What happens in the deleted scenes?
When Infinity War starts, Thanos already has one Infinity Stone in his Gauntlet. That’s the Power Stone, which Thanos got from the Nova Corps after decimating Xandar. That would have been an amazing sequence of events, but Marvel chose to have it happen off-screen.
Instead, we learned about it from a few lines of dialogue. That never sat right with me. After all the big deal that was made about Infinity Stones, Marvel chose not to share with the audience how Thanos got his hands on the first one.
But Jim Starlin told Near Mint Condition that Marvel actually shot all those scenes. He learned about the plans for Infinity War and Endgame early during the production:
It was kind of funny. Just before [Avengers:] Infinity War came out, I have been in contact with Joe Russo, one of the directors. And when I was on the set, [writers Christopher] Markus and [Stephen] McFeely told me everything, what they were doing in the two movies, they ran me down this hallway that had all the concept paintings up on the wall. And so for a year-and-a-half, I had to keep my mouth shut.
One month before Infinity War’s release, Starlin learned that the big Thanos sequence at the start of the movie had been cut:
But about a month before the movie came out, I got an email or something from Joe saying, ‘the 45 minutes of Thanos that we had at the beginning of Infinity War, we had it cut.’ There was a whole sequence of him getting the first gem and they had to cut that out. They shot it, but they never wanted to spend the money on the effects and they didn’t want the movie to be as long as the second one [Endgame] was. They didn’t realize it was going to be quite the hit it was.
The Thanos creator revealed in the interview that Marvel wanted to have something done with that sequence for the Infinity War DVD release, but that never happened.
How Marvel can still deliver Thanos’s deleted scenes
Still, as The Direct notes, there is a way to fix this that doesn’t involve releasing an Infinity War Director’s Cut version of the film.
Marvel is reportedly working on a Nova project, with the superhero expected to join the collection of heroes who will face Kang in The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars. If such a project goes forward, seeing Thanos destroy Xandar would be amazing. That event is certainly important for the character’s arc, as it’ll show what Thanos did to the Nova Corps.
The other possible avenue Marvel might take would be to rerelease Infinity War in theaters, complete with the 45-minute sequence. Marvel fans would probably flock to theaters to see it. Although rereleasing Infinity War might make little sense, considering the path we’re on right now in the MCU.
