'Avengers: Infinity War': Danai Gurira On Okoye's Marvel Comics Changes

In preparation for Avengers: Infinity War and the Black Panther movie which came before it, Okoye actress Danai Gurira read comic books for research, but found some major changes were coming for her character.

"I'm a researcher, so I did [read comics]," Gurira told members of the press on set of Avengers: Infinity War. "I loved how we – we weren't – we were doing something different from what you see in the Christopher Priest version versus Mr. Coates's version, which we tended to pull from more right through to the hair, the style of tattoos and no hair. Whereas the Mr. Priest's version, we had the perfect little dark and lovely bobs. I really liked the way the way they played off the elements in how to make them a lot more developed, I think, than what they were in the original Christopher Priest version of the comic book. It was actually really interesting to see how the evolution of the story has come about. But of course, it's really fascinating what Mr. Coates has been doing most recently."

Okoye isn't the only element of Avengers: Infinity War which will stray from the Marvel Comics source material a bit. "It's so different from the comic books," Hulk actor Mark Ruffalo said. "There's elements that are clearly the same but when you really start to get into the story everything changes. Planet Hulk was a big influence for [Thor: Ragnarok], and the idea, the inkling of World War Hulk starts to… I read that way before doing this and there's some interesting stuff in there, but honestly nothing so far directly related to this."

As for Okoye, the character will see a direct continuation from her appearance in Black Panther which released in February. It is actually a tough time to be the Wakandan general, given the huge number of new faces suddenly coming to town.

"My character is the general," Gurira said. "She's Black Panther's general. Her name is Okoye. She was in the Christopher Priest version, but a very, very different woman. I love how they played that and spinned it and made it different."

Avengers: Infinity War hits theaters on April 27, 2018. If you have any questions about ComicBook.com's time on set of Avengers: Infinity War, leave them in the comment section below or send them to @BrandonDavisBD on Twitter!