‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Director Explains Reasoning Behind Emotional Deaths

Avengers: Infinity War featured plenty of emotional moments, and what better people to ask about those moments than the directors themselves.

Spoilers incoming for Avengers: Infinity War, so if you haven’t seen it yet you’ve been warned.

The Russo Brothers sat down with students of Iowa City High School to discuss the film (via The Little Hawk Student Newspaper), and eventually, the topic had to move to those emotional deaths in the film’s last act. Heroes like Star-Lord, Winter Soldier, Groot, and Spider-Man all fell to Thanos’ reality shaping actions, and fans definitely felt the impact.

“We made those deaths impactful- emotionally, because you have an emotional connection with those characters and it’s difficult taking someone like Peter Parker and putting him in that position,” Russo said. “What 16 year old wouldn’t want not to go in such the way it’s shown so we set up that relationship between he and Tony Stark in separate movies to lead to that moment- it’s a father-son relationship. It’s painful to watch. Certainly the most painful to watch is the Gamorra sequence because Thanos is a horrible despicable creature- who believes that he sincerely loves her- which makes it a lot harder to watch. So we try to complicate things emotionally because our job as storytellers is to tell the best story we can and make your experience as many emotions as possible when you watch the film. Because ultimately it is a- you’re paying money to go see it and if we can make you laugh, cry, happy, sad and feel catharsis- you get a lot more for your money than just laughing or just crying.”

It took some work to make each of those deaths have an impact, especially since they occur so close together.

“We just planted the emotion of it- we love the characters as much as anybody- we think very hard about how the audience feels- how we feel and what can make the scenes complicated as possible- to make it as painful as possible- again the job of the storyteller,” Russo said. “And after 18 movies we’re really committed to making this cathartic and to tell a truthful story as possible. It’s not like we led you down the road in Winter Soldier took Bucky and turned him into a villain for most of the film. So we took a popular character and made him a killer. Kills a lot of people in that movie. Then in Civil War was- the Avengers getting divorced in a very messy divorce- we keep trying to have game changers at the end of each film but we are slowly moving towards deconstruction”

Marvel Studios’ Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War are in theaters now. It will be followed by Ant-Man and the Wasp on July 6, 2018, Captain Marvel on March 8, 2019, the fourth Avengers movie on May 3, 2019, the sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming on July 5, 2019, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in 2020.