'Avengers: Infinity War' Writer & Director Would Have Included Fewer Infinity Stones

Marvel fans know good and well that there are six Infinity Stones in the Marvel Universe, but Avengers: Infinity War director Joe Russo and co-writer Stephen McFeely actually thought those might be too many stones to juggle.

In the commentary track for the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War Blu-ray/DVD release, Joe Russo and Stephen McFeely actually chime in during the scene where Dr. Strange's friend Wong is doing the obligatory exposition work of describing the Infinity Stones. We what we learn is that while Infinity War's creative team knew they had an obligation to Marvel lore, they would've preferred not having six objects of importance in one story:

"...This is a movie that rewards your investment. If you know the other movies, I think you'll have a greater chance of being delighted by it. If you're fresh to these movies, we hold your hand a little bit early on, and tell you about the stones and what they might do and how valuable they are to the story.

Joe: And what better way to do that than through magic?

McFeely: Rght, right.

Joe: Now what's also interesting in the film is that two of the characters that the audience ostensibly cares a lot about are carrying around stones. So they're MacGuffins. Doctor strange being one and Vision being the other.

McFeely: If we created the Infinity Stones in a vacuum, I'm sure we would not have decided there were six of them.

Joe: Yes

McFeely: Six MacGuffins is a lot for a story."

It's true that, in the traditional rules of storytelling (especially cinematic storytelling), six MacGuffins is indeed a lot for one story. However, as with all Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, there is an obligation to honor the canon of the comics, and in the longer format of a shared universe, fans had already invested a lot of viewing time (and exponentially more time in online theory) trying to figure out the location of all six stones, over the course of nearly half a decade. In other words: fans weren't taking any shorts on this one.

Little insights like the one above continue to prove that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a unique ongoing experiment, which is rewriting (literally in some cases) the entire nature of how storytelling is done. Given the scope of the entire MCU saga, six MacGuffins earned over nearly twenty films is nothing, really.

Avengers: Infinity War is now available on Digital platforms and lands on DVD and Blu-ray on August 14. It can be pre-ordered here. Ant-Man and the Wasp is now in theaters. Other upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe movies include Captain Marvel on March 8, 2019, the fourth Avengers movie on May 3, 2019, Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 5, 2019, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in 2020.