Disney Encouraged 'Avengers: Infinity War's Bleak Ending

Superhero films don't often depict immense amounts of fatalities, yet we've see a handful in the Marvel Cinematic Universe throughout its existence. This sense of safety was completely exploited with Avengers: Infinity War, which saw half of the universe's population killed by Thanos, including many of our favorite heroes. Despite the film being released by the family-friendly Disney, the film's directors claimed they never received any pushback from the studio about their plans.

"We did not," Joe Russo shared with Deadline when asked if he got notes about the finale. "They were incredibly encouraging of the choices we made."

Anthony Russo elaborated that the preconceived safety net of the films allowed for the climactic point to be felt even more strongly by fans.

"The only way to drive a conversation is to surprise people," the filmmaker pointed out. "If you're constantly adhering to convention, you're not going to surprise people."

While some audiences might have thought the film delivered an intentional cliffhanger just to surprise people, Anthony described that effective plot twists lot twists properly done create "pop culture talking points for an audience, but they're also just good narrative."

A majority of the characters who perished are sure to return in future films, though the filmmakers have kept us guessing about how that could actually happen.

Interestingly, Infinity War isn't the only film from Disney that has ended with the deaths of its heroes, as Rogue One: A Star Wars Story also saw massive fatal sacrifices from the film's antagonists.

"I never believed [Disney] would let us kill off all the characters in the film," Rogue One writer Gary Whitta shared with ComicBook.com last year. "That was our original instinct. The very first meeting with [director] Gareth [Edwards] I remember saying, 'I kind of feel like they all need to die, but there's no way Lucas ... There's no way Disney'll let us do that. We can't kill everybody. It's a Disney movie.' And yet, they were fully supportive of it, and it's actually one of the coolest things about the film."

He added, "It wasn't that way in my original script, but again, we never felt that we would get away with it. K-2 always died, but Jyn survived in the very first version of the movie that we developed, and then it was Gareth who kept pushing for it, saying, 'I feel like they need to die. They need to die.' Eventually he convinced [Disney and Lucasfilm]."

Find out how the heroes come back from beyond when Avengers 4 lands in theaters on May 3, 2019.

Are you surprised Disney let the film kill so many characters? Let us know in the comments below!