Avengers: Infinity War released its digital downloads on Tuesday, coming with several bonus features and commentary tracks.
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With the producers, writers, and directors of Marvel Studios‘ biggest film to date taking audiences behind the scenes, many of its secrets have been uncovered. As it turns out, the production of the film was constantly changing as other films were completed and development continued. Furthermore, several changes were made throughout Infinity War’s production, an event which called for more than 6,000 crew members to bring it to life.
Below, we run through some of the biggest reveals included on Avengers: Infinity War‘s commentary tracks and bonus features.
Major spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War follow. Major spoilers!
Connection the Guardians
With Avengers: Infinity War available for download now, the deleted scenes have been unveiled. Whereas in the theatrical cut of Infinity War the Guardians of the Galaxy head straight from Gamora’s kidnapping to Titan where they encountered Iron Man, Doctor Strange, and Spider-Man, the deleted scene explains how they knew to head in the direction of their crashed ship.
Ultimately, Quill turns to the coded messages and sees 23 important secret coded messages. “From Nebula: Gamora is a live,” Quill said. “Thanos is taking her to Titan. Why are you responding? Why aren’t you responding? Are you getting my important secret coded messages?”
Happy Cut
During the scene which saw Pepper Potts and Tony Stark conversing in Central Park after a jog, the dialogue is a bit more thorough as the baby-on-the-way chatter is expanded. “Last night, I dreamt we had a kid,” Tony said. “We named him after your eccentric uncle, what was his name? Morgan.”
From there, Tony pleads with Pepper to tell him she is pregnant but she isn’t. She claims they don’t have a wedding date yet and the temporary attempt at August 27 is fake to throw the media off their scent.
Enter: Happy Hogan!
Snap Victims
“The movie sort of keeps twisting at the end there in ways that you can’t believe it’s going one step beyond and that the fate of our characters and the fate of our universe are still at play,” Anthony Russo said. “In terms of our choices of who Thanos would end up eradicating with his snap, it was very story focused. How do we pay off each individual character story most profoundly? The first person to go is Bucky Barnes and it’s shot from Captain America’s perspective. We’re watching Cap go through the experience of watching him go away. We’re watching Okoye, whose number one mission it is in life is to protect the king. She watches the king go, in front of her. To see those characters react in those situations is very powerful and resonant.”
The creatives behind the film wanted to emphasize all of the proper aspects of the movie’s final moments to make sure the hit audiences emotionally. “When Thanos shows up, we really wanted to make this the most powerful moment ever,” producer Trinh Tran said. Still, they did not tell the cast of the film what would be taking place in Wakanda until the last possible moment. “The blip out sequence, we had gathered the whole entire talent, they are circled around our directors, and basically revealed to them that morning of that scene was happening, that some of them were gonna be disappearing.”
Dark Energy Explained
In The Avengers, Thor’s arrival came on the top of a jet suddenly. However, with the Bifrost which could help him travel at the speed of light having been destroyed in the Thor movie before The Avengers, many wondered how it was possible for the God of Thunder to travel from Asgard to Earth. One thought-to-be throwaway line from Loki: “How much dark energy did the All-Father have to muster to conjure you here?”
As it turns out, the dark magic is real thing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and it seen in action in the opening sequence of Avengers: Infinity War. When the Hulk is defeated in a hand to hand bout with Thanos, Heimdall’s dying efforts conjure the dark energy to send the Hulk back to Earth. This has now officially been confirmed by Avengers: Infinity War writer Christopher Markus on the commentary track.
Xandar’s Destruction
As Avengers: Infinity War ultimately started seeing Thanos already having attained the Power Stone from Xandar. This meant the location seen in Guardians of the Galaxy, home of the Nova Corps, had been destroyed by the Mad Titan as he took the first Infinity Stone on the way to forming his Infinity Gauntlet.
Not only does writer Stephen McFeely rule that six Infinity Stones is already too many for the story to handle by his preference, anyway, but the Xandar scene would have been redundant to the story.
“We should talk about why we decided to push Xandar off screen,” co-director Joe Russo said.
“We wrote version of Thanos attacking Xandar and it had a similar purpose in the script to what Knowhere does now,” writer Christopher Markus said. “It was a place where Thanos and Gamora encountered each other but the fact of the matter is you know exactly what… If Thanos went to Xandar to get that stone, you know what happened. It was a big battle and he got it.”
Hulked Out
The writers and directors explained the truth of the matter when Bruce Banner is unable to summon his Hulk counterpart.
“Here we see the beginnings of Bruce’s issues,” writer Christopher Markus said as Mark Ruffalo’s character failed to turn green.
“People speculated whether there was some fear on the Hulk’s part about having to face Thanos again but I think ultimately what it is is that he’s tired of playing hero to Bruce Banner,” co-director Joe Russo said.
In fact, this aspect of Avengers: Infinity War is designed to develop Bruce Banner moving forward. “With a movie with 23 named heroes that you know from other movies, one of the challenges is to give people the briefest complete arc,” writer Stephen McFeely said. “Banner has to rely on himself is essentially the briefest one line arc in this movie.”
Stark Knowledge
Joe Russo and Anthony Russo and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely opened up about the connection between Thanos and Tony Stark. When the Mad Titan bested Tony Stark in combat on Titan, he revealed he was “burdened with knowledge” like Stark and promised the earthbound tech genius had his respect.
“The journey that Tony’s been on as a genius scientist is that the evolution of his armor. This is the best it’s ever gonna get for Tony and it’s nanotech,” Joe Russo said. “He goes to the cutting edge of what his mind can deliver, and it still is not enough to beat Thanos. In fact, it barely keeps him in the fight.”
When it comes down to it, Thanos knows Stark as the man who thwarted his efforts to take over Earth via Loki in 2012’s The Avengers. “Which is why he’s aware of Stark from the original Battle of New York as the person who undid the plan,” Joe Russo said, giving extra meaning to Thanos having respect for Iron Man.
Fates Revealed
“The blip out sequence, we had gathered the whole entire talent, they are circled around our directors, and basically revealed to them that morning of that scene was happening, that some of them were gonna be disappearing,” producer Trinh Tran said.
Unsurprisingly, the decision to keep the characters’ fates a secret was an effort to preserve the movie’s surprises. “The audience is so good at predicting stories that even just the smallest clue can tell them where the film is gonna go. So, we worked really hard to make sure none of the secrets of the film leaked,” director Joe Russo said. “It’s about as massive a production as you can mount. About 6,000 crew members working on the film from around the world.”
Reality Sets In
“The bubbles obviously a function of the Reality Stone,” co-director Joe Russo said. “Thanos has the ability to manipulate.”
So, if Thanos can turn bullets to bubbles and erase people like The Collector with a thought, why can’t he just erase half of the living beings in the universe already?
“We were asked by a 12-year-old in DC at a Q&A why Thanos needed all six Stones and why he didn’t just use the Reality Stone to alter reality,” Joe Russo said. “The idea being that only something so dramatic of disposing life in half the universe could be accomplished with the power of all six Stones.”
Thor & Cap
“One thing I think we all really responded to about Thor is where he’s left at in the end of Ragnarok with the destruction of Asgard. We all have a history with the Captain America character, and I think there’s an interesting connection there in that Cap was also a character who lost everything,” Russo said, tying the two heroes’ together over their unimaginable losses. “There’s something fascinating about exploring these people as you strip away who they are and their built-out identities and find out what’s left.”
Continuing, Russo said Thor’s find himself dealing with the sort of isolation Steve Rogers felt during Captain America: The Winter Soldier. With his home destroyed and people culled, Thor has lost his family and even his eye in a fight he never signed up for.
“I think we are going through a very similar process with Thor in this movie. Especially with this scene, we’re completing the experience that Ragnarok brought to Thor in the sense that we’re taking the rest of everything away from him. Everything that remains. He’s starting with nothing after that point and trying to climb his way back is a very underdog arc, a very rousing arc. I think that the road that he follows is very empathetic.”
Thanos, The Mighty
“Here you see the early establishment of just how fearsome Thanos is even without, he’s got one stone here and I don’t think he’s even using it,” McFeely said.
Russo confirmed that Thanos isn’t using the Infinity Stone he holds, which shows just how absurdly strong and lethal the Mad Titan can be.
“He’s not using it,” Russo said. “This is to show that Thanos, the Genghis Khan of the Marvel Universe, he’s unbeatable in 1-on-1 battle. He’s conquered thousands of worlds. He’s a much more polished fighter than the Hulk, and Thor, and Loki.”
Less Stones
The writers and directors of Avengers: Infinity War would have had less Infinity Stones if it were up to them.
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.
Why No Happy
“I think there’s another sort of Easter egg/cameo in the bonus/deleted scene,” co-director Anthony Russo told EW, referring to the full deleted scene with Happy Hogan protecting Tony Stark and Pepper Potts from paparazzi.
“Oh yes! There is a deleted scene where Jon Favreau/Happy and I make an appearance in the park,” co-director Joe Russo said. “The movie was really long and we were looking for places to pace it up in the opening and unfortunately that was one of the things we had to cut. But I was willing to cut my own cameo in the movie so it shows how much we really needed to get that park scene moving.”
Favreau, who directed 2008’s Iron Man and has played Happy Hogan in several films since, did not serve the film’s greater and extremely fast-paced narrative. “It was also really hard to cut Jon as he is such a funny performer and we loved working with him,” Anthony Russo said.
That’s Joe
Joe Russo has a habit of putting himself in scenes for his Marvel movies and Avengers: Infinity War was no exception, though the co-directors cameo was cut from the theatrical release. As it turns out, things were constantly changing, including a cameo by Happy Hogan actor Jon Favreau and Joe Russo as a member of the paparazzi.
This time around, Joe Russo was a photographer, known well by Tony Stark’s security, going by the name of Bert.
Strange Powers
“Doctor Strange’s power level, we could talk about,” Russo explained. “And from the books, as a kid, what I loved about Doctor Strange is that he always had a mystical spiritual side to him that seemed to know more than all the other characters. And I found that very entertaining, and we wanted to advance his power levels since the end of Doctor Strange because it has been a few years. And that he’s been doing his work and he’s a diligent study and he is now one of the more powerful characters in the Marvel Universe.”
Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) debuted in his own solo movie in 2016, with the film chronicling his attempts to master the mystic arts in hopes of curing his severe hand injuries. Under the guidance of The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton), Strange studied a variety of mystic texts to battle the demonic Dormammu, with his powers only heightening in the years since that encounter.
Holy Roller
After wiping out half of the Asgardians aboard Thor’s ship, Thanos dropped his plated armor in favor of an Infinity Gauntlet with a pair of Infinity Stones in it. He had already killed Heimdall and Loki, prompting an expectation of the Mad Titan to slaughter any hero he comes across. However, the only kill on his way to the infamous finger snap in Wakanda was Gamora, a sacrifice necessary to obtain the Soul Stone. According to the directors of Avengers: Infinity War on the film’s commentary track attached to its digital downloads, the dropping of the arm reflects this shift from murderous mentality to a relentless mission.
“It’s interesting because as Thanos moves forward in the film from this moment, once he disposes of his armor, he almost becomes a holy warrior where he doesn’t spend a lot of energy intentionally trying to murder people, unless they’re in some way a threat to his agenda,” co-director Joe Russo said. “But almost no one ends up being a threat to the agenda except for Tony, who I think feels he has this sort of existential connection to Thanos. It’s the one moment where he is actively…since brutally murdering Loki for disobedience, where he actively is going to murder someone for standing in his way. Of course he sacrifices Gamora, but that is to obtain the Soul Stone.”
Late Arrival Cap
Captain America was originally supposed to enter Avengers: Infinity War late in the movie with a scene-stealing Wakanda entrance that eventually went to Thor, but directors Anthony and Joe Russo brought the star-spangled Avenger in earlier because no one at Marvel Studios liked Cap’s late entrance.
“Everybody at Marvel, I think other than Joe and I, they were mad at us because we were bringing him in the movie so late,” Anthony Russo told ET. “We thought it was the right spot to do it, but after a while we kind of gave into everybody’s, ‘We need more Cap!’”
Evil Lovers
Joe Russo revealed that Proxima Midnight (Carrie Coon) and Corvus Glaive (Michael James Shaw), two members of Thanos’ Black Order, were actually married to each other. According to Russo, the initial goal was to explore the Black Order’s various histories, but those plot threads were ultimately cut for time.
“There were earlier drafts of the script with the Black Order, in a more stylized draft where we did backstories for each of them.” Russo explained. “Ultimately the movie was getting too crowded, too hard to follow. In the books, there’s a backstory between Proxima and Corvus, that they’re married. Only hinted at in the slightest way here by the fact that they are paired up to retrieve a stone and the way that she responds when Corvus gets stabbed by Natasha.”
48 Hours
“Nobody gets to rest in this film. They literally get Strange, Tony, Banner and Wong get about two minutes of exposition out before the story comes to them,” said co-director Joe Russo. “And now they’re in motion. Inciting incidents happened and characters are in motion. And you’ll watch each sequence, as we introduce characters, each one has his own inciting incident that sets them off on the path towards Thanos.”
“I’m not sure exactly what the amount of elapsed time in this movie is,” McFeely chimed in. “It can’t me more than, maybe, two days.”
“Yeah, at most,” replied Russo.
Mephisto, That You?
“Talk about Maw,” Joe Russo said on the commentary, “he is inspired a little bit by Mephistopheles from the original Starlin books.”
Writer Stephen McFeely confirmed this notion, saying, “Right, we did pull a couple of lines.” Joe quickly continued on that point. “There are some directly quoted lines from the book that we put in his mouth.”
In the Infinity Gauntlet storyline, Mephisto served as Thanos’ right-hand-man of sorts, often talking up and praising the Titan. Ebony Maw’s line where he tells Thanos “My humble personage bows before your grandeur,” is a direct quote from Mephisto in Infinity Gauntlet.
Soul Stone?
“There was a lot of speculation as to where the Soul Stone was, right? We never wanted to give that chip away,” co-writer Stephen McFeely pointed out. “We didn’t want it to be somewhere you already knew. We didn’t want some other movie to plant it. We wanted to use it as a story point.”
The Soul Stone was located on Vormir, a distant planet, which hadn’t previously been mentioned in other installments of the franchise.
“We didn’t want it to be random either. Like it’s on Planet X,” co-writer Christopher Markus noted. “Which happens to have lots of, you know spiders on it. That would be difficult.”
Big Red Returns
With the villain of Captain America’s first outing having been banished to Vormir, the location of the Soul Stone was revealed in Avengers: Infinity War. He was acting as its keeper, telling those who wish to control it that they need to sacrifice something they love, prompting Thanos to toss Gamora from a cliff. As noted by screenwriter Stephen McFelly on Avengers: Infinity War‘s cmmentary track attached to digital downloads, this was “a fetish Chris [Markus] and I have” which ended up paying off in dividends for long time fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“Cinematically, he’s the first one to be obsessed with these Infinity Stones in the MCU and he clearly did not die at th end of First Avenger,” screenwriter Christopher Markus said. “The idea of where he might have gone is so tantalizing and much like being able to fill roles that would be there anywhere with William Hurt or Benecio del Toro, he fit this moment perfectly.”
