'Avengers: Infinity War' Directors Reveal Why Thanos' Snap Victims Were Chosen

The ending of Avengers: Infinity War shocked fans as their favorite Marvel Cinematic Universe heroes were wiped from existence but each disappearance was strategically chosen by the film's directors.

Spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War follow. Major spoilers!

With Avengers: Infinity War available now on DigitalHD, the bonus features are loaded with insider info from the cast and crew of the film. In a feature which takes fans behind the making of the Battle of Wakanda from Infinity War's third act, the directing duo Anthony and Joe Russo explain how they chose the victims who would be erased by Thanos snapping his fingers with a fully formed Infinity Gauntlet.

"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."

It was all an effort to preserve the film's secrets. "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," 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."

"This, by far, has been the most secretive of all 18 movies," Tran concludes.

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