'Avengers: Infinity War' Writers Would Have Changed Thanos's Mission If They Could

Marvel's most recent box office juggernaut, Avengers: Infinity War, has been rather accurately [...]

By Russ Burlingame

Marvel's most recent box office juggernaut, Avengers: Infinity War, has been rather accurately described as a movie about its villain. The tale centered on Thanos's quest to assemble the six Infinity Stones, affix them to the Infinity Gauntlet, and wipe out half the universe.

And that bit about his quest? The writers are already regretting it.

"Had we started from scratch, we would not have chosen six damn MacGuffins," Stephen McFeely, one of the film's writers, told the New York Times. "That's not that helpful. It was difficult to get that all in."

A MacGuffin is a narrative device -- a thing which serves as the primary motivator for the plot, often in the form of a search undertaken by the hero.

Thanos's pursuit of the gems took up the length of the film, culminating with the battle between Thanos and dozens of superheroes in Wakanda. It also focused the film firmly on Thanos, since cutting back to the heroes meant taking time away from what had been established as the film's central narrative. The filmmakers identified this early and played to the limitations, assisted by a fan-favorite performance by Josh Brolin. Still, it seems the McFeely and his co-writer Christopher Markus may have felt a little harried trying to get all of the Thanos stuff into one film of a manageable size.

Fans had criticized how passive Thanos had been in past films, although his arc in Infinity War generally won critics over, so it is interesting to see that the film's writers were the among the few not entirely thrilled with how the arc paid off.

The stones appeared in numerous Marvel movies beginning with Captain America: The First Avenger. Their cosmic backstory was explained in Guardians of the Galaxy, although it was never made clear why Thanos was so fixated on the stones specifically until Infinity War.

Avengers: Infinity War is now playing in theaters. Other upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe movies include Ant-Man and the Wasp on July 6th, Captain Marvel opens 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.

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