Avengers: Infinity War doesn’t give you time to breathe. It doesn’t care if you’ve seen the previous Marvel movies. It just takes off and never lets up. However, in a new interview, the film’s writers revealed that pace wasn’t always what they intended for their script – and it led to some complications.
This Civil War showdown didn’t get wrapped up in Infinity War. Photo: Disney
Minor spoilers follow.
Speaking to Yahoo Movies, Infinity War writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely revealed early versions of the script had Steve Rogers and Tony Stark sitting down to settle the rivalry that’s held over from Captain America: Civil War. Eventually, though, they realised the film just couldn’t sustain it.
“Our first sort of wonky draft, the idea that they had to get back in the same room together and deal with that, meant that you’re slowing down your Thanos [Infinity] Stones plot to deal with other threads from other movies,” McFeely told Yahoo. “And that became, as much as we wanted to do it, and as many times as we wrote those scenes, became clear that this movie needed to be propulsive and be about Thanos and what he represented to the Avengers.”
“It feels like an advantage now,” added McFeely. “You can make the argument that because of Civil War, because they are so fractured, they are not prepared for when Thanos comes. And is there a chance that had the Avengers been one happy family, could they have fought him off?”
And so the rivalry gets mentioned in the film but is never dealt with head-on – which makes sense, because aliens begin attacking Earth almost immediately. There was already barely enough time for a casual chat, and the issues between Tony and Steve certainly weren’t going to be resolved with a casual chat. Narratively, though, it seems likely that once Tony gets back to Earth, he and Steve will have to deal with their drama and team back up to save the universe in Avengers 4.
The Yahoo interview has some more interesting stuff, too, such as the fact that Spider-Man wasn’t always going to go into space with Tony and that Drax’s best line in the film was improvised. Check it out at the link below.