For a decade now, Marvel Studios has consistently attempted to make each of its movies bigger, splashier and more star-studded than the last. But the 19th…
For a decade now, Marvel Studios has consistently attempted to make each of its movies bigger, splashier and more star-studded than the last. But the 19th feature film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is easily the most ambitious of the series yet.
“Avengers: Infinity War,” in theaters April 27, is what the filmmakers have called a culmination of the last 10 years of Marvel movies, bringing together at least 30 major characters from those flicks. That’s the key players from the previous two “Avengers” movies — Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, et al. — plus the “Guardians of the Galaxy” squad, Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, Black Panther, a myriad of sidekicks and, well, any number of surprises the studio has up its super sleeves.
Getting all those characters into one movie was about as easy as saving the universe. Consider co-screenwriter Stephen McFeely’s initial response to planning the movie.
“We breathed heavily into a paper bag for an hour,” he says with a laugh.
“Infinity War” traces the biggest, baddest villain of all, Thanos (Josh Brolin), as he hunts down six infinity stones that would give him a devastating amount of power. He’s such a threat, it’s going to take virtually every Marvel hero to stop him. “Infinity War” will be followed next May by a sequel — both were written and filmed back-to-back, but a title has yet to be announced because it contains a spoiler for the first film.
McFeely and screenwriting partner Christopher Markus, who previously co-wrote a “Thor” sequel and three “Captain America” films, began laying out the movies by writing on 3×5 cards the name of every MCU character still alive in the franchise and tacking them to a wall. They read all the Marvel comics featuring Thanos (who had been set up in previous films as the ultimate antagonist) and then created a 60-page document full of situations that hadn’t yet been done in the series, and possible character pairings that would delight fans. Many are still under wraps, but one highlight is the dueling egos of Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.).
“There wasn’t a big mandate other than epic-ness,” says McFeely. “And also [not to] be afraid of big stakes.”
Markus and McFeely spent five months doing research and development, four months outlining and then another five months writing the first drafts of both movies. After that, they spent a year and a half rewriting, including while filming.
“Even while we’re on set in Atlanta, we’re sort of tailoring and changing and all of that, given that there’s a lot of moving pieces and a lot of cast with opinions and thoughts,” says Markus.
With so many stars involved — Chris Pratt, Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans, just to name the Chrises — scheduling was the biggest issue. The order of scenes to be shot was constantly being reworked, and with a little movie magic, some parts feature actors who weren’t even in the same room together.
Markus says that, to their knowledge, none of the A-listers had contracts demanding a certain amount of screen time, and McFeely says that if anyone griped about not having enough of the spotlight, they could point to Thanos really being the center of the film.
“We gave ourselves permission to use both movies to tell a good story for each character,” says McFeely. “A good story for one character might have a lot of screen time, and for another one, it might have less. And that had to be OK, otherwise we just couldn’t get through a reasonable tale.”
