Spoilers, spoiler, spoilers. Do not proceed further if you haven’t seen Marvel’s “Avengers: Infinity War” like three times and have processed your grief.
It’s Marvel week (and hopefully not month). “Avengers: Infinity War” is an unstoppable Thanos-like monster destroying everything in its path and grossing $800 million in just five days in theaters. At this rate, it’s easily going to break “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” record for the fastest film to reach $1 billion. In 2015, ‘Force Awakens’ accomplished this milestone in twelve days. ‘Infinity War,’ could do it in about eight (or less?). And it still hasn’t even opened in China.
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Deaths, deaths, deaths. Everyone has the end of ‘Infinity War’ still on the brain and the fact that half the planet and half the characters are wiped out at the end of the film. Everyone has theories too: Hawkeye’s family wiped out at the end and this makes him take on the Ronin name and coming out of hiding, Ant-Man and the Wasp being central to the plot and perhaps most convincingly, Doctor Strange’s plan of giving the Time Stone to Thanos all part of his master plan (maybe he saw that one outcome and gave it a shot).
But the filmmakers of ‘Infinity War’ are still talking. And while you think you’ve got it all figured out, screenrwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely say, not so fast, ‘Avengers 4’ is not what you think it’s going to be. In a interview with Buzzfeed today, Markus said many of the deaths are “real.”
“[Avengers 4] doesn’t do what you think it does,” he said. “It is a different movie than you think it is. Also…[the deaths are] real. I just want to tell you it’s real, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you will be able to move on to the next stage of grief.”
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“Put it this way,” McFeely added. “I think [Infinity War] is a fairly mature movie for a blockbuster. It’s got a lot of fun in it, obviously, but boy, it gets very mature. The second one is also mature. We’re going to own these choices, and hopefully surprise and delight you and get you invested. It’s by the same studio, the same filmmaking team. They were written at the same time, shot at the same time. They’re clearly connected, but they are definitely two different movies, one of which is dependent on what happened previous.”
“We broke your heart, now we’re going to blow your mind!” Markus said in a line that sounds wonderfully rehearsed in front of a mirror all weekend long.
Is this a red herring? Sure, some deaths are “real,” Loki, Gamora, Heimdall, but everyone’s assuming that the Avengers are going back in time to reverse the ending (much like they did in the original comic storyline of “Infinity Gauntlet”). Is Markus trying to throw us all off, or are some heroes actually not coming back (aside from the ones that already have sequels works).
Frankly, I’m not buying it, but with all the fan theories going around, many of them incredibly plausible, I would like to assume ‘Avengers 4’ will still have a lot of surprises in store.