Avengers: Infinity War

• 1. Introduction

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  Avengers: Infinity War ends with its villain sitting alone on a distant planet, watching a sunrise. He has just erased half of all life in the universe. That quiet final image caps a film built almost entirely toward it. Released in 2018, it is the nineteenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It brings together heroes introduced across a decade of separate movies to face one antagonist: Thanos, an intergalactic warlord hunting six Infinity Stones. Anthony and Joe Russo direct, working from a script by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. How did a comic-book villain become, in the words of the people who made the film, its true main character? What did it take to shoot a production this size across three continents on one of the largest budgets in film history? And why did the ending push fans to abandon an entire corner of the internet?

• 2. A Two-Part Beginning

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  Marvel Studios announced the project in October 2014. Its working title was Avengers: Infinity War Part 1, paired with a second part planned a year later. Anthony and Joe Russo joined as directors in April 2015. A month after that, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely signed on to write both scripts. They drew on Jim Starlin's 1991 comic The Infinity Gauntlet and Jonathan Hickman's 2013 comic Infinity. Anthony Russo said the story took its cue from 1990s heist films, describing Thanos as a thief on what he called "a smash-and-grab" for the Stones. Producer Kevin Feige had pitched the two parts as distinct films that merely shared elements, not one story split in half. The Russos moved to clear up that confusion in May 2016. Marvel simplified the title to Avengers: Infinity War that July. Principal photography would begin the following January, at a studio in Georgia, under a deliberately misleading working title: Mary Lou.

• 3. Filming Across Continents

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  On the 23rd of January 2017, cameras rolled at Pinewood Atlanta Studios in Fayette County, Georgia. Trent Opaloch served as director of photography. Most of the ensemble returned to roles built up across previous Marvel films, including Josh Brolin stepping back in as Thanos. Filming wrapped on the 14th of July 2017, having run back-to-back with production on the direct sequel, Avengers: Endgame. Additional filming took the crew to Scotland beginning in February 2017, covering Edinburgh, Glasgow, and the Scottish Highlands. Studio work was based at Wardpark Studios in Cumbernauld. By late June the production had moved to Downtown Atlanta, then to the city's Central Park in early July, before finishing in Queens, New York. For the final scene, Thanos settles into a nipa hut on a remote planet. To capture it, the filmmakers worked with the Thailand-based studio Indochina Productions, filming the Banaue Rice Terraces at Ifugao in the Philippines. Infinity War and Endgame were both shot on ARRI Alexa IMAX 2D cameras. It marked the first time a Hollywood feature had been filmed entirely on IMAX digital equipment. Visual effects work was split across ten companies. They included Industrial Light and Magic, Weta Digital, Framestore, Method Studios, DNEG, Cinesite, Digital Domain, Rise, Lola VFX, and Perception. With an estimated budget of $325-400 million, it ranks among the most expensive films ever made. Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth each earned $15 million for their roles. One detail was meant to be felt more than noticed: Thanos wears no armor for most of the film, a choice tied to his growing power as he gathers the Stones.

• 4. The Villain As Hero

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  Josh Brolin plays Thanos, an intergalactic warlord from the destroyed moon Titan. He seeks all six Infinity Stones so he can, as he puts it, "re-balancing the universe" by killing half of all life in it. Producer Kevin Feige said Thanos believes the universe is becoming over-populated, a crisis he blames for destroying his own home. Feige went further, saying, "you could almost go so far as to say he is the main character of the film." Writer Stephen McFeely agreed, calling the story Thanos's "hero journey," and added that the character's motivation "wasn't just power; it wasn't just an ideal; it was people." Brolin likened Thanos to "the Quasimodo of this time," and to the antihero of the novel Perfume, since the character was born deformed and treated as a freak on Titan. Joe Russo pointed Brolin toward The Godfather (1972) for inspiration, which Brolin said helped him "emotionalize the whole thing." Brolin also said he preferred playing Thanos to his role as Cable in Deadpool 2 (2018), citing the amount of work that went into building the character. He performed Thanos through both voice work and motion capture on set. On the planet Vormir, the Soul Stone's keeper, Red Skull, tells Thanos the Stone can only be claimed by sacrificing someone he loves. Thanos sacrifices Gamora, the adopted daughter he raised after taking her from her home world. Later, on the Wakandan battlefield, Thanos rips the completed Mind Stone from Vision's forehead and finishes the Infinity Gauntlet. He then snaps his fingers before teleporting away. Half of all life across the universe disintegrates in response. Among the victims are Bucky Barnes, T'Challa, Groot, Wanda Maximoff, Sam Wilson, Mantis, Drax, Peter Quill, Stephen Strange, Peter Parker, Maria Hill, and Nick Fury. Fury's last act before disintegrating was to send an emergency signal on a modified pager, a device whose message the film leaves unanswered.

• 5. The Avengers Divided

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  Steve Rogers leads a non-regulation faction of Avengers after the events of Captain America: Civil War (2016). Co-director Joe Russo said Rogers now wrestles with his responsibility to himself against his responsibility to others. In the film, Rogers takes on the spirit of the comic-book identity Nomad. He receives new vibranium gauntlets from Shuri in place of his old shield. An early draft delayed Rogers's first appearance until the end of the film, saving Vision from Corvus Glaive in Wakanda. Markus and McFeely said they were called "insane" for that choice and admitted it was "not a satisfying" approach. Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner spends the film trying to reintegrate with the Avengers and warn them how dangerous Thanos is, while the Hulk himself largely refuses to appear. Joe Russo said that refusal was only partly fear; in his view, the Hulk believes Banner only wants him around for fighting and has had enough of saving him. Ruffalo said the Hulk in this film has the reasoning ability of a young child, comparing him to a five-year-old. Paul Bettany's Vision is an android built from the artificial intelligence J.A.R.V.I.S., Ultron, and the Mind Stone. Co-director Anthony Russo called him "a living MacGuffin." Early in the film, Vision asks Wanda Maximoff to destroy him and the Stone rather than let Thanos take it, but she refuses. Tom Hiddleston, who plays Loki, learned of his character's death in this film before shooting Thor: Ragnarok (2017), after meeting the Russos in May 2016, and said it was the first scene the directors had conceptualized. Hiddleston felt it was "very powerful" that Loki calls himself Odinson in his final moment, a line he said "closes the whole journey" of the character. Sebastian Stan's Bucky Barnes, formerly known as the Winter Soldier, is given the new name White Wolf by the people of Wakanda after they help remove his Hydra programming. Chadwick Boseman and the other Wakandan actors improvised their war chants on set ahead of the battle. The Russos said they had no idea about the chants, since they had not yet seen footage from Black Panther (2018), which was filming at the same time. Don Cheadle's James Rhodes, paralyzed during the events of Civil War, is given a walking apparatus by Stark and remains reluctant to rejoin the team in his War Machine armor. Tom Holland's Peter Parker dies in a scene that Robert Downey Jr. helped coach him through, one that ran less drawn out on screen than it had in the script. None of those performances would have reached audiences without a marketing campaign that began building anticipation years before the film opened.

• 6. Selling An Ending

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  In May 2017, Robert Downey Jr. and his organization Random Act Funding partnered with Omaze on a contest in which a randomly chosen donor won a set visit to Infinity War. That August, Marvel brought a life-sized statue of Thanos, built by Legacy Effects, to D23 Expo 2017, with statues of the Black Order standing alongside it. Seventeen cast members and producer Kevin Feige appeared at the same expo to present a footage reel marking ten years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Polygon's Julia Alexander said the footage finally felt like "the movie Marvel has always wanted to make." CinemaBlend's Eric Eisenberg said it left him "literally shaking." Between the 17th and the 23rd of July 2017, the film generated over 90,000 new social media conversations, the third-most of any film that week. By the week of the 16th of October, total conversation had climbed past 679,000. The first teaser trailer debuted on Good Morning America on the 29th of November 2017 and was viewed 230 million times in its first 24 hours, the most of any trailer to that point. A second trailer followed on the 16th of March 2018, drawing 179 million views in its first day, the third-most ever and the biggest second-trailer debut on record, surpassing Beauty and the Beast (2017). A commercial aired during Super Bowl LII was viewed 17.6 million times across YouTube and Facebook. According to comScore and United Talent Agency, it generated more social buzz than any other film advertised that day. Marvel paired the release with the "Marvel: The Universe Unites" charity campaign, pledging a $250,000 donation to the Starlight Children's Foundation if fan posts reached one million likes, alongside donations from Disney, Hasbro, and Funko. In early May, Marvel and Epic Games launched an Infinity Gauntlet mode in Fortnite Battle Royale, letting players find the Gauntlet on the map and become Thanos. The studio spent an estimated $150 million on prints and advertising. Deadline Hollywood put the film's total media value at $150 million as well, the largest of any Marvel release, with roughly $40 million of it contributed by partner Coca-Cola. All of that promotion was aimed at a single opening weekend, one about to rewrite the record books.

• 7. Breaking Every Record

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  Avengers: Infinity War premiered at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood on the 23rd of April 2018. It opened across the United States on the 27th, in 4,474 theaters, 408 of them IMAX, making it the widest release Disney had ever given a title. Three AMC locations ran the film for 24 hours straight, and 53 more scheduled 2 am or 3 am showtimes to meet demand. In India, the film opened on nearly 2,000 screens in four languages, the biggest release a Hollywood film had ever received there. The film's worldwide opening weekend reached $640.5 million, the biggest ever, beating The Fate of the Furious (2017) total of $541.9 million. It was later beaten by Avengers: Endgame, which opened to $1.222 billion. In the United States and Canada, the opening weekend hit $258.2 million, including a $106.7 million opening day and $39 million from Thursday night previews. The film reached $1 billion worldwide in 11 days, beating the previous record of 12 days set by Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). On the 12th of June 2018, it crossed $2 billion, the fourth film ever to do so, after Avatar (2009), Titanic (1997), and The Force Awakens, reaching the mark in 48 days. In China, the film opened to $200 million, or 1.266 billion RMB, the second-highest opening weekend in local currency behind The Fate of the Furious. In India, it became the first Hollywood film to earn more than 2 billion rupees net, about $29.7 million. In Russia, the government initially set the release for the 11th of May, then agreed to move it to the 3rd, on condition that only Russian films would screen there on the 9th, the country's Victory Day. The film ultimately grossed $678.8 million in the United States and Canada and $1.374 billion elsewhere, for a worldwide total of $2.052 billion, the fourth-highest-grossing film of all time and the top film of 2018. Deadline Hollywood calculated its net profit at $500 million, ranking it first on that outlet's list of 2018's most valuable blockbusters. Numbers that size drew reviewers into the theater in force, and their verdicts split along a fairly clear line.

• 8. Critics, Crowds, Reddit

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  Rotten Tomatoes' critical consensus said the film juggles a huge cast of Marvel heroes against "their gravest threat yet," calling it "a thrilling, emotionally resonant blockbuster." Metacritic assigned the film a score of 68 out of 100, based on 54 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy praised the writers and directors for balancing the cast under what he called "the supervision of Marvel Films maestro Kevin Feige." Variety's Owen Gleiberman called the film "a brashly entertaining jamboree." Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times called it Marvel's "biggest and most ambitious movie yet," though not its best, and singled out Josh Brolin's motion-capture performance as "the film's most interesting." Not every critic agreed. A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote that, "considered on its own, as a single, nearly 2-hour-40-minute movie, Avengers: Infinity War makes very little sense," though he conceded it "was never meant to be viewed or judged in isolation." Time's Stephanie Zacharek wrote that the film "isn't really a beginning, but more of a middle or an end with a new piece of yarn attached." She said a viewer needed to have seen all eighteen previous MCU films to fully get it. The Los Angeles Times' Justin Chang called its bid for catharsis "unsuccessful," since Marvel's "assembly line" keeps "chugging ahead with its signature polished, mechanized efficiency." At the 91st Academy Awards, the film received a nomination for Best Visual Effects. It was also nominated for an Annie Award, a British Academy Film Award, and two Critics' Choice Awards. In 2020, an Empire magazine poll ranked it seventh among the 100 greatest films of the 21st century. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of A. PostTrak recorded an 87 percent overall positive score and a 68 percent "definite recommend." American YouTube personality Tony "Nem" Mitchell watched the film 103 times in theaters, a world record; he said IMAX gave him 50 free tickets to help him keep the streak going. Seventeen-year-old Kieran Harvey of Staffordshire watched it 100 times, saying it "just felt so different to anything I've ever seen before." The film's ending, in which Spider-Man tells Stark he does not feel good as he disintegrates, spread across the internet as a meme applied to unrelated situations. On the Reddit forum /r/thanosdidnothingwrong, a member proposed banning half of its roughly 20,000 subscribers to mimic the film's ending, and the community agreed. News of the coming ban swelled the forum past 700,000 subscribers, including both Russo brothers. On the 9th of July 2018, moderators banned more than 300,000 accounts, the largest ban in Reddit's history. Over 60,000 people watched the event unfold on a live Twitch stream. Those banned regrouped in a new forum, /r/inthesoulstone. Its sequel, Avengers: Endgame, reached theaters on the 26th of April 2019, with the Russo brothers again directing and Markus and McFeely again writing the script.