The Marvel Cinematic Universe has grown by leaps and bounds since the first Avengers movie and there are numerous new characters who can now interact with each other. Our own Sean O'Connell got to visit the set of Infinity War several months ago and he asked the writers, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, how they decided which characters to put together on screen. Apparently, it was a multi-month process just to figure out how different characters might interact if they were put together. According to McFeely,
After Civil War, we got in a room for 4 or 5 months trying to crack these two ridiculously big things...We talked a lot about, it's a Joe Russo term, 'strange alchemy.' What is it when you put the two characters together, even in a fairly normal traditional situation. But since we've invested in those characters and known them, we sort of delighted in the idea of those two people rubbing against each other. So, we always chased 'delight' -- and terror. Lots of terror.
The entire premise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe at the begging was essentially, let's create this handful of characters and then see what happens when you put them all in the same room together. Avengers: Infinity War, is that same concept but now multiplied by a factor of 10. With dozens of characters to choose from, Christopher Markus told us that they just had a wall of characters they were looking at and would seemingly randomly put any two of them together and consider what sort of story they could tell or what sort of humorous interaction might occur.
We've begun to see some of these interactions in the various trailers for Avengers: Infinity War. The most recent trailer showed us Iron Man and Star-Lord trying to come up with a plan and the egos of the two getting in the way. We know that Thor will be meeting up with the Guardians of the Galaxy as well and have seen Doctor Strange hanging out with Bruce Banner. All of these combinations promise some great action and/or comedy as everybody teams up to take on Thanos.
However, the writers were also quick to point out that just because there's a big scary bad guy out there, it doesn't mean that all these heroes are going to get along easily. Some characters, like one Bucky Barnes, has some baggage that comes with him from previous movies that will need to be dealt with. As Christopher Markus explained...
And there's also...we're coming off Civil War. We're coming off Winter Soldier. So that's there's lots of backstory that still needs to play out in addition to the Thanos situation. Like, I just walked by Sebastian Stan out there. You could put Bucky in a room with anybody and they're going to say, "Oh shit! He's a maniac." He's shot Natasha [Romanoff] twice as far as I can keep count. So it's going to be interesting.
It's a reminder that not every character interaction in Infinity War is going to be a positive one. These players have history and not all of it is good. We'll get to see it all come together April 27.
