It's easy to see that Avengers: Infinity War is one of the biggest movies ever made. The latest Marvel Cinematic Universe blockbuster is a massive piece of cinema, which makes sense, as it represents the culmination of a decade of stories centered on the six Infinity Stones. That said, Infinity War screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely opened up in a recent interview and admitted that they would've scaled down the MacGuffins if they had a chance to try again. McFeely said:
Had we started from scratch, we would not have chosen six damn MacGuffins. That's not that helpful. It was difficult to get that all in.
It's easy to see where Stephen McFeely is coming from with that remark. Avengers: Infinity War brings almost every narrative thread from the MCU together for the very first time, and the need to go after six different Infinity Stones creates a massive undertaking for the filmmaking team behind the blockbuster. Though all of the Infinity Stones (with the exception of the Soul Stone) were established in previous films, it's fairly easy to understand how difficult it was to go to different corners of the MCU and bring them together in one story.
In fact, this is one of the story elements that fans criticized in Avengers: Age of Ultron when the second Avengers film debuted back in 2015. Age of Ultron was tasked with the unenviable job of properly setting up the Infinity War arc that would play out three years later, and the film arguably sometimes buckled under its weight -- particularly in the scenes between Thor and Erik Selvig.
Warning: massive spoilers ahead for Avengers: Infinity War!
Despite the arguably cumbersome nature of the Infinity Stones, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely still look at Avengers: Infinity War as one complete movie. In fact, elsewhere in their interview with The New York Times, they noted that the only main difference between this film and other self-contained Marvel movies is that Thanos wins. Markus explained:
We still argue that Infinity War is its own, complete film. It's just the one where the bad guy wins.
That's an important distinction to make, and it leads us to wonder what could happen when Avengers 4 rolls around. Avengers: Infinity War sets all of the Infinity Stones up, and then allows Thanos to win by snapping his fingers and kill half of all life in the universe -- including half of the MCU heroes. With less than a year to go until the fourth Avengers movie debuts, we will have to wait and see how Markus and McFeely will end this particular story.
Avengers: Infinity War is currently in theaters and continuing its insane box office ascent. Make sure to check it out while you still can and watch out for the culmination of this massive storyline next year when Avengers 4 debuts on May 3, 2019 and concludes Phase 3 of the MCU!
