We’ve all seen the memes over the last week about “Avengers: Infinity War.” The ones where someone brings up that Marvel Studios claims that ‘Infinity War’ is the biggest crossover in history, and some clever Internet person puts up a funny juxtaposition. But the truth is, ‘Infinity War’ does mark a pretty incredible moment in film history.
With something like 64 characters coming together, each being portrayed by an A-list talent, it’s even a miracle this movie was made. It’s no surprise that Fandango is now showing that the run-time for the superhero epic comes in at a staggering 2 hours 36 minutes, which is the longest Marvel Cinematic Universe film to date. So, how did the filmmakers responsible for the movie create a cohesive story, with dozens of characters, that actually works as a single film? Well, apparently they looked to Robert Altman for inspiration.
In an interview over at Slash Film, co-writer Stephen McFeely discussed bringing all these characters together:
“One of the reasons that first ‘Avengers’ movie was so popular and so exciting is, you were taking four franchises and [claps] smashing them into each other. Hopefully, we have the same kind of magic here, where we bring this completely different set of characters and smash them into varying groups of our characters. Another thing to think about, one of the challenges we’ve had is, how do you make sure this is not 25 people moving from one scene to one scene to one scene? So we talk, being a little facetious about it, but we talk about how it’s like ‘Nashville,’ right? So you’ve got four or five different stories weaved together and then come together and then break apart. So, you get all these different pairings and groupings of four and five and six [characters].”
Co-writer Christopher Markus mentioned another popular franchise that is known to have a ton of characters, “And even now, not unlike something like ‘Game of Thrones,’ where you have this vast canvas with characters – you’ve been watching this guy over here molesting this girl over here in the East for years and only now does it have that feeling of massive plates shifting and finally bringing these characters near each other.”
Comparing yourself to an epic television series that spends upwards of 10 hours each season explaining stories, doesn’t really correlate to this film. Of course, some could argue that the almost-20 films that led up to ‘Infinity War’ are basically episodes of a very expensive TV series. But the comparison to “Nashville” also seems odd. Last we checked, that film didn’t have an alien collecting powerful stones in hopes of wiping out half of the life in the universe. But yeah, it definitely had a fair amount of characters.
One of the characters in ‘Infinity War’ that is getting talked about most is Hawkeye. Conspicuously left off the marketing for the film, fans have been wondering where the archer has been hiding, and if he’s actually going to show up in the film. Marvel Studios prop master Russell Bobbitt can put your minds at ease, saying in an on-set interview that Hawkeye is “totally there” and “a part of the world!”
Bobbitt goes on to talk about some of the new tech the archer will get. “Hawkeye is getting a lot of cool new stuff. We’re developing a lot of interesting stuff for him. All in the, sort of, bow related but some new gadgets he has in addition to the bow.”
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Re: your deliberately over-literal “Last we checked, that film didn’t have an alien collecting powerful stones in hopes of wiping out half of the life in the universe.” – It’s an analogy, Charles, they’re not literally saying it’s Nashville. You really should reconsider changing your default position from “snark” to something else. People come to movie sites to read information about films, including how the filmmakers describe their approach to the material, because we find that interesting. At the risk of belaboring a point, I find Stephen McFeely & Christopher Markus’s quotes about their work more interesting than I find your snarky commentary about it. And please, the next time you think about taking a condescending attitude to someone’s work, consider that they may actually know what they’re talking about (their movie has already surpassed Black Panther’s record in ticket presales) and you (a blogger on a website) may not.
Thank you! I was thinking the same thing. And it was such a poor attempt at snarkiness too, which makes it even worse.
Several times now I have read a new article here and noted how unusually patronising and banal the writing and observations have been, and scrolled up to see this writers name. I have been a daily visitor to this site for years (including back when it was an extension of indie wire) and it’s very disappointing to see such markedly poor content be included in what is generally a pretty terrific source of film news and criticism.
I’ve had exactly the same experience. Perfectly said.
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And here we are.
Charles Barfield, you suck. Not just because you’re a bad writer, but more than anything it’s because you’re a boring LCD bottom feeder, someone who probably really believes they lend a voice to disenfranchised peoples by posting reams of click-bait articles while never really lending their platform to truly independent cinema by diverse talent, ever, hardly ever, interviews, profiles, features, of somebody new, somebody who doesn’t get their due in the mainstream press? You’d rather just pump out these little turds about nothing, keeping us up to date on all the latest Disney films, and roost having nothing interesting to say.