‘Infinity War’ Screenwriters Markus & McFeely Talk Villains, Hawkeye, R-Rated Movies & More [Interview]

You know because it is a big machine, a lot of people would assume these things are written by committee. There’s so much interconnectivity—how much freedom do you have?
SF: We have a lot of freedom. A scary amount. I’ll tell you this, for example, when they came to us and said, ‘Infinity War,’ and once we signed the deal, the only requirements were Thanos, the stones and this ambition to be great and epic. We were never going to be afraid of how big the movie could be. No one’s going to make ‘My Dinner With Thanos’ it was always going to be an epic movie. So along the way, Chris and I offer all these suggestions as to all the directions we could go and some are crazy and some are small and some are big, and some have lasting ramifications and Marvel’s not afraid of any of that. It’s not like we’re getting a list of 10 things we must have by page 17. At all. Particularly as we get further and further into the MCU and the movies are good, we’re part of the team and Kevin Feige will certainly be the last word on a lot of things, but we’re the ones who give it to him.

How close do you work with the Russo brothers on the script?
SF: Oh, yeah, yeah. When I say that, I mean, the individual filmmakers are the ones making the movie, so with us it’s Chris, me, Joe and Anthony [Russo] and then Marvel executives will come in and steer us and offer their two cents and Kevin being the most important of that. But that’s why we’ve been here so long because the room is very small, actually. For such big movies with such cultural impact, it’s kind of weird how there’s like only five people around the table.

Villains in superhero movies as we know, they can be the problem of a lot of these stories. They’re weak, etc. You guys have had some nice atypical ones, a best friend in ‘Winter Soldier,’ themselves and their warring ideologies in ‘Civil War,’ how did you guys approach a classic Thanos and try and avoid those villain traps?
CM: You try and make him as fully realized and sympathetic as a character as possible. In fact, you go in and look at him as a character and not a villain. And, to the point that at some point we realized that he was actually the protagonist of the film and that everything in the movie was pivoting around him. And he has as many hard, moral choices to make as the heroes. When his situation became as difficult for him as it was for the heroes, that’s when we knew we were going down the right path.

What’s the biggest challenge besides juggling a million characters and Thanos?
SF: Besides that? Telling two complete stories. It’s exciting to be able to write two stories at the same time, it’s also crazy and daunting, you shouldn’t do it. But the real estate allowed us to tell two really big stories that are separate, but clearly they’re linked in important ways. You didn’t feel like you wanted to cut something down the middle. We wanted to make sure that we did enough story that one wrapped up and the other could begin.

Two stories: do you mean one being Thanos’ story and one being the heroes story?
SF: I don’t strictly mean that, but two movies that feel like two realized wholes and not just two different pieces of one story. We wrote them at the same time, we shot them at the same time.

So you wrote it all together and mapped out the gigantic arc?
CM: Oh yeah, we sat in a room for four months with movie #1 on one wall and movie #2 on another and baseball cards of all the characters of the MCU on the other wall, it was like “A Beautiful Mind” in there.

He’s the butt of all the jokes, but I like Hawkeye. Are we gonna see some justice for him?
CM: Don’t worry about Hawkeye. There are reasons for everything.

Do you guys have a future with Marvel? Do you see yourselves continuing to be an integral core of the MCU?
SF: We would love to work with Marvel again. We’ve hooked up with the Russo brothers to start this new studio so I don’t know when it would be, but Marvel is the best place to work in town easily.

There’s a lot of talk about R-rated Marvel movies. What do you think in store there for the future?
SF: In terms of R-Rated movies, that’s really a Kevin question so I don’t know, but certainly “Deadpool” shows you there’s an audience for it. And whether Disney wants to get into that business I don’t know.
CM: I will say with the Marvel movies they never feel like they’re holding back. I’ve never felt like I’ve needed to see more blood or whatever. So, I would only want an R-rated movie if there was really a character who would suffer by being presented in any other way.

“Avengers Infinity War” hits theaters April 27th