Joe Russo has discusses some of the inspirations that he and his co-director and brother, Anthony, drew from while making Avengers: Infinity War - including, 1990s heist films. Infinity War will serve as the culmination of everything that has transpired in the Marvel Cinematic Universe thus far marking the franchise's 10 year anniversary in the process. Rooted in the promise of bringing together nearly every major character in the MCU so far, the film will pit the mightiest heroes of the MCU against the Mad Titan Thanos (Josh Brolin) and his Black Order.
Much of the narrative of Infinity War is about the powerful Infinity Gems, which individually have served as MacGuffins in previous MCU films. Thanos is now trying to collect all of the Infinity Stones, in order to wreak havoc across the whole universe. The Stones have been kept at separate locations - the Space Stone in Asgard, Reality Stone with Benicio del Toro's the Collector, Power Stone with the Nova Corps, Mind Stone with Paul Bettany's Vision and the Time Stone with Doctor Strange, with the Soul Stone's whereabouts currently unknown. The Mad Titan (and his minions) will have to individually collect them to use the full power of his Infinity Gauntlet.
Related: Infinity War Aims to Make Thanos 'The Next Darth Vader'
During an interview with Comic Book at the 2017 San Diego Comic-Con, Joe Russo talked about how the thrilling and fast-paced beats of '90s heist films influenced Infinity War:
"My brother and I like use movies (because we're film geeks) as influences for us. Sometimes, with so many people working on these films, it's just great to show them footage or talk about a film that everyone knows so you understand the tone, or the theme, or the structure that you're playing with. Structurally, with this first film, Avengers 3, we've been using the smash-n-grab '90s heist films, so there's a real urgency to the film. I feel like it adds a level of excitement and relentlessness to the pace of the movie. And it's a lot of divergent narratives coming together into a climax."
The quick pacing that Russo mentioned could come from everyone racing each other to get the Stones. While Thanos wants to collect all of them, the Avengers try to foil his plans by derailing him in his adventure across the galaxy to capture them. The trope is quite common to action-thriller films, where everybody is in a rush to accomplish their respective goals.
The D23 Expo and SDCC sizzle-reel for Infinity War shows Thanos wielding the gauntlet, but with an uncomplete set of Stones. In the same clip, we see Loki (Tom Hiddleston) seemingly offering him the Tesseract, which he may then use to battle a number of heroes after emerging from a wormhole . That said, it is unknown if the supervillain will be able to collect all the Stones in the film - and if he does, how much more ruckus he can create, given that he could literally throw a planet/moon with just a couple of Stones at his disposal.
Of course with a villain as powerful as Thanos, we can expect some casualties in his tracks as "death follows him like a shadow." Unfortunately, establishing this kind of power (which we have not seen before in the MCU) will come at the expense of some of our favorite heroes - meaning, imminent deaths and upping the stakes in Avengers: Infinity War.
Next: Every Marvel Movie Reveal from Comic-Con 2017
Source: Comic Book
