20 facts you might not know about 'Avengers: Infinity War'

At first, Marvel announced two films called "Avengers: Infinity War Part 1” and “Avengers Infinity War Part 2.” However, Marvel was also trying to make it clear these were two different films, not one long story being broken up into two parts. This proved a little confusing, so this movie was simplified to Avengers: Infinity War, and the second film got a new subtitle.

Infinity War is the product of the primary creative forces in the MCU: the screenwriting team Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely and directing duo Joe and Anthony Russo. Inspiration was taken from the 1991 comic The Infinity Gauntlet and 2013’s Infinity, but that wasn’t all. Anthony Russo said they were also inspired by ‘90s heist movies, considering Thanos to be on a heist-like quest across the universe.

Want to talk about a massive undertaking? Infinity War and its sequel, Endgame, were shot back to back. Filming began in late January 2017 and ran until the middle of July.

Chris Hemsworth had kind of tired of playing Thor before Taika Waititi came along and made Thor: Ragnarok, which gave the character a comedic direction. It also turned Ragnarok into a huge hit. Markus and McFeely talked to Waititi and Ragnarok screenwriter Eric Pearson to keep that tone. Joe Russo called Thor the “driving hero’s arc” of Infinity War.

After the events of Captain America: Civil War, Steve Rogers is on the run. As such, Tony Stark and the Avengers have to find and bring him in to fight Thanos. Initially, Markus and McFeely didn’t have Cap returning until he saved Vision in Wakanda in the film’s climax. This was considered entirely unreasonable, and the screenwriters would concede to that being “not satisfying” and change it up.

Hiddleston was made aware that Infinity War would open with the death of Loki quite early. The idea was conceived by the Russos early enough that he found out before he even filmed Thor: Ragnarok. Hiddleston said he used this knowledge when playing Loki in Ragnarok to help sow the seeds for Infinity War.

Terry Notary, as well as an actor, is a stunt coordinator and movement coach. In the film, he plays Cull Obsidian, one of the Children of Thanos. He did the voice and motion capture for that character. However, while Vin Diesel voices Groot, Notary did the motion capture for adolescent Groot for the movie, not Diesel.

It’s pretty wild that Marvel got Carrie Coon to play Proxima Midnight, given how acclaimed she is as an actor and relatively small the role is. However, Marvel also did a solid for Coon, which may help explain why she took the role. Coon was pregnant when filming was happening for the back-to-back Avengers movies, so she mostly did voice work and facial motion capture, leaving the rest of her motion capture work to a stunt double.

Weaving is quite good as Red Skull in Captain America: First Avenger. He also did not enjoy filming it, especially the makeup and prosthetics. At the time, he said he wasn’t interested in reprising the role, and he stuck by that. Instead, CGI and on-set stand-ins did a lot of the work for Red Skull, with Ross Marquand providing the voice.

Kenneth Branagh directed Thor, bringing his Shakespearean touches to it. He did not return for the sequel, but it was more about time commitments. Branagh returned to the MCU, in a way, in Infinity War. He has an uncredited voice cameo as the Asgardian making the distress call at the film's beginning.

The Russo brothers were directors on the cult sitcom Arrested Development, including directing the pilot. They wanted David Cross to make a cameo as Tobias Funke, his character from that show, but Cross couldn’t make it work with his schedule. However, an uncredited extra was dressed like Tobias and appears in the Collector’s collection in the movie anyway.

Jon Favreau, who directed the first two Iron Man movies, was supposed to have a part as his character Happy Hogan in Infinity War. Joe Russo also shot a cameo as a paparazzo. Both of them saw their parts cut from the film, though. Russo couldn’t even make it into a film he directed!

Everybody in Black Panther also appearing in Infinity War did not have much downtime. Infinity War started shooting two weeks after Black Panther's production ended. As such, nobody working on Infinity War had seen Black Panther and was pleasantly surprised by some of what was brought into the film, such as the Wakandan war chants.

Making Infinity War did not come cheap. While some reports say it cost $400 million, the number most often associated with the movie is $325 million. That still makes it the fourth-most-expensive movie ever made. Although, two of the movies ahead of it are Avengers films: Age of Ultron and Endgame.

We assume Marvel and Disney weren’t sweating all that cash. The movie made $640.5 million worldwide…in its first weekend. That made it the biggest opening weekend ever, and it became the fastest movie to make a billion worldwide, doing so in a mere 11 days.

Infinity War would make $678.8 million domestically and $2.048 billion worldwide. When it opened, it was the top film in 54 markets. The movie was the highest-grossing film of 2018 and the fourth-highest-grossing movie ever. It would set several box office records, both domestically and worldwide (many of which would be bested by its sequel, but that’s for another time).

Thanos is the big bad that the Avengers need to assemble to beat. However, Marvel thought of the film and Thanos from a different perspective. Kevin Feige thought you could consider Thanos the main character of Infinity War, and McFeely agreed, adding that the film is sort of Thano’s “hero’s journey.” It’s just that his journey ends with, you know, the disappearance of half the life in the universe.

Infinity War is a major ensemble piece, but if you parse out the screen time (which people on the internet did), everything comes up Thanos. The baddie has the most screen time of any character, coming in at 29 minutes. Second-most is Gamora, with 19 minutes and 30 seconds, which owes in part to the fact she is Thanos’ adopted daughter.

In the wake of Infinity War , a (presumably and hopefully) tongue-in-cheek subreddit called “thanosdidnothingwrong” emerged. One member of that subreddit suggested half of the members should be randomly banned from it, which made its way to the higher-ups at Reddit, who agreed to make it happen. That news sparked additional interest in the subreddit, and at the time of the ban, over 700,000 people were subscribed. The ban was kicked off by a video of Josh Brolin snapping his fingers, at which point over 300,000 members of the subreddit were banned. Both Russo brothers were in the subreddit, but only Anthony was banned.

Infinity War got one Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects. It did not win, though it secured some wins at the People’s Choice and Teen Choice Awards. Fair enough, but notably, it won Favorite Movie at the Kids’ Choice Awards. Apparently, children enjoyed a film that ended with a genocidal maniac killing half the universe’s population and watching Spider-Man dissolve into dust.