What to Expect From Avengers: Infinity War

The Marvel movie schedule announcement is still fresh in our minds and it’s still incredibly intriguing. With all the movies coming out between Marvel, Warner Bros., Fox, and Sony, it feels like a golden age of comic movies that’s heading towards an intense burnout. Marvel will keep adding to their cinematic universe until there’s no money to be made, so that’ll be continuing for a while. Still, it’s kind of nice that we have the two-parter Avengers: Infinity War to look forward to in 2018 and 2019.

This is the initial “finale” of the universe, as far as I'm concerned. Sure, we’ll still get movies after it, but a lot of the major actors like Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth will be high-tailing it out of there around that point, whether being written off completely or just having their roles replaced. Plus, twenty years from now, you know you’re going to have a bunch of grizzled nerds looking back and saying, “They should have just ended it with Infinity War,” while waiting on line for Speedball 3: Atlantis Attacks.

It’s all been building up towards this throwdown with the Mad Titan Thanos. While Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, and Iron Man 2 were about building towards the Avengers as a concept, Thor and Captain America laid down the seeds for Infinity War with Avengers ramping it into gear. Even then, Marvel has taken its time with it, which is pretty impressive. They’ve skipped over Thanos for the next movie and have been treating him like Emperor Palpatine, showing up briefly here and there to look all ugly and intimidating. The writing has been on the wall for years that the third Avengers movie would be about Thanos and the Infinity Gems, but the recent news has made things a bit more interesting.

Not only is Infinity War a two-parter, but the two movies are bread in a Marvel Studios sandwich. Infinity War Part 1 comes out May 4th, 2018, followed almost immediately by Captain Marvel on July 6th. At the end of the year, Inhumans shows up on November 2nd. That will lead into Infinity War Part 2 on May 3rd, 2019. Hollywood’s been milking the two-parter thing for years, but to have two movies pop in in-between that? Well, that raises all sorts of questions.

Of course, none of the superhero movies these days are word-for-word faithful to the source material. Not since Watchmen at least (ending excluded). Still, the mining for source material has still been strong enough, whether it be how Dark Knight Rises was a hybrid of Dark Knight Returns, Knightfall, and No Man’s Land or how Captain America: The Winter Soldier was close to the comic in all the ways that mattered. Then again, Avengers: Age of Ultron will have virtually nothing to do with the comic with the same name and thank God for that.

All arrows point at Jim Starlin and Ron Lim’s Infinity Gauntlet as being the basis for Avengers: Infinity War. If so, it’s a really good thing that they wouldn’t follow the book to a tee because while the idea of Infinity Gauntlet is awesome, the movie-going audience would turn on it if they went with the comic’s story. I know we’re getting Adam Warlock. His cocoon has shown up in Thor: The Dark World and Guardians of the Galaxy during the Collector scenes. He has to be a lock to show up here. That said, no way are we getting a story that would throw the Avengers (and the Guardians of the Galaxy) completely under the bus just to make Adam Warlock look like the coolest dude ever.

It says a lot that there have been multiple attempts since then to rewrite the Infinity Gauntlet story without Adam Warlock saving the day while all the Avengers and their ilk are reduced to dust. I mean, Brian Clevinger, Lee Black, and Brian Churilla did Avengers and the Infinity Gauntlet, where instead of the Avengers being massacred by the big, purple, space genie, they have Thanos get crushed with a space truck.

Look forward to US-Ace showing up in the post-credits of Dr. Strange.

So yes, Adam Warlock will more than likely be a major player in these movies and they may even make him likeable, but no way is he getting that much juice over the heroes that the very movies are named after.

There is one aspect of the Infinity Gauntlet series that has an incredibly good chance of being remolded for the movie-going audience. In the series, Thanos is advised by Mephisto, Marvel’s Devil-who-is-not-actually-the-Devil-but-let’s-be-honest-he’s-the-Devil in how to best use his ultimate power. Naturally, Mephisto is trying to use his forked tongue to play things his way. I highly doubt we’ll see him show up on the big screens, but it should be obvious that this role is absolutely perfect for Loki.

Ever since Avengers came out, people have been speculating that Loki – being Thanos’ underling – would be thrust into the Mephisto role. Considering the character’s increasing popularity, it seems more and more likely.

Much like Age of Ultron, I wouldn’t expect much to come out of the two-parter being named after the actual Marvel miniseries Infinity War. After Infinity Gauntlet, Starlin continued to write a bunch of Warlock/Thanos stories with “Infinity” in the title, but they go off the rails and wouldn’t jibe with an Avengers movie. For one, the Earth heroes have less and less to do with the main plot. Second, the Earth heroes’ main obstacle during this time is to fight evil versions of themselves, which would be incredibly lazy, especially since heroes fighting dark versions of themselves is a major criticized trope in these movies as is. We already had Iron Man vs. Evil Iron Man, Captain America vs. Evil Captain America, and Hulk vs. Evil Hulk. We’re good.

Then there’s the fact that they’ve been spending years building up Thanos as the ultimate bad guy. After Gauntlet, Starlin writes Thanos as something of an anti-hero and that’s not going to work here. He’s THE threat. Whether the movies end with him being frozen into a statue, blown to smithereens, or reduced to a farmer, it’s about everyone vs. Thanos at the core. At most, you’ll get Nebula stepping up and Thanos having to help oppose her, but nothing you can dedicate a whole movie to.

Marvel – both as a studio and a comic company – has been sketching the architecture of these movies for a long while. There’s a reason why the Guardians of the Galaxy showed up on the Avengers cartoon years before the movie came out. The idea of doing a Captain Marvel movie is not a recent one for them. This has been in the cards for a long time. Long enough that they’ve been trying to increase Carol Danvers’ importance and make her the premiere female hero. Especially since mutant heroes (and Sue Storm) are off the cinematic menu.

Here’s something rather interesting, though. Kelly Sue DeConnick’s two runs with the character have been met with criticism and she’s since explained that it’s because of editorial mandates. One of the biggest complaints I’ve seen is how her first run immediately goes right into a time-travel story, which is the worst kind of story to do at the beginning of a comic series. The reason this went wrong was that DeConnick was told to find a way to rewrite Carol’s backstory. The time travel was going to be a way to retcon it so that Carol could have an origin where she’d get her powers independent of her predecessor Mar-Vell. Then editorial changed their minds and told her that they were going to keep the Mar-Vell part of her origin after all.

Why would they suddenly go back on that? Could it be that it’s because they plan on putting Mar-Vell in the movies as setup? More specifically, could Mar-Vell show up in Infinity War Part 1, with his downfall leading into Carol’s rise in Captain Marvel, which would then funnel back into Infinity War Part 2? The original Captain Marvel has taken on Thanos several times and the Starlin-penned story from Captain Marvel #31-33 in the 70s is like a more streamlined version of Infinity Gauntlet. Thanos is even done in the same way: he gets ultimate power, becomes one with the cosmos itself, but forgets that the very device that made him so powerful is now left out in the open.

Then there’s the Inhumans, another superhero property Marvel’s been trying to build up over time. How curious. The whole Inhuman concept has been built on in the Agents of SHIELD TV series with Skye almost definitely being an Inhuman herself. While there are a lot of different routes that they can go through for the Inhumans movie, the timing of its release can’t be a coincidence. There’s only one major storyline that comes to mind that includes both Thanos and the Inhumans and that’s the recent event Infinity.

While I love the story to death, Infinity is a mess to explain, mainly because it’s merely a climax to the first act in Jonathan Hickman’s complicated Avengers/New Avengers run and that’s a whole can of worms in itself. The comic goes out of its way to make comic Thanos more like the little we’ve seen on his movie incarnation, in the sense that we first see him sitting on a throne in space with followers bowing down to him and handing out exposition while he merely smiles. Speaking of thrones, Thanos finds himself at odds with the Inhumans halfway into the story, leading to a balls-out awesome confrontation with Black Bolt.

Certain characters are introduced through this story, such as Thanos’ major henchmen. For the sake of giving the Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy someone to fight against, I wouldn’t doubt seeing the likes of Proxima Midnight, Black Dwarf, Ebony Maw, and Supergiant stepping onto the big screen. More importantly, the storyline brings in the character Thane, the son of Thanos and a woman of the Inhuman bloodline. He’s yet to truly make an impact in Marvel outside of the finale of Infinity, but the company definitely has some plans for him. As bloated as the double-movies sound already, Thane’s inclusion isn’t too unlikely.

It’s still three and a half years until Avengers: Infinity War makes its first step into theaters, but speculation is a fun puzzle to play with. In the end, I expect a foundation of Infinity Gauntlet with cherry-picked aspects of Infinity thrown in there, along with Kree warrior Captain Mar-Vell showing up. As badass as Annihilation was, I doubt we’ll see anything resembling that story show up. I’d love to see Drax the Destroyer tear out Thanos’ heart and show it to him before he dies as much as the next guy, but I don’t think they can swing a PG-13 rating with that.

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