AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR will feature entire Marvel Cinematic Universe

In case you haven’t noticed, with the exception of Ant-Man, Marvel’s movies all just keep on getting bigger and bigger. Even if you exclude all the superhero/villain cameos, Avengers: Age of Ultron still boasted 12 major characters. And despite only one hero’s name in the title,  Captain America: Civil War is pretty much Avengers 2.5 as it boast just about every hero in the MCU throwing down against each other.

Well, not quite every hero, as there are a few others – most notably a few galactic guardians – left out of the mix. But you can expect those oversights to be rectified when the two-part Avengers: Infinity War rolls around. The culmination of the MCU’s central overarching plot, began back in 2012’s Avengers when it was revealed that the cosmic despot Thanos is behind most of the major calamities in the MCU in his quest to construct an Infinity Gauntlet, Infinity War is going to be massive. In the comic book storyline that this is based on, it took just about every single hero to take down Thanos and his Infinity Gauntlet – which gives the wearer the power to rewrite reality – after he literally killed half the universe as a gesture of love to Death.

While it’s uncertain if we’ll see anywhere close to that kind of death toll, the hero roster will certainly be just as impressive. And yes, that probably/definitely includes the Guardians of the Galaxy as co-director Joe Russo – who also helmed Captain America: Civil War and Captain America: Winter Soldier with his brother Anthony – explained to ComicBook.com (via ComingSoon.net):

“That is another one that we would have to reserve as a surprise, but we will say this: People will not be disappointed in the amount of characters in the movie. The concept of Infinity War is that the Marvel universe unites to battle the greatest threat to the world and universe that you’ve ever seen, and we’re going to honor that concept.”

I know he says “surprise”, but I think we can take it as a given that Star-Lord and the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy will indeed be shoulder to shoulder with Iron Man and the Avengers. So yes, you can already start spitballing ideas for your “Peter Quill vs Tony Stark dance-off” fan fiction, Nick.

This type of universe-spanning cosmic ruckus is a far throw from the much more grounded and realistic action of Winter Soldier – an aspect of that movie that I loved to bits. But as Russo explained, just because they did the whole “grounded” thing once, and to great success, doesn’t mean they can’t switch up their action.

“I sat in the theater and watched Empire Strikes Back seven times in a row when I was a kid. Yeah, we’re science fiction fans as well, Dungeons and Dragons. We collected all the books when we were kids. We had figurines. Anything that you could think of that has to do with fantasy or sci-fi or superheroes was in our universe. We’re just going to approach the cosmic side with the same fervor that we did the earthbound work we’ve been doing. We also are going to work really hard to bring a psychological realism. We obviously can’t bring a naturalism to it because it doesn’t really exist outside of science fiction, but we can bring that psychological realism to it, to the characters, and that’s going to be our focus.

Also, it’s going to be our focus to explore the cosmic side, applying the same rules that we like to apply to the last two films that we’ve done. It ends up being the rules of physics always apply or apply as much as we can get them to apply based on what we’re doing.”

A more realistic sci-fi approach to the big cosmic stuff? Hmmm, consider me greatly intrigued.

UPDATE: The Russos have said that fans will not be disappointed at the amount of characters in this movie, but exactly what is that amount? Well, after the writing of this article, CBM brought out another article covering the Russos’ recent appearance at Wizard World New Orleans comic book convention. And while at the con, the directing brothers gave an actual number. And it’s a lot.

“We have so many characters we’re dealing with. We’re breaking ground on Avengers: Infinity War. We have a board with 67 characters on it.”

67? SIXTY SEVEN?! That is a crazy amount of characters! And last time I checked that was more than double all the heroes we’ve seen in the MCU thus far combined. So who the hell else is joining the cast. We now Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is going to expand their roster, and then there’s still whomever shows up beside the title characters in Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, Black Panther and Thor: Ragnarok. But even those movies all added an additional 3 people – which is highly unlikely – that still wouldn’t cut it! So will even the villains be teaming up with the heroes? I mean, it is technically their universe too that Thanos is trying to wipe out.

Any ideas from your side? Sound off in the comments below!

The two-part Avengers: Infinity War kicks off on May 4, 2018, with Part 2 scheduled for May 3, 2019.

Last Updated: January 12, 2016