The official runtime for Avengers: Infinity War clocks in under two-and-a-half hours at 149 minutes. However, the film could have been much longer. Jim Starlin, who created Thanos for Marvel Comics, told Near Mint Condition how a 45-minute scene involving the Mad Titan ended up on the cutting room floor.
By the time Infinity War begins, Thanos has already acquired the Power Stone from Xandar. He then intercepts the spaceship containing Asgardian survivors and takes the Space Stone from the Tesseract. But the Russo Brothers also filmed a scene revealing how Thanos gained the former stone and decimated the Nova Corps’ home base. During the interview, Starlin recalled when he found out the scene was cut.
“Just before Infinity War came out, I have been in contact with Joe Russo, one of the directors,” said Starlin. “And when I was on the set, Markus and McFeely told me everything, what they were doing in the two movies, they ran me down this hallway that had all the concept paintings up on the wall. And so for a year-and-a-half, I had to keep my mouth shut.”
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“But about a month before the movie came out, I got an email or something from Joe saying, ‘The 45 minutes of Thanos that we had at the beginning of Infinity War, we had it cut,'” continued Starlin. “There was a whole sequence of him getting the first gem and they had to cut that out. They shot it, but they never wanted to spend the money on the effects and they didn’t want the movie to be as long as the second one [Endgame] was. They didn’t realize it was going to be quite the hit it was.”
Watch the full interview below.
Do you agree with the decision to cut out the opening scene with Thanos? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below!
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