Nearly the entire theater cheered when Captain America emerged from the shadows to help the Secret Avengers in ‘Captain America: Infinity War‘ but he almost popped up much later in the film. In fact, the fiery return of Thor to Earth was originally meant to be the scene where Steve Rogers would show up.
Thinking back, it is hard to imagine Cap’s appearance having quite the impact on the battle that the God of Thunder ended up having.
In fact, co-director Anthony Russo stated that he and his brother Joe didn’t want the reveal coming until much later in the film and that they were talked into having him arrive earlier:
“Everybody at Marvel, I think other than Joe and I, they were mad at us because we were bringing him in the movie so late. We thought it was the right spot to do it, but after a while, we kind of gave into everybody’s, ‘We need more Cap!'”
As to how they mentioned having him show up so late, in the original plan:
“He had Thor’s heroic entrance in the Wakanda battle. That was originally Cap. Our thinking was that he was on the run, nobody could find him, and so we thought that it would be this really compelling way to use the character — especially because we were trying to thin the ranks out so we could track everyone — and then we realized we had a really good spot to bring him in earlier in Scotland, to save Vision and Wanda. And so we started moving around heroic moments for characters.”
I love that they were able to build up the character and hint at what our favorite bearded hero has been up to since the events of ‘Captain America: Civil War.’ Sure, Iron Man could have shared a bit of exposition on it but the way this ended up felt right.
While the scene where Cap is punching out hordes of aliens was fun, I don’t think it would have quite matched the arrival of the God of Thunder.
I mean Cap is awesome, but…
On the production side, I do like that while they had to change things up that they were still able to keep their original theme of the team being broken intact:
“But that choice about bringing Cap in, that was sort of at the heart of what we — the premise of the movie for us was always that because of what happened in Captain America: Civil War, because Cap and Tony had the falling out, because the Avengers are divided, this is why they lose to Thanos,” Anthony explained. “Because they’re not together, they’re divided.
So [we were] playing with this idea that it’s hard for Tony and Cap to get back together on the same team and having Cap sort of be late to the party because [Cap, Black Widow, and Falcon] are forced to live underground,” Anthony continued, “and then hiding from the government. That was always the basic premise of the movie for us.”
I do love the fact that they were still able to keep the general theme of showing the Avengers being divided while ramping up the energy and action for all of the characters which we’ve seen so far.
Would you have preferred a later entree of Steve Rogers in ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ or did he appear at just the right moment? Share your thoughts below, True Believers!
Source: EW
