Whether or not the total count actually approaches 70, Avengers: Infinity War features an impressive number of characters. For their third Marvel movie, Anthony and Joe Russo have wrangled all the Avengers we’ve seen in solo outings, as well as the ones who fought in Civil War, plus a ragtag group of intergalactic heroes and a couple of extraordinary teens.
But, as you might expect after watching several movies that mentioned him in hushed tones, Thanos (Josh Brolin) has dominated both of the official trailers. According to Joe Russo, that marketing decision is very much based on the purple people cleaver’s ubiquity in the upcoming film. As the director tells Fandango, Thanos “has an incredible amount of screen time in this film, in a lot of ways I would say it’s his movie.”
With Infinity War, Russo says he and his filmmaking brother set out to “tell a story that [audiences] weren’t expecting, and the story is told from the point of view of a villain, which I think is also really unique and risky for a commercial film that will surprise the audience.” (Given how Black Panther balanced a well-rounded antagonist and protagonist, and raked in the box-office revenue, there’s already some precedence in the MCU.) But while we’ll spend enough time with the Mad Titan to venture into his childhood, the good guys won’t be relegated to the sidelines. Russo says Thor is the other prominent character; apparently, the Odinson and Asgardian refugee “has a really interesting arc in the film. He hasn’t been at the forefront of other Avengers movies but he certainly has a very important role in this film.”
The interview also touches on the heist movie feel of the Infinity War, Wakanda’s ongoing presence in the overall MCU narrative, and the superhero team-ups ahead, including a Doctor Strange-Tony Stark pairing that Russo finds “really interesting” and “compelling.”