Infinity War Deleted Scene Showed Thanos Winning

Avengers: Infinity War almost started with a 45-minute invasion of Xandar showing Thanos retrieving the Power Stone, according to the characters’ creator, Jim Starlin. It probably would have been epic, but Marvel apparently ultimately scrapped footage for the ambitious prologue to save money and keep the movie under three hours.

The revelation comes from a new interview the graphic novelist recently did with Near Mint Condition on YouTube (via IGN). Starlin said he toured the set during production and received the full rundown of Infinity War and Endgame’s plot from script writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, including a sequence that showed Thanos obtaining his very first Infinity Gem. However, Starlin said that co-director Joe Russo informed him just a month before release that the filmmakers had opted to cut the scene entirely and only reference it in dialogue.

“There was a whole sequence of him getting the first gem and they had to cut that out,” he told Near Mint Condition. “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 [Endgame] was. They didn’t realize it was going to be quite the hit it was.”

Instead, when the finished version of Infinity War begins, Thanos has already taken the Power Stone from Xandar and is tracking down the second gem aboard Thor and Loki’s ship. This is how he’s easily able to beat up the Hulk, though his successful siege of Xandar stays off-screen.

Audiences effectively got a preview of what this might have looked like in the first Guardians of the Galaxy when Star-Lord and co. defended the planet against Ronan the Accuser’s assault. But it would have been cool to see an inverted version in which Thanos lays waste to half the planet as the Nova Corps try to stop him prior to getting his Power Stone upgrade.

And while the studio’s fears of going over budget with even more VFX and making the movie’s runtime 194 minutes long are totally reasonable, Infinity War went on to be the sixth-highest-grossing box office release ever. Endgame, which was nearly as long at 181 minutes, remains the third highest. I have to imagine if there was a way for Disney to add the movie’s would-be explosive introduction back into the Disney Plus version via post-production, the company would have done it already.