“They never wanted to spend the money”: Marvel Shot an Epic 45-Minute Thanos Scene, Cut it from $2B Robert Downey Jr Swansong

Talking about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Avengers: Infinity Wars is one of the best films of the franchise. However, the start of the film must have felt quite strange to every MCU fan. The void is where the filmmakers don’t reveal how the supervillain Thanos acquired the first Infinity Stone.

Surprisingly, there was a 45-minute-long scene that depicted how the power stone was taken into possession by the villain. However, the scene didn’t make it to the film as it was discarded due to some reasons.
Marvel Studios' Thanos Marvel Studios’ Thanos

Why was a crucial scene from Avengers: Infinity War eliminated?

Remember Thanos’s entry in Avengers: Infinity War with one Infinity Stone? But how did Thanos acquire that stone? According to the creator of Thanos, Jim Starlin, the makers of the film shot a 45-minute-long scene in which it was shown how Thanos got that power stone. However, the scene didn’t make it to the film, as Marvel Studios didn’t expect that the movie would receive great reviews from the audience.

The 2018 film Avengers: Infinity War starts with narration where Thanos is in his quest for the Infinity Stones, and for that, he annihilates half of the cosmos’ sentient life. The makers of the film have opted for a very wise move to keep their audience hooked as they slowly reveal in each part how and where the Stones have been acquired.

For instance, in the 2014 film Guardians of the Galaxy, it is shown that the Power Stone is locked in a vault in Xandar, the capital of the Nova Empire. Thanos goes to Xander to retrieve the stone, and after finishing Xandar and the Nova Corps, he acquires the stone and fixes it in the Infinity Gauntlet.
Avengers: Infinity WarAvengers: Infinity War
However, in the beginning, scene of Avengers: Infinity War, it is shown that Thanos is looking for the Tesseract, and while searching for it, he destroys the Asgardian ship. The scene then follows a series of events that land Thanos with the other Infinity Stones. But those events were never shown in the film, as Starlin revealed that the scene would have extended the film by 45 minutes. Starlin said,
“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.’ 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.”
Though an extra 45 minutes wouldn’t have done any harm to the film, it would have given the film an integrality, and of course, every minute of Thanos’s appearance on the screen would have been much appreciated by the viewers.

Avengers: Infinity War created a blast at the box office

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Currently, Marvel Cinematic is facing a tough time as its recently released movies have not been able to meet fans’ expectations. Nevertheless, there was a time when Marvel had supremacy among the fans. This was the time when Marvel films used to be a massive box office success.

One of the MCU films that was a great hit was Avengers: Infinity War. The film was a huge box office success that earned more than $2 billion. It was the second-most profitable Marvel film after Avengers: Endgame.