Between the comic book panel and the silver screen is an often-overlooked conceptual stage
that's an art form all its own.
That visual design work is on display in Marvel's art book Avengers: Infinity War The Art of
the Movie.
While we wait and wonder about the fourth Avengers movie, this new collection provides
an intriguing look at the Infinity War that might have been.
The Avengers are all over the emotional spectrum when we catch up with them in Infinity War,
but none are feeling lower than Thor.
His third solo movie, Ragnarok was a cathartic experience for the character.
It was a journey that required the God of Thunder to accept loss and learn to let go
of his parents, his palace, his eye, and his beloved hammer, Mjolnir.
"it sounds like you had a special and intimate relationship with this hammer and losing it
was almost comparable to losing a loved one."
"that's a nice way of putting it."
Thor ended the movie growing as a person, ascending to the throne of Asgard to lead
his people to a new home.
Then, before the main title of Infinity War even appears, Thanos wipes out half of the
remaining Asgardians.
Off screen.
From that point, most of Thor's story involves forging the axe Stormbreaker to replace his
long-lost hammer and get some vengeance.
At some point, though, Marvel Studios' head of visual development Ryan Meinerding imagined
Thor wielding some sort of laser rifle instead, which he perhaps would have gotten from his
new friend Rocket Raccoon.
It's just as well that Thor never ended up wielding a gun in Infinity War that's really
more of a Skurge thing.
One of Infinity War's bigger surprises was Eitri, the giant dwarf played by Peter Dinklage.
The master of the forge of Nidavellir, Eitri is the last survivor of his people, the rest
having been wiped out by Thanos after they created his Infinity Gauntlet.
With the help of Thor and company, he refires the forge to make one a new weapon in the
hopes of thwarting the Mad Titan.
Of particular help is Groot, who sacrifices one of his own limbs on the spur of the moment
to make the mighty axe's handle.
According to concept artist John Straub,
"The original scene in the script just said 'Groot helps Eitri,' giving me a lot of freedom
to come up with something interesting and unique.".
Before settling on the final version, Straub imagined a scene in which Groot formed a sort
of exoskeleton and acted as Eitri's arms.
Anthony Francisco, meanwhile, offered up a take on Eitri that was somewhat more aged
and austere than the disheveled survivor Dinklage became in the finished film.
The costume Chris Evans wears in Infinity War is a darker-colored variation on his Captain
America uniform, with the white star conspicuously ripped out.
It's a strong visual indicator that, while he's still the same selfless Steve Rogers
we've always known, he doesn't need the Americana trappings to show what his ideals are.
It's a great concept but it wasn't the first concept the film's design team considered.
For inspiration, the artists also looked toward the comic book character "U.S. Agent", who
is typically known for his black-and-red variation of Cap's classic suit.
Before settling on the dark blue outfit we saw in Infinity War, Marvel Studios experimented
with a similar version of the look for Steve Rogers.
While most of the major players in Infinity War were already introduced in previous films,
the opening sequence brings a new team of fresh faces to the fray: the Children of Thanos.
Known in the pages of Marvel Comics as the Black Order, this phalanx of cretins act as
heralds to the Mad Titan.
They announce his arrival and carry out his will on each unfortunate world that falls
into his grasp.
Since this quartet had never been on screen before, Infinity War's design team had more
freedom than usual in their interpretation of the characters.
In particular, they experimented with how expressive these frightening, gothic aliens
should be.
Some of the early passes at Thanos' children find them a little more… smiley than the
stern figures they became in the movie, particularly these takes on Ebony Maw and Proxima Midnight.
It's an unwritten rule of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that Tony Stark must don at least
one new suit of Iron Man armor every time he appears.
Infinity War is no exception.
The suits have been growing increasingly high-tech ever since Iron Man 2's suitcase armor.
But Infinity War's Bleeding Edge armor represents a whole new frontier, using nanotechnology
to create a form-fitting, hyper-responsive second skin that forms around Stark at his
command.
It's enough to make the first Iron Man movie's technology look downright antiquated.
"Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave!"
Marvel's design team put no small amount of thought into the construction of the Bleeding
Edge suit.
As concept artist Phil Saunders explained,
"[The suit is] actually forming all the anatomical hairs underneath [...] There's a sort of neurological
layer and a circulatory system layer that gets formed, and then a layer of musculature."
It's probably for the best that the movie doesn't linger on this in-between phase of
the armor — it bears a disconcerting resemblance to the off-putting, flayed muscle look of
2011's Green Lantern.
Comic book history is so rich that even costumes can have long, complex legacies of their own.
Such is the case with the Iron Spider, a variation on Spider-Man's identity occasionally adopted
by Peter Parker.
The version of the suit deployed in Infinity War is basically a somewhat shiny variant
on the standard red-and-blue motif, but the development team also tried a red-and-gold
iteration that struck much more closely to the comics that inspired it.
There was also a black version, though that one perhaps bore too much resemblance to the
symbiote suit seen in Spider-Man 3.
Wouldn't want to remind anyone of that.
In his quest for the Soul Stone, Thanos must travel to the planet Vormir and confront the
guardian of the gem that's hidden there.
In a twist that shocked fans, this guardian is revealed to be none other than the Red
Skull, last seen getting banished to another dimension by the Tesseract at the end of Captain
America: The First Avenger.
It goes without saying that the Skull has been subjected to some intense cosmic punishment
since we last saw him, and his decades of isolation fired up the imaginations of Infinity
War's character designers.
Concept artist Ian Joyner explained his take, saying,
"The idea of really hollowing him out and embracing the more horrific aspects of his
look was something I took a lot of delight in exploring."
The team's takes on the new Red Skull run the body horror gamut from a.. thing that
wouldn't be out of place in a Guillermo del Toro movie, to a haunting vision of a cloaked
wraith that would be very much at home on an Iron Maiden album cover.
In the end, the look was probably too metal for the movie but as with all of these prototype
designs, it's neat to know what could've been.