A few years back when Kevin Feige first stood on that stage and announced Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (complete with calling Captain America 3 Captain America: Serpent Society), the highlights came in the form of Avengers: Infinity War Part I and Avengers: Infinity War Part II.

That’s right, these two Avengers films were originally meant to be two halves of the same coin. However, more recently, Marvel Studios reneged on that nomenclature, calling Avengers 3 Avengers: Infinity War, and keeping Avengers 4 as an untitled project. So what was the deal behind that? From our perspective, it seemed very much like Marvel Studios had gotten wise to the idea that splitting up stories into parts results in lower box office numbers, but co-director Joe Russo explained the real reason to multiple outlets during a set visit.

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“Our approach has always been … we look at the process, as with [co-writers Christopher] Markus and [Stephen] McFeely, it’s simply the same thing in the way that the Winter Soldier relates to Civil War, and the way that Civil War relates to Infinity War. These two [Avengers] movies will also relate. There’s a narrative thread that is connecting these films, but at the same time, there’s an independence in terms of what the experience is, or where the story goes. It isn’t a true two-parter. And I think the two-parter concept came back when Marvel decided they were going to culminate the MCU. It was going to be a two-movie deal. But as we developed the movie, in execution, it ended up being more of two singular expressions. And I think that’s just what happened.”

I’ve always been in the camp that the idea of splitting up these two narratives was a way for them to guarantee better box office numbers for both, but I have to say, I kinda buy this comment from Russo. In the macro-level planning stages of a project, it’s easy to play up connections between films, but once you get down to the micro level of story structure, I can see them feeling the need to give each film a full, cohesive experience.

More than anything, I’m interested to see just how different these two films turn out. What do you think? Do you buy Russo’s explanation, or do you think it was more of a marketing ploy than anything else? Let us know your thoughts down below!

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SOURCE: CinemaBlend