With ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ now available digitally (and coming to Blu-Ray and DVD in a few weeks) the spotlight is once again on directors Joe and Anthony Russo as they are all over the special features for the release, giving behind the scenes looks into the making of the behemoth blockbuster and answering fan questions left lingering in the dust (pun intended). Recently, they sat down with Entertainment Weekly to answer some of those questions in person, starting with why they had to cut out Jon Favreau’s cameo from the film, especially since he was not only the man responsible for directing the first MCU film (‘Iron Man’), but is also hilarious and his character of Happy is quite entertaining on screen.
They answered with:
JOE RUSSO: “Oh yes! There is a deleted scene where Jon Favreau/Happy and I make an appearance in the park. The movie was really long and we were looking for places to pace it up in the opening and unfortunately that was one of the things we had to cut. But I was willing to cut my own cameo in the movie so it shows how much we really needed to get that park scene moving.”
ANTHONY RUSSO: “Yeah. It was also really hard to cut Jon as he is such a funny performer and we loved working with him.”
They also spoke about the other scene they had a hard time cutting from the movie:
ANTHONY RUSSO: “In addition to that, I would say, there is a favorite scene that we had to cut from the movie. It’s a scene between Peter Quill, Drax, and Mantis when they are stuck on the ship sort of trying to figure out where Thanos has taken Gamora. It’s a really fun scene and the movie just didn’t necessarily need it and it was a heartbreaker to cut, but we are glad that fans are now going to be able to see it.”
When asked what their favorite special feature was for the film, they replied it is actually one of the digital exclusives:
JOE RUSSO: “I think the directors’ roundtable, which is a digital exclusive, is really special, it was great to be in the room with many of those that brought the Marvel Universe to life over the last decade. And it was great to hear the challenges they faced, what it is they loved about working with Marvel and looking at the characters, etc. And because it’s been such a unique experiment in filmmaking that you have a lot of different voices handing off storytelling to each other and it was great for all of us to be in a room all at one time talking about that.
It’s the collective brain trust that has really brought this to life and everyone brings such different tones, styles, and ideas to each movie that they make. And it was also really special to us as we love all those people and we’ve had great collaboration with all of them over the last seven or eight years. We think this roundtable will be very informative for the fans to see this piece in particular.”
After hearing all this I cannot wait to get my hands on some of these special features and delve even further into ‘Infinity War,’ especially that director’s roundtable, as I agree it is fascinating to see all of those MCU directors gathered together discussing this shared universe they have built over all of these years.
Have you gotten the digital release of ‘Infinity War’ yet and started watching the special features? Any favorite parts yet? Or are you waiting for the Blu-Ray / DVD? Feel free to share your thoughts on it all in the comments below!
