Avengers: Infinity War Parts 1 and 2 Will Be Different From One Another

Captain America: Civil War is already getting a lot of praise from critics who saw the early screenings, and we already know that Civil War and the next standalone Marvel films will build up to the next major MCU event: the two-part Avengers: Infinity War films.

Io9 had the chance to talk to directors Anthony and Joe Russo, producer Kevin Feige, and writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely to ask about what we can expect from the MCU films.

"The movies are very very different from one another," said Anthony Russo. "It's not a part one and part two scenario, necessarily. They're just two different expressions. I think it creates a misconception that we're shooting them at the same time."

The Russos are shooting both Infinity War films back-to-back, so I think what Anthony is trying to say is that because of the shooting schedule, some fans might think that it's just one big epic cut in half. That's probably not the case. So how do we expect to see Infinity War's story pick up from the previous films?

"For us there's a through line from

Winter Soldier

, through

Civil War

, right to

Infinity War

," said Anthony Russo. "In our mind, the storytelling arc moves that way."

"There's an overarching story that's going to be told through all four films," added Joe Russo. "And I think having the amount of characters we have in [

Civil War

] certainly prepares us to deal with probably triple the amount of characters in

Infinity War

."

That sounds like a crazy amount of characters. Back in February, the Russos said that Infinity War will have 68 distinct characters, so it's hard to imagine how they'll all give each of them a chance to shine in the two films. Thankfully, Feige says that a lot of the set-up has already been made:

"Much of the groundwork has already been laid," he said. "That's the truth.Doctor Strangewill lay some more.Thor: Ragnarokwill lay some more—but I think the majority of it is already there."

That's good to know that the next Marvel films will help build up for the big Infinity War event. The Russos recently confirmed that Thor and Star-Lord will appear, so it would be interesting to see how the other characters will gather. They didn't reveal any specific details about the story, but the writers did mention that they're currently working on a script right now:

"We sent in literally 60 pages of unrelated ideas," Markus added. "Just like ‘Here's some stuff that could happen in this insane movie.' Then we came back from Atlanta and everyone had a copy of that [document] and they'd circle this, ‘This is cool, this is insane, this is cool, we're not allowed to do that,' and from there we've pieced it together very slowly. We're in the middle of it now."

Avengers: Infinity War- Part 1 will hit theaters on May 3, 2018; Part 2 will be released on May 4, 2019.