Infinity War created a record for having the most number of relevant characters in a film, but it still could not manage to bring in many other important characters. While Avengers 4 will surely break the record that Infinity War currently holds, as it will bring the characters that were left out in the previous film, we will still not get to see the most important character from the Infinity Gauntlet storyline in the upcoming mega-crossover event.
You must have guessed it by the title that I am talking about Adam Warlock here, but there’s a valid reasoning for him being left out and the Avengers 4 directors have finally explained that to us.
Collider hosted a Q&A session with Directors Joe & Anthony Russo after a special screening of Avengers: Infinity War and the brothers revealed quite a lot of secrets from the film. While talking to the fans, the directors explained the reason why they left Adam Warlock out of Infinity War, when he is the biggest character in the comic which inspired the movie.
Here’s what Joe Russo had to say:
“We had a lot of pre-established characters and sometimes characters from the books, again, being a comic book fan, I don’t want to see a literal interpretation of a comic book I’ve read a hundred times because I don’t wanna go to a theater and know exactly what’s going to happen. For me, it kind of ruins the experience of going to a movie. And sometimes we’ll take the arcs that have been assigned to different characters in the books and reassign them to other characters. Or we’re just taking inspiration from the books and really deviating from the storyline, in which case, the characters aren’t applicable to what we’re trying to do in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.”
Adam Warlock is a big name when it comes to Marvel comics and the two Avengers movies are too stuffed anyway, so introducing a character of such significance in such a short span of time will not be justice to anyone. Sure Infinity War had new additions to the MCU, but none of the new characters are as big as Adam. They were brought in to serve small purposes which they did satisfyingly well.
If Adam Warlock would have been brought in to do what he did in the comics, then he would have taken a lot of screen time, which would have meant that the other characters get even lesser screen time. That could have meant that the likes of Captain America, Falcon, Black Widow, Bucky & several others who barely appeared for a few minutes would have only got extended cameos in the movie.
Also as Joe Russo said above, it would have told us the plot of the film and we would not have been guessing “what next?” the way we were without Warlock. So we should be happy and wait for Warlock to show up in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, in the way that James Gunn intended.
It actually makes no sense for the same comic book stories to be retold on the big screen. Marvel usually does this on a regular basis. They take up 2-3 stories for inspiration, and from there on they end up doing their own thing, only putting in direct comic book references and Easter Eggs for fan service.
This is why the Marvel formula has always worked and will continue to work. Even though they inspire films from a certified source material, they still give us original content that we all look forward to watching every year. Joe Russo said something similar about the plot of Avengers 4, as they want to keep the audience guessing and interested at all times. Here’s what he said earlier this year:
“Our job as we said a million times is to tell the story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, not to do direct adaptations of the comics because we’re comic book fans,” Russo admitted to ComicBook.com. “I have no interest as a director in telling a story that’s already been told or in seeing one that’s already been told. If I know all the events story as they’re going to happen then what’s the point of going to the film? We want to keep surprising audiences and continue the story that started with Iron Man […] a decade ago.”
Avengers 4 is a film that we know nothing about! We may have some ideas about the potential aspects of the film, but we just cannot guess what the Russos have done using those aspects. Avengers 4 comes out on May 3.
