Taika Waititi And James Gunn Both Contributed Ideas To 'Infinity War'

Hey, have you heard there's a new Avengers movie in theaters? Crazy, I know! It's called Avengers: Infinity War, and as the film climbs higher and higher to box office triumph, more and more stories about the film are filtering in. For instance: we now know more about how Taika Waititi and James Gunn contributed to the film.

While Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely are the writers of Avengers: Infinity War, no MCU movie is created in a vacuum. There are numerous minds contributing ideas to help create the ever-growing Marvel Cinematic Universe, and when it came time to make Infinity War, some other Marvel filmmakers offered some contributions. Vulture has a story that goes into how several story elements of Infinity War came to be, including the contributions of filmmakers like Guardians of the Galaxy's James Gunn and Thor: Ragnarok's Taika Waititi.

Per the Vulture story, Thor was originally a lot more serious and dramatic in Avengers: Infinity War. That all changed when Chris Hemsworth returned from shooting Thor: Ragnarok. According to Stephen McFeely, Hemsworth told the writers that Waititi's vision had changed Thor to a more comedic character, and the character was the better for it.

As a result, Marvel flew Waititi out for a few days to meet with writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. During this time, Markus and McFeely listened to several ideas Waititi had about the character of Thor. As a result, Infinity War ended up making Thor a a much funnier character (and one of the best characters in Infinity War overall).

The Guardians of the Galaxy have a big part to play in Infinity War, and the characters in the film seem pretty in-line with how they're portrayed in James Gunn's two Guardians of the Galaxy films. That's probably because, as the Vulture story puts it, "Gunn took great pains to ensure that Infinity War would reflect the characters he'd helped bring to life."

As McFeely puts it:

"There was a choice we had Star-Lord make in the movie that Gunn was adamant he wouldn't make, and Pratt agreed with him...And so we said, 'If you guys feel that strongly about it, we'll do it your way.' It didn't alter too much of what we were trying to do, but it was a good example of how that kind of caretaking was a bonus to us."

In the end, it's good to know that Marvel is willing to let filmmakers like Waititi and Gunn offer up actual insight and vision into putting these characters up on the screen. It would probably be easier to ignore this step entirely and just plow ahead, but Marvel seems willing to let directors weigh-in for the good of the film.

Avengers: Infinity War is now playing everywhere.