Between them, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame go to some fairly dark places. But according to Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige, who sat down for for an exclusive Empire live Q&A with subscribers in attendance, that was just the tip of the iceberg.
Addressing the fact that Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo had let slip about Thanos decapitating Steve Rogers and throwing the head to Cap himself, Feige offered some context. "I think there are behind the scenes pictures of this, us having the giant omnibus of the Infinity Gauntlet comic collection and saying, we need to do justice to this,'" he explained. "One of those images was Thanos sitting on a throne of skulls, ruling over everything and we wanted to get that in there. One of the ideas was, when they finish the time heist, they returned to a world [in 2023] that Thanos had already conquered, that involved all of that, the throne made of bones and skulls and had him tossing, like a bowling ball, Captain America's severed skull head, still in the cowl, to Captain America. And it was pretty cool, but the logic to get there defeated us."
And how close did it get to appearing on screen? "I think it ended up in a set of pages at one point in the script. There might be a piece of concept art somewhere with it." According to Feige, it was all in service of making Thanos into a true threat. "Thanos is not just a purple guy with a big chin who sits in chairs and smirks, which is basically all he had been up until Infinity War. So much of the time we spent in a conference room in Pinewood in Atlanta that someday I want to have a plaque: 'It was here that nine people almost lost their minds developing and writing Infinity War and Endgame.' I would keep opening the book and saying, 'but we need to do this. We need something like this. Thanos can do this.' Some of that led to things you saw in Infinity War in Nowhere where he turns Drax into a pile of cubes. Or turns Nebula into that spiraling ribbon. Or has bubbles come out of Star-Lord's gun. His casual, sadistic use of the stones was something that we kept wanting to do."
Avengers: Endgame will be out on Blu-ray on 2 September