My beloved blue angst machine and husband to many, Loki Laufeyson-Odinson, was brutally killed in the opening sequence of Avengers: Infinity War by the sexy evil Titan Thanos, as he brutally slaughtered Team Thor because Thor can’t have anything joyful in his life for too long. This scene, while sad, also set the tone for the kind of painful brutality that would be a thread through the movie. Yet, there was another way.
According to the new book The Art of Avengers: Infinity War, which also features some pictures of Chris Evans’ Captain America looking delicious, there are some passages explaining that there were fake scripts in order to keep information from leaking, and one of the key things to be changed was Loki’s fate.
“We created a version of the script where Loki would get away in an escape pod at the beginning of the movie,” executive producer Trinh Tran revealed. “When we started shooting that particular sequence, we had crew members who were thoroughly confused. We had to let them know that those were fake versions of the script that they read.”
These bait-and-switches happened regularly, with no one having read the full script, in order to keep this epic experiment in blockbuster storytelling as under wraps as possible—which paid off in the end.
As noted by Comicbook, director Joe Russo even told Kinowetter, in an interview before the movie’s release, “We can divulge nothing at this point. We worked really hard to protect the secrets of the movie because this is the end of 10 years of storytelling and I think a lot of people [have] emotionally invested quite a bit into the Marvel Universe so we want to make sure they have the best experience they can have when they go in to see the movie. We wrote fake pages for the script; we distributed fake pages. None of the actors have actually read the entire script, the real script. Very few people actually know what’s going to happen in the movie.”
Poor Hiddles … to walk into filming thinking “I get to escape,” only to find out you’re going to be choked out by Josh Brolin in a mo-cap suit.
Now, it has been months since I’ve allowed myself to deal with the heartbreak of losing Loki, and a lot of it still stings. Do I believe Loki is secretly alive? He looked really blue, and not a good way. Do I believe that he is coming back? Well, since there’s supposedly going to be a television show with him, yes, and I’m here for the future (hopefully pansexual) adventures of Loki—not to mention the Grandmaster could always bring his boyfriend back from the grave.
Do I think that Loki’s death was necessary? No.
Beyond thirst, from a character standpoint, he had just gotten his shit together, and I would have loved to see him come in at the final hour, with his big brother, to help protect the Earth, a place he once tried to enslave for Thanos. He can still get dusted in the end, and that would have still emotionally resonated, but getting strangled by Thanos in front of Thor after pulling a tiny knife on the Titan was just not a good look.
Thor just watched the slaughter of half of his people and the murder of his best friend. He has enough motivation to kill Thanos and reunite with his escape-pod brother.
What do you guys say? Team Escape Pod or Team Death?
(via Comicbook, image: Marvel Entertainment)
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