Marvel almost killed Tony Stark in ‘Avengers: Infinity War,’ Russo Brothers reveal
Iron Man’s fate changed after creative talks with Robert Downey Jr.
Behind the scenes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has seen significant changes over its nearly 18 years in the movies. From changes in actors and directors, the ideas the films themselves originally had, cameos and endings, to changes in movie titles—to name a few. And what we’ve seen is what has turned out to be the best option, or the best that could be done at the time. One of the defining moments of the first 10 years was Tony Stark’s death in ‘Avengers: Endgame,’ although this could have happened earlier.
In a recent CBR interview with Anthony and Joe Russo—directors of the upcoming ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ and contributors to ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ and ‘Avengers: Endgame’—they discussed some of the details they had planned when they were preparing these films in 2018. One of these details was that Tony Stark was going to die at the end of ‘Infinity War’ during the battle on Titan against Thanos; however, it was Robert Downey Jr.’s idea to have his character live a little longer.
Robert Downey Jr.’s simple request
In the interview, Joe Russo mentioned the time they spent with Robert Downey Jr. discussing ‘Infinity War,’ noting that these meetings serve both to “explore all angles” and to find a moment when the audience is “not expecting it.”
“This happens a lot in these rooms, right? We try to... I’m feeling the heat now,” said Russo. We try to investigate. We try to investigate all angles, right? Everything’s up for grabs. We always say, ‘Best idea wins.’ And a lot of the times you gotta stretch…” Here, Joe mentions that discussion of ideas with RDJ, during which the actor said his idea was the best and simple: “Mine is just, ‘Don’t kill me.’”
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Joe concludes by explaining that, after considering the idea of letting Tony survive, the decision was to do it in the next movie. “There was a moment where we thought, ‘They’re not expecting it. This could be the best place to possibly do it.’ But then we’d have to figure out how he could potentially still participate in the next movie. And then we went, ‘Fuck it, let’s just do it in the next movie.’”
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