If you haven’t seen ‘Avengers; Infinity War’, be warned that there are spoilers ahead (we did say in the article title that we’re talking about its ending after all).
Previously we gave a breakdown of the finale and what it could mean for the Marvel universe, but it turns out that what was originally conceived as the film’s final moments was even darker (and bloodier) that what audiences saw in the cinema.
In the film, Thanos snaps his fingers and uses the Soul Stone to wipe out half of all life in the universe. The random victims simply fade away into dust, the reason being that it didn’t have the sort of finality as an image of blood trickling out of a character has.
Regarding their decision to use the dust effect in the film, VFX Supervisor Dan DeLeeuw had previously said, “We had concept art combining all those things, and it was getting too busy. It became too complicated. It was stepping on what the actors were doing. So it became ‘body turns to ash.’ We peeled away all those layers and focused on that one [Power Stone], deciding how quickly it would consume someone, what pattern it would consume them.”
What was going to follow the sequence of the characters fading into dust was a scene of Thanos walking through a river of blood. This would have taken place after the Titan was transported to Soul World inside the Soul Stone, where he’s momentarily reunited with a young Gamora. The scene was “intended to represent the blood of his victims.”
DeLeeuw explained that “it got a bit dark,” which is why the idea was dropped.
Instead the sequence has a sort of red tinted appearance to give it a brooding feel.
You can watch an explanation and an early version of what the sequence could have looked like here:
