Avengers: Infinity War Isn’t Going To Have 67 Characters In It

You know when people only hear part of a story and then focus solely on that part until it gets blown out of proportion? That’s kind of what’s happening right now with Avengers: Infinity War.

Some fans heard brothers Joe and Anthony Russo talk this weekend at Wizard World Comic Con New Orleans about how they were considering 67 Marvel characters for inclusion in the two-part movie, and thanks to the power of the internet, that has somehow morphed into, “Holy crap! There’s going to be 67 Marvel heroes and villains in Avengers: Infinity War!”

That’s actually not what the Russo brothers said. What Joe actually said (as relayed by ComicBookMovie.com) was this:

"We have so many characters we’re dealing with.  We’re breaking ground on Avengers: Infinity War. We have a board with 67 characters on it.  You have to forgive him."

Everyone should know by now that when too many comic book characters are crammed into a movie, disaster is almost always the result. See also: Batman & Robin, among others. I trust Marvel not to try that, and you should too.

Besides, as Polygon points out, there haven’t even been 67 characters from Marvel Comics show up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe yet. Consider:

• The original Avengers (Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye): 6 characters
• The “new” Avengers (War Machine, Vision, Scarlet Witch, Falcon, Ant-Man): 5 characters
• The Guardians of the Galaxy: 5 characters
• The Netflix heroes (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage): 3 characters
• All of the surviving villains from the above heroes’ movies/shows (Loki, Winter Soldier, Thanos, Kingpin): 4 characters
• Main cast of Agents of SHIELD: 10 characters

Obviously this isn’t scientific in any way, but even if you add in Nick Fury, Maria Hill, Sif and the Warriors Three, that basically gets us just over halfway. And adding other MCU heroes we know are coming like Black Panther, Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel, Wasp, Iron Fist, etc. still doesn’t get us to the magic number.

So no worries. What I think the Russo brothers are trying to do is assure everyone that the scope will be massive, and that they won’t rule anyone out if it makes sense for them to be involved. Looking at it that way, it’s easy to be excited.

Next: No More MCU Movies for Joss Whedon

Avengers: Infinity War — Part 1  is scheduled to release on May 4, 2018, with Part 2 following on May 3, 2019.