Thanos’ invasion of earth in AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR is no laughing matter. It’s a very serious matter, in fact, and there’s no time for tomfoolery or joke-making. But quippers are gonna quip, and there are a lot of them in this movie, so humor will certainly be in abundance. Even though the situation is very dire in the movie, co-director Joe Russo says it will feature more humor than the more serious CAPTAIN AMERICA movies.
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During an interview with The Afternoon Show (at the 1:20 mark), Russo was asked about the humor of INFINITY WAR. He said that they always knew the movie would be very funny, which is a bit different from the more serious tone of the last two Cap movies he and his brother Anthony have done.
I think that tone [humor] is an under-appreciated aspect of filmmaking. In fact, one of the most critical aspects is managing tone, and this film in particular, when egos like this clash between these superheroes there’s bound to be humor. A lot of the characters in this universe diffuse tension with humor, so we knew the movie was going to be very funny. It’s very different than Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War in that regard because the tone of Cap movies is a little bit more serious. Cap is a little more straight-laced and intense, and the world he was in in both of those movies required he behave that way.
The reason for the new level of humor has to deal with all the new personalities clashing, with classic quippers like Iron Man and Spider-Man meeting the likes of Star-Lord. Russo said they even let actors experiment a bit and play around with some improvisation.
And in this film, you’ve got a lot of, ya know, really unique personalities clashing so we knew we were going to lean into the humor. The way that we balance it in the script phase and on set with the actors is we do a lot of improvisation.
We have a lot of very funny people on the set, so typically we wait for the first take or two we’ll have them stick to script and then we let them go off script and probably shoot five or six more takes off script, and then you get in the edit room with all that footage and you spend hours and hours combing through it until you find the right combination that balances the tone and gets the humor across but keeps the stakes moving forward.
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Marvel has always leaned heavily into the humor of their movies, and the studio released three of their funniest films yet last year with GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2, SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING and THOR: RAGNAROK. CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR had plenty of jokes, but a lot of that was thanks to the appearances of Spidey and Ant-Man. Given some of what we’ve seen in the trailers, notably between Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) I’m not surprised to hear it has a lot of humor. Lord knows we will need some laughs between Thanos destroying the place and, I don't know, Avengers dying.
AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR arrives on April 27.