At the beginning of Avengers: Infinity War, Josh Brolin’s Thanos was already in possession of the Power Stone, which was last seen in Guardians of the Galaxy being locked in the Nova Corps’ vault. However, unlike all the other Infinity Stones, we never saw the Mad Titan obtain this purple-colored gem, and only know that he ravaged Xandar to do so. According to Thanos creator Jim Starlin, there was a 45-minute sequence in Infinity War that would have shown this, but it was removed for a specific reason.
Jim Starlin co-created Thanos with Mike Friedrich for 1973’s The Invincible Iron Man #55. A little under four decades later, the character make his first live-action appearance in The Avengers, and in 2018, he finally came to the forefront following other brief appearances in Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers: Age of Ultron. As for why the Power Stone sequence was cut from Infinity War, Starlin told Near Mint Condition that it was due to not wanting to give the movie an Avengers: Endgame-level runtime. In his words:
But about a month before the movie came out, I got an email or something from Joe [Russo] saying, ‘The 45 minutes of Thanos that we had at the beginning of Infinity War, we had it cut.’ There was a whole sequence of him getting the first gem and they had to cut that out. They shot it, but they never wanted to spend the money on the effects and they didn’t want the movie to be as long as the second one [Endgame] was. They didn’t realize it was going to be quite the hit it was.
At 149 minutes, Avengers: Infinity War currently sits as the fourth-long Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, trailing behind Avengers: Endgame, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Eternals. However, if this Power Stone sequence Jim Starlin mentioned was indeed in the ballpark of 45 minutes long, then that would have easily taken Infinity War past Endgame’s three-hour (and one minute) runtime. However, as the comic book writer recalled, Joe Russo, who directed both of the most recent Avengers movies with his brother Anthony, decided to toss out the sequence both because of those time concerns and not wanting to pour resources into crafting those visual effects.
Since not even a storyboard version of the siege of Xandar was included as one of Avengers: Infinity War’s bonus features, fans have needed to use their imaginations to imagine what unfolded on the planet that culminated in Thanos taking the Power Stone for himself. It’s also doubtful this will ever be seen in a flashback of this in one of the upcoming Marvel movies since Thanos is dead and there’s no indication of him ever being resurrected. Still, you can see how his mission to collect the other five Infinity Stones went down by watching Infinity War with your Disney+ subscription as you go through the Marvel movies in order.
Next up on the theatrical MCU docket is Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which opens on May 5. On the small screen side of things, the Secret Invasion miniseries, which dropped its first trailer earlier this month and will hit Disney+ on June 21. For all the latest and greatest news regarding this superhero franchise, keep checking back with CinemaBlend.