When the first Avengers: Infinity War trailer was released in November, everyone gravitated toward one particular shot—it was GIF’d all over Twitter, analyzed in trailer breakdowns, and swooned over by the internet masses.
If you’ve seen Infinity War, it should immediately be clear what’s wrong about this image. (And if you haven’t seen the movie, stop reading now. We’re about to get spoilery.) This shot is not in Infinity War. And, if it were, it wouldn’t make sense: Bruce Banner’s subplot revolves around his inability to become the Hulk in the latter portion of the movie, which is why he spends the entirety of the Wakanda battle in the Hulk-Buster armor. The big green guy never even shows up in the second half of the film.
This shot, and the Infinity War trailer as a whole, are the latest in a long, worsening trend of Marvel trailers misleading audiences. In the recent past, trailers for Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor: Ragnarok, and Black Panther have all differed from the final product in various ways. Some of them used CGI to edit key details out of “spoilery” scenes: the Ragnarok trailer removed Thor’s eye injury from a major shot, and Black Panther edited Killmonger to look like T’Challa in a glimpse of him walking into the throne room. Others teased audiences with flashy shots that never made the final film, like Spider-Man and Iron Man flying through New York together in the Homecoming trailer. (That shot in particular was created solely for use in the trailer, and was never intended to make the final cut.)
The trailers for Infinity War are the most blatantly misleading yet. Remember the Thanos line everyone was quoting when the first teaser came out? “Fun isn’t something one considers when balancing the universe. But this … does put a smile on my face,” he says in voice-over. What a cool line … that isn’t ever said in the movie.
That’s only the beginning. From inconsequential to egregious, here are a few of the other differences between the Infinity War trailers and the final product.
Wall or Windows?
The first official trailer shows Cap walking out of the shadows in front of a brick wall; in the movie, he’s standing in front of a large window. Why change such a mundane detail? Who knows, but an international TV spot got it right. Maybe Marvel thought we’d be too distracted by his beard to notice? Which, fair enough.
“Who the Hell Are You Guys?”
When Thor meets the Guardians in the trailer, he’s greeted with this shot: a bunch of weird, friendly looking aliens. In the film, he turns to see a different sight: the Guardians with weapons drawn and fists raised, ready to fight. The shot above is taken from a different part of the film, when Thor leaves in a pod with Rocket and Groot to go to Nidavellir. Whoever made the trailer digitally inserted the latter two characters into the shot above, for a reason I can’t deduce. Maybe they thought this was more charming? Maybe they didn’t want us to read too far into a shot of Thor being held at gunpoint?
Shuri and the Mind Stone
The second trailer shows a glimpse of Shuri in Wakanda, preparing to operate on Vision. The projection in her hand looks like some sort of X-ray of his head. In the movie, though, she’s holding an image of the yellow Mind Stone. This seems like an effort to hide the operation on Vision from viewers, but even the trailers hinted at a last-ditch attempt to save him.
Thor’s Big Moment
Oh man, Thor is so cool in Infinity War. This shot looked especially promising, and a trailer breakdown from Polygon was on the right track, noting that he appeared to summon lightning from something that had been edited out of his hand. “What is Thor (not) holding?” Polygon asked, speculating what the weapon could be. Well, the article was right about the ax, but wrong about the shot. It never appeared in the movie at all. As for the eye patch, it’s been edited onto Chris Hemsworth’s face in all the trailers, even though it’s gone by this point in the film. This may have been less an attempt at hiding spoilers and more a last-minute cut; it feels like this scene was probably intended to be in the film and just didn’t make it to the final version. I’m a little bummed about it, since I’m always a big fan of people shooting lightning into the sky with a magic weapon.
Spider-Man’s Missing Legs
Toward the end of the second trailer, we see Spider-Man flying through the chaos on Titan, which we now know was caused by Thanos throwing a literal moon at Tony. What’s been removed here are Peter’s extra spider legs, which help him navigate all the flying debris in the actual film. Viewers weren’t meant to know about Peter’s enhanced suit until the reveal in the movie. All we could tell from the trailers was that it was another awesome Stark creation.
Three Stones Short
Upon seeing the second Infinity War trailer, various publications took this shot to mean that things weren’t as dire as they could be toward the end of the film. The battle for Wakanda seemed to be happening in the third act, and we could see right here that Thanos had only two Infinity Stones. But friends, we got played.
As we know far too well after seeing the movie, three stones were edited out of this scene. In the movie, Thanos is missing only the Mind Stone at this point, and we know how that turns out. Marvel also edited some blood off of Cap’s mouth here. (At least the beard turned out to be real. Can you imagine the riots?)
There are plenty of other changes: A few shots of Bruce and Natasha from the trailers never show up in the movie, and the “Get this man a shield” line is shot differently in the final product; the funny exchange between Peter and Doctor Strange (“Oh, we’re using our made-up names!”) goes down differently in the film; and when Star-Lord and Tony are fighting about their plan to kill Thanos on Titan, the shot of Doctor Strange meditating with the Time Stone is edited out of the background of the trailer.
In a spoiler-phobic world, it may seem unimportant, or maybe even courteous, to edit these trailers in a way that keeps audiences from picking up on important plot points and details. But our movie-going culture sees trailers as accurate reflections of what to expect from a film. There are YouTubers and media sites whose purposes revolve around breaking down big trailers shot for shot. They, and their audiences, take what we see in these trailers as canon. Fan bases build their expectations around them.
But it’s become clear that this mind-set needs to change. Marvel’s trailers are no longer “previews”; they’re hype machines unconcerned with consistency. In terms of effectiveness, the strategy is certainly working—the box-office numbers alone tell us that much—and hiding key details from expectant viewers may not be an inherently bad thing. My only point is that trailers are not to be trusted anymore. Honestly, we might all be better off not watching them in the first place.
