There is this idea that Marvel Studios has everything meticulously planned out. This storyline being abandoned late in the game reveals just how much the filmmakers fly by the seat of their pants and find it along the way. To that end, this decision was made after the filming of “Endgame” had already taken place.
“Cutting that out was a decision made during the editing process on ‘Infinity War,’ by which point we had already shot ‘Endgame,'” Markus explained. “We had shown it to a few audiences, to test audiences, and none of them would accept it,” Joe Russo said, chiming in, “I think it was just happening too quickly.” Anthony Russo then put in his two cents, positing that telling this story at that time would have felt rushed and out of place:
“Maybe that’s it. We just didn’t have enough … because we were in the climax of the movie, I don’t think we had enough space to really tell that story in a way that felt satisfying, where you weren’t just focusing on, ‘Oh my god, there’s a madman with almost a complete Gauntlet who’s gonna undo half the universe.'”
McFeely agreed, saying, “We did not have it.” Despite the trouble it caused for the VFX workers who were putting together “Infinity War” — and Marvel VFX workers have had to put up with their share of craziness over the years – this was the right call to make for the story at hand. McFeely then added a hypothetical scenario to illustrate his point:
“Imagine before Thanos shows up, we had a scene where Hulk comes out of the bushes, and Natasha says, ‘Hey, big guy, sun’s getting low.’ And he says, ‘Oh, Natasha, that’s not … We don’t need that now.’ And speaks in perfect English, and you’re supposed to be delighted and jarred by it, and then they’re all gonna get dusted. It was just tonally off.”