Disney held its live-action movie panel at the D23 Expo in Anaheim, California today, during which the studio offered a sneak peek at several of its upcoming projects including A Wrinkle in Time [watch the trailer here], Mary Poppins Returns [see a motion poster here] and Star Wars: The Last Jedi [watch the sizzle reel here].
The panel closed however with Avengers: Infinity War, and fans in attendance got to see the very first footage from the hugely-anticipated Marvel superhero blockbuster. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like it’s going to make its way online (perhaps next weekend at Comic-Con?), but in the meantime, Entertainment Weekly has put together a detailed description of what was shown, and it certainly sounds epic.
The Guardians of the Galaxy emerge from lightspeed in a field of asteroids and red gas. Something large was once in this sector of space – a planet, maybe? Now it is gone.
“Okay Guardians, don’t forget this might be dangerous, so let’s put on our mean faces,” Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord tells his compadres.
Out of nowhere, a creature thuds against their windshield. It’s Hemsworth’s Thor. Unconscious. Beaten to hell.
The Guardians bring the stranger in, and Mantis revives him. “Who the hell are you guys?” Thor asks the motley crew.
From there, it’s rapid-fire imagery. We see Tom Hiddleston’s Loki offering the Tesseract up as a gift — presumably to Thanos, whom he has been aligned with since that first Avengers film.
There’s also a shot of Tom Holland’s Spidey-sense tingling as the hair on his arms rises while he reads on a school bus – then he’s in the gold-laced suit that Stark offered him at the end of Homecoming.
Iron Man, Captain America, and Doctor Strange strike defensive poses in another montage of introductions. Then Thanos emerges from a smoky portal as Brolin’s voice-over purrs a menacing suggestion: he’s here to bring “balance to the universe.”
“This puts a smile on my face,” he says.
Thanos already has two stones in the Infinity Gauntlet, which offer him phenomenal powers even without the others. (The two stones went by quick, but it appeared to be the blue Tesseract, or Space Stone, from the first Captain America, and the purple Power Stone, which was the orb from the original Guardians of the Galaxy.) We see him on the surface of a blighted world, drawing a moon or another planet into the atmosphere of the realm where he is battling the Avengers, ripping chunks of it free as they streak toward the battle like cannon fire.
It’s definitely the end of that world.
SEE ALSO: Avengers: Infinity War wraps production
As the Avengers and their allies have continued to protect the world from threats too large for any one hero to handle, a new danger has emerged from the cosmic shadows: Thanos. A despot of intergalactic infamy, his goal is to collect all six Infinity Stones, artifacts of unimaginable power, and use them to inflict his twisted will on all of reality. Everything the Avengers have fought for has led up to this moment – the fate of Earth and existence itself has never been more uncertain.
Avengers: Infinity War opens on April 27th 2018 in the UK and May 4th 2018 in the US and will feature an all-star cast including Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), Chris Evans (Captain America), Mark Ruffalo (Hulk), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow), Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye), Chadwick Boseman (Black Panther), Tom Holland (Spider-Man), Sebastian Stan (Winter Soldier), Anthony Mackie (Falcon), Paul Rudd (Ant-Man), Paul Bettany (Vision), Elizabeth Olsen (Scarlet Witch), Don Cheadle (War Machine), Josh Brolin (Thanos), Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange), Benedict Wong (Wong), Chris Pratt (Star-Lord), Zoe Saldana (Gamora), Dave Bautista (Drax), Bradley Cooper (Rocket), Sean Gunn (Rocket) Vin Diesel (Groot), Karen Gillan (Nebula), Pom Klementieff (Mantis), Sean Gunn (Kraglin), Tessa Thompson (Valkyrie), Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Cobie Smulders (Maria Hill), Benicio Del Toro (The Collector), Danai Gurira (Okoye), Winston Duke (M’Baku) and Peter Dinklage and Terry Notary in as-yet-unrevealed roles.