Avengers: Infinity War VFX Reel Reveals Hulkbuster, Doctor Strange’s Torture Scene & More

There were a lot of bleak moments in Avengers: Infinity War. There was that ending, of course, but that goes without saying. There were a lot of brutal moments leading up to the infamous Thanos snap. One moment, in particular, was watching Ebony Maw torture Doctor Strange. Maw was after the Time Stone that Strange wears around his neck. Thanos’s head goon found out the hard way that you can’t just rip the thing off (Doctor Strange had applied a reasonably robust spell that made that impossible), so instead, he devised a unique form of torture to compel the good Doctor to remove the Time Stone and hand it over. The VFX studio IMAG, one of a host of digital wizards that helped Marvel and the Russo Brothers realize their epic vision, helped construct this moment. They also created the sequence where Peter Parker gets to trade his regular costume for an Iron Spider suit, scenes with Thor and Rocket, some of the battle in Wakanda, and a few critical moments on Titan, where Thanos faced off against most of the Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-Man, Iron Man and Doctor Strange.

Ebony Maw himself was built, at least in part, by the studio Cinesite. Ever since Infinity War was released on Blu-ray, all these digital studios have been able to share their work. That’s included German digital studio RISE’s VFX reel showcasing how they created Avengers: Infinity War‘s devastating (but slightly hopeful!) post-credits scene; Weta Digital’s VFX reel that gave us a glimpse of how they constructed that epic battle on Titan; and Framestore’s work building Tony Stark’s brand new nanotechnology-powered Mark L Iron Man suit.

In IMAG’s VFX reel, you’ll see just how much work went into craft Infinity War‘s huge set pieces, and how much of it is very subtle. In the Wakanda battle sequences, sometimes their mandate was multiplying the Wakanda forces so that instead of seeing a hundred or so actors running across a field, we see thousands. In other instances, like when Bruce Banner dons the Hulkbuster armor and charges into battle, IMAG’s work involved giving the Hulkbuster a laser blaster, and drowning him in Thanos’s ferocious army of “space dogs.”

Creating Marvel’s biggest film ever required a huge number of talented individuals, in VFX studios across the world, to pull it off.

Check out IMAG’s Infinity War VFX reel here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=dpwDLXWNL5o

Featured image: Hulkbuster. Photo: Film Frame. ©Marvel Studios 2018

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bryan Abrams

Bryan Abrams is the Editor-in-chief of The Credits. He's run the site since its launch in 2012. He lives in New York.