4 Behind The Scenes Weapon Details From The MCU

Creating the superweapons that the heroes and villains acquire in the MCU requires expert technicians and creators. The MCU’s apt research holds an important role in the weapon’s structural designs. Similarly, in the costumes that the characters wear, their weapons are studied and re-engineered until they’re perfect. Not only do such creators know how these weapons work in-universe, but they also understand the reason for which they’re being used by the characters.

Let’s analyze some of the details and behind-the-scenes tricks that made the MCU arsenal so indulging.

1. Thor nearly replaced Mjolnir with a Blaster

Thor’s popular tool is his godly hammer Mjölnir, but when he was up against Thanos, he needed something even stronger. Though that weapon ended up becoming the combo ax/hammer Stormbreaker, he almost chose something a bit more modern.

The Avengers: Infinity War artbook shows different variations of Thor’s look in the movie, and in an early version he can be seen holding a space rifle and a blaster. How cool would it have been to see Thor using a blaster, but it’s not a typical Thor kinda weapon, right? Thus, MCU made the right decision by going with Stormbreaker.

2. Cap almost got his iconic shield redesigned

Captain America’s shield is such an iconic symbol that it feels bad to redesign it, however in Infinity War, that’s exactly what they did. However, the initial redesign for his Wakanda-developed shield was way more drastic than what we got to see in the film.

Ryan Meinerding, Marvel’s lead of visual development, posted a few unused designs of the shield on Instagram handle and they’re much more spikey (and sort of Super-Sharp) than what the Captain wielded in the film. The shield wouldn’t have actually been a shield, but more of a multipurpose weapon that Cap wore as both a shield and a weapon.

3. Chitauri weapons were specifically designed according to Black Widow’s look

As for the visual creators who worked on The Avengers, the structure & design of the Chitauri was really a challenge. The external race that dooms most of Manhattan in the movie is visually under-represented in the comics, so their design was totally unique to the movies – but what about their weapons?

The visual team knew that Black Widow was going to acquire some sort of alien tech, so the first job was making sure that their weapons were to look super cool when she got her hands on them. Ryan Meinerding, the visual development supervisor on The Avengers, said:

“Specifically with their weapons, we tried to find something that, if Black Widow got ahold of one of their weapons, she could use it in an interesting way. Which is how we ended up with that [sic] sort of long Civil War weapons.”

4. Robot Arnim Zola could have been in Ant-Man

One of the MCU films that we will never witness is Edgar Wright’s version of Ant-Man, a movie that could have been similar to the comics in some ways, but full of bizarreness in others. (The film was however directed by Peyton Reed.) The concept that couldn’t make its way in the film was a robot, Arnim Zola.

Previously when fans saw Zola he was in Winter Soldier, but merely as a recording when he told Steve Rogers of his villainous plan to infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D. If Wright’s film had come to reality, Zola would have returned in a gigantic metallic body.