Month: April 2019

Actor Chris Pratt has shared an “illegal” video from the set of Avengers: Endgame, and it’s quite a treat. The behind-the-scenes video, which contains what could be considered spoilery material, showcases a moment on set when the Avengers assembled.

In the single video we can see Chris Hemsworth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Rudd, Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, Dave Bautista, Jeremy Renner, Tom Holland, Robert Downey Jr., and Chris Evans, among other huge names. It appears that Pratt shot the video secretly–sort of. As you’ll see, Chris Evans catches him in the act and jokes that Pratt is going to get in trouble for filming what Pratt called a “really illegal video.” The video has since gone viral, racking up more than 14.6 million views.

Pratt’s caption reads: “I remember being blown away in this moment on the Avengers set. Nobody was allowed to film anything on their phones. I said screw it. No rule was going to stop me from seizing this once in a lifetime opportunity to capture this collection of stars, a groupthat likely will never be in the same room again. We are so blessed.”

Endgame released last week and shattered box office records with $1.2 billion over its first five days worldwide.

Read next: Avengers: Endgame Could Have Been Much Different, Here’s How

Epic’s popular free-to-play battle royale game Fortnite has added another Marvel skin. Joining the Black Widow skin is the new Star-Lord Outfit based on Chris Pratt’s appearance as the Guardians of the Galaxy superhero.

The Star-Lord outfit and related Back Bling are sold together in a bundle for 1,500 V-Bucks. There is also the Dance Off emote (500 V-Bucks), the Guardian Axe (500 V-Bucks), and the Milano glider (1,200 V-Bucks) that are also available to buy. Here’s a video of the outfit and the dance, while you can see more in the image gallery below.

In other Marvel/Fortnite news, Fortnite has a new “Endgame” mode available now where players can side with Thanos and his Chitauri Invaders or the Heroes trying to stop them. There is also a set of Fortnite Endgame challenges to complete, which will unlock more Avengers-inspired cosmetics.

Additionally, Season 8, Week 9’s challenges are available now, which means the current season is likely coming to an end soon. If you need any help, we’ve rounded up tips for the trickier tasks in our complete Season 8 challenges guide.

Star-Lord Outfit Set

Game developer Markus “Notch” Persson, who created the Minecraft franchise and sold it to Microsoft for $2.5 billion USD, will not be involved with the franchise’s upcoming 10th anniversary celebration event. A spokesperson for Microsoft told Variety that they are excluding him due to his “comments and opinions.”

“His comments and opinions do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang and are not representative of Minecraft,” a representative told the site.

As part of Microsoft’s acquisition of Minecraft and developer Mojang, Persson stepped away from the series. The Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that this remains the case; he hasn’t worked on the franchise since he sold it to Microsoft years ago.

Microsoft did not point to any specific comments or opinions from Persson that led to his exclusion from the event, but a number of his tweets and comments on a variety of subjects have garnered criticism.

Persson reportedly owned 70 percent of Mojang, so he could have made more than $1.5 billion in the Microsoft buyout between cash and shares. He spent $70 million on a Beverly Hills mansion that Beyonce and Jay-Z were also eyeing.

Persson’s exclusion from the May 17 Minecraft celebration event in Stockholm is not the first instance of Microsoft distancing itself from Persson. In March, an update to Minecraft removed a reference to Persson, though he is still listed as the game’s creator in the credits.

As for the upcoming Minecraft event, it aims to give fans a look at the “past, present, and exciting future of the decade-old franchise.”

Minecraft remains one of the most popular games ever. Available on basically every platform that plays games, Minecraft has 91 million monthly players as of October 2018, which is many millions more than Fortnite has.

At the start of April, 343 Industries announced that it hoped it might be able to release Halo: The Master Chief Collection‘s first PC beta test during the month. But now it turns out that’s not going to happen.

Community director Brian Jarrard said on Twitter that the team had to delay the first beta test, or “flight” in the Halo parlance, due in part to the complexity of the project. Here’s his full statement:

The delay is a bummer, especially because fans have been waiting so long for Halo: The Master Chief Collection to come to PC, but it’s refreshing to hear 343 speak so openly about the development process. There is no word yet as to when the first flights will be available, but Jarrard added that a more in-depth blog post is coming this week with answers.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection is coming to PC in stages, beginning with Halo: Reach (which is also releasing for Xbox One) and continuing chronologically from there–Halo: CE, Halo 2, Halo 3, and then Halo 4. The titles will be released on PC through betas with the aim of testing each title with a limited group of people first before rolling out publicly for everyone. You can sign up for the free Halo Insider program here for a chance to try out the games early.

Each title within the Halo: The Master Chief Collection on PC will be sold individually, but the “flights” are free, if you get in. And in a big change for the series, Halo: The Master Chief Collection will be available through Steam.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection originally launched in November 2014 for Xbox One. It faced serious and significant server issues at launch that made the title basically unplayable for some. Microsoft improved the experience significantly over time, and today the title is mostly stable and highly populated with players thanks in part to its inclusion with Xbox Game Pass.

The next Halo game, Halo Infinite, is in the works for PC and Xbox One. It’s supposedly going to be featured during Microsoft’s E3 2019 briefing in June.

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The final chapter of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Infinity Saga has arrived, and with it, we have so many questions about what happens next. While Avengers: Endgame wraps up many of the MCU’s lingering threads, it also leaves room for many more, including something that could have major ramifications on the Disney+ streaming service. Warning: What follows contains major Avengers: Endgame spoilers. Read at your own risk.

When Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), and Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) travel back in time to New York City in 2012–during the final showdown of the first Avengers film–something very interesting happens. While trying not to screw up the timeline, they accidentally let the 2012 version of Loki (Tom Hiddleston) get his hands on the Tesseract–which houses the Space Stone–and disappear into a portal with it.

While Tony and Cap solve the problem of getting their hands on the Space Stone by, instead, going even further back in time, neither of them seem to care much that Loki got his hands on the stone in their timeline and disappeared. Using Endgame’s own flawed time travel logic, that should create a branching timeline and a new–and likely very bad–series of events.

After all, this isn’t the Loki you couldn’t help but love from Thor: Ragnarok and Avengers: Infinity War. This is the absolutely awful and vile Loki that nearly brought about the destruction of Earth in Marvel’s Avengers. This Loki is the worst, plain and simple, and him having possession of the Tesseract it bad news, regardless of the timeline. And yet, as far as we know, Tony, Steve, and Scott didn’t even bother to tell anyone what happened.

So what happens now?

The future of the MCU remains a giant question mark after Endgame. We know Spider-Man: Far From Home is out soon and a number of Phase 4 movies–from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 to a Black Widow standalone film to Black Panther 2–are all expected eventually. But what about Loki and the Tesseract?

This may be where the upcoming Disney+ streaming service comes into play. It was previously revealed that among the MCU shows coming to Disney+ was a series starring Hiddleston as Loki. However, after Endgame, the god of mischief is still very dead in present day after being killed by Thanos (Josh Brolin). So how will he appear in his own show?

We may already know the answer. The Hollywood Reporter, citing a source, claimed the show will follow Loki as he revisits events in human history and acts as an “unlikely influencer.” Does this mean we’re getting an evil Loki going around and further screwing up human history? While the Space Stone allows him to teleport, it doesn’t make him able to travel through time. That said, Avengers: Endgame is loaded with time travel, for better or worse, which means finding a way to jump around in human history is a distinct possibility.

Are fans going to love a show where evil Loki just screws things up left and right, though? It’s always possible the show will find a way to make him good, but it’s hard to see this version of Loki as a hero.

Whatever the case, it should be interesting to see where Marvel Studios takes Loki in his standalone show. The important thing is that Hiddleston isn’t done playing the character just yet, which is very exciting.

Avengers: Endgame has destroyed box office records since its premiere, and there’s plenty to talk about when it comes to the movie–including what and who was originally planned to appear but ultimately didn’t make the final cut. If it isn’t clear already, let this be your final warning: the following article contains spoilers.

The final chapter to the Infinity War saga and second to last film for the third phase of the MCU, Endgame does plenty right. Unfortunately it gets some wrong too. Endgame ends Tony Stark’s story in the best way, but the movie doesn’t quite honor the legacy of Natasha Romanoff or Steve Rogers. Not all of these plot points played out as they were originally planned, however. In an interview with The New York Times, Endgame screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely explained how many aspects of the movie were once very different.

Banner Was Going To Become Professor Hulk Much Earlier

One of the many surprise changes for one of the original Avengers during Endgame’s five year jump is that Bruce Banner discovers a way to unite his mind with Hulk’s body. As a result, Banner has access to Hulk’s incredible strength without losing his brilliant mind. Although this transformation was always planned for Banner, it was originally scheduled for much earlier.

“There was a time when Banner became Smart Hulk in [Infinity War]. It was a lot of fun, but it came at the wrong moment. It was an up, right when everyone else was down,” Markus said. “It happened in Wakanda,” McFeely continued. “His arc was designed like, I’m not getting along with the Hulk, the Hulk won’t come out. And then they compromise and become Smart Hulk.”

The Team Wasn’t Going To Time Travel To The Battle Of New York

During the time heist, a group of the team travels to the Battle of New York, which takes place in 2012’s Avengers. The team chooses this moment because three of the Infinity Stones are present in the battle. However, there is another point in the MCU where more than one Infinity Stone shows up, and originally that was going to be the focus of Endgame’s time heist.

“In the first draft, we didn’t go back to the [original] Avengers movie,” McFeely said. “We went back to Asgard. But there’s a moment in the MCU, if you’re paying very close attention, where the Aether is there and the Tesseract is in the vault. In that iteration, we were interested in Tony going to Asgard. He had a stealth suit, so he was invisible, and he fought Heimdall, who could see him.”

The original plan was to also give Thor several long scenes with Jane Foster in Asgard. In Endgame, the two former lovers never interact, with Thor chickening out upon seeing her. This massive journey to Asgard would have changed up the composition of the designated teams for each of the other missions as well, resulting in entirely different time periods during the heist. “They went to the Triskelion at one point to get the [Tesseract], and then somebody was going to get into a car and drive to Doctor Strange’s house,” Markus said.

No Alexander Pierce Cameo

During the time heist, we discover what transpired in the immediate aftermath of the Avengers’ victory over Loki during the Battle of New York, prior to the team splitting up and going their separate ways. Turns out Tony Stark and Thor were stopped from exiting Stark Tower by Head of SHIELD and undercover HYDRA operative Alexander Pierce. Pierce tries to take the Tesseract away from Tony and Thor, which the two Avengers refuse to give up. Pierce’s role was always going to be filled by one of SHIELD’s leaders, but in previous versions of the script the possible characters had less villainous motives.

“That was one where we thought, should it be Nick Fury? We also wrote a version for Maria Hill,” McFeely said.

The Final Battle Would Have Paused For Strategy Discussion

The final battle against Thanos sees Captain American, Iron Man, and Thor joined by every friend they’ve made as well as the allies of said friends. It’s a massive spectacle, and one that originally was going to pause for the heroes to discuss strategy.

“It didn’t play well, but we had a scene in a trench where, for reasons, the battle got paused for about three minutes and now there’s 18 people all going, ‘What are we going to do?’ ‘I’m going to do this.’ ‘I’m going to do this.’ Just bouncing around this completely fake, fraudulent scene,” McFeely said. “When you have that many people, it invariably is, one line, one line, one line. And that’s not a natural conversation.”

The Final Battle Had A Few More Heroes

Speaking of said battle, there was a plan to have more heroes take part in it. The MCU’s version of the Avengers replaces founders Hank Pym (Ant-Man) and Janet van Dyne (Wasp) with Hawkeye and Black Widow. However, both Hank and Janet did make their way into the MCU eventually, and Endgame’s screenwriters did consider having both suit up to join Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, and Thor in the final battle.

“There were moments, as they brought everybody back, where we’re like, technically, Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer have [Ant-Man] suits,” Markus said. “Do we bring them back? It became impossible to track the people we did bring back, but also, it’s just going to be an orgy.”

Black Widow Didn’t Die To Retrieve The Soul Stone

In a scene everyone knew was coming the second it was revealed Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff were headed to retrieve the Soul Stone, the two fight over who will sacrifice themselves in order to earn their prize so the other doesn’t have to. For a second, it almost looks as if Clint successfully immobilizes Natasha before leaping to his death, but the former spy turned Avenger is able to outsmart her teammate and maneuver into a position where she’s the one sacrificed. Originally, there was a time when things were supposed to go the opposite way.

“Jen Underdahl, our visual effects producer, read an outline or draft where Hawkeye goes over,” McFeely said. “And she goes, ‘Don’t you take this away from her.’ I actually get emotional thinking about it.”