If anyone has the right to a scholarly opinion about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s the Russo brothers.
After all, sibling filmmakers Joe Russo and Anthony Russo hold the record for directing the most movies in that world—Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.
Their fifth Marvel-inspired effort, Avengers: Doomsday, opens in theaters this December and promises to be the MCU’s biggest crossover event year…at least until Avengers: Secret Wars follows a year later, of course.
All that time playing in the superhero sandbox has taught the Russos many important lessons, including the biggest challenge one faces when bringing beloved comic book characters to the big screen across multiple films: Allowing characters to grow without alienating fans.
Avengers: Doomsday Director Reveals Biggest Hurdle of Making Marvel Movies
“It’s a very difficult part of the process because we basically just have to use our own meters, because we love the characters,” Anthony said at a special screening of Avengers: Endgame Encore in New York (via GamesRadar+). “We love the history, we love them in the same way that many fans do. But the one thing we always like to remind people of [is that] fandom does not speak with a single voice. There’s a wide variety of opinion in terms of who responds to which characters and which versions of which characters people respond to, it’s a very complex relationship that people have with the characters.”
At the end of the day, however, the storytellers need to follow their instincts without feeling hindered by audience expectations.
“We need to surprise ourselves in terms of who those characters are, where they can go, what they can do, what can happen,” he added. “And in doing that, we hopefully surprise audiences as well.”
The encore presentation of Endgame concludes with four stingers that directly tee up the events of Doomsday, which is set to pay off the multiverse arc of Phases 4-6.
These end credit moments are as follows: Loki (Tom Hiddleston) butts in on Steve Rogers’ (Chris Evans) fairy tale ending with Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell); Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) gets “collected” by Doctor Doom (Robert Downey Jr.); Mobius (Owen Wilson) and the rest of the TVA staff monitor a sudden collapse of the multiverse; and Victor von Doom forges his iconic mask.
That final scene completely re-contextualizes the mysterious hammering heard at the very end of Endgame, which was initially framed as a nod to the MCU’s beginning, when Tony Stark built the Mark 1 Iron Man suit in the Afghani cave.
“There’s a natural progression from Endgame into Doomsday,” Joe Russo told Fandango in August. “Which is also inclusive of all the other stories that have been playing out. But I think it’s important to see Endgame in theaters for two reasons. One, if you want to have a lot of fun, cheering and screaming and reliving all the emotions you had the first time to you saw it. Number two, I think it’s required viewing for following the story in Doomsday.”
Avengers: Doomsday is in theaters Friday, Dec. 18. Click here for tickets.
