We all remember picking our jaws up off the floor after we saw Avengers: Infinity War for the first time a year ago. Yes, we all know they’ll be reversed somehow, but you can’t deny that killing half of the Marvel universe was a ballsy move on the filmmakers’ part. It raised the stakes higher than ever before going into Avengers: Endgame. So much so that you might be worried if the movie can follow up on this enormous twist in a satisfactory way.
This problem was something pitched to co-director Anthony Russo at a press conference in Los Angeles over the weekend, which marked the beginning of the Endgame press tour. He explained that the shock ending of IW came, in the first place, from his and his brother Joe’s love of thinking up challenging narratives that force them to get creative.
“One of our favorite storytelling adages is ‘Write yourself into a corner.’ What we take that to mean is to put yourself in a place on a narrative level where you have no idea how you could possibly move forward and that’s a very exciting place to be. It forces you to come up with some really creative ways forward.”
Russo continued by saying that he feels you need to have “real stakes” in a movie, otherwise it won’t resonate with audiences.
“We’ve tried to do that with the endings of every Marvel movie we’ve ever done, perhaps more so with Infinity War. We were very committed to the ending of that movie because we feel stories lose their relevancy and resonance unless there are real stakes.”
As for following this development in Endgame, Russo concluded by teasing that the focus now will be on how do the remaining heroes respond to this “devastating loss,” something that’s never happened to them before.
“For us, moving into this movie in Endgame, the story is very much about ‘How do these characters, how do these heroes deal with loss; resounding loss, true loss, devastating loss?’ That’s what they’ve experienced in Infinity War and that was a unique experience for them. The way they’re written into this story is how is everyone on an individual level dealing with that experience and then how are they collectively dealing with it.”
As soon as Infinity War came out, the Russos swore that the deaths of the movie would not be cheaply undone in the next film and would have a knock-on effect going into future installments in the franchise. Some have scoffed at how that could be the case, as the likes of Spider-Man, Black Panther and the Guardians of the Galaxy have to be resurrected to lead their upcoming sequels. Most fans agree though that, even if these heroes live on, others may end up taking their place, thereby ensuring the movie retains its, as Russo puts it, “relevancy” and “resonance.”
Either way, all will be revealed when Avengers: Endgame arrives in theaters on April 26th.