After years of debate over whether the MCU can recapture the magic of the Infinity Saga, Joe and Anthony Russo are setting out to end the hit-and-miss Multiverse Saga in style with Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars.
According to Anthony Russo in an interview with AP News, Marvel Studios' next Avengers movies will push the limits of ensemble storytelling further than anything the brothers have attempted before.
Of course, when they're bringing together the Avengers, X-Men, and Fantastic Four for the first time, it's hardly surprising to learn that this movie is an even bigger challenge than Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Endgame.
"The MCU is this massive experiment in how vast, how much scope can an ensemble really have?" Anthony says. "If we have a taste and talent for ensemble storytelling, we’re certainly pushing ourselves further than we ever have before."
The Russo Brothers, who are "soft prepping" Avengers: Secret Wars, are taking this workload in their stride. Joe explains, "When you’re doing one of these movies, it’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done. When you’re doing two of them, it’s almost inconceivable. But it’s the second time around we’re doing two back to back."
The Russos' return has inevitably raised expectations that Avengers: Doomsday can help put the MCU back on track following several years of increasingly mixed reactions to Marvel's output. It's likely what Kevin Feige is hoping for, but don't expect the Russos to take responsibility for fixing the entire MCU.
"It’s a great question. It’s part of the unique challenge," acknowledges Anthony. "The thing that Joe and I have always appreciated about our collaboration with Marvel is: Our job isn’t to answer for the entirety of the MCU. We intersect it in a very specific way. It’s that intersection which is where we can make sense of things."
The production itself has also presented its share of challenges. After the movie's shift from Avengers: The Kang Dynasty to Avengers: Doomsday, the Russos started shooting with an unfinished script.
"We always view the script as a living organism," Joe notes. "We’re improvisation-based, rehearsal-based directors. We like to see what the actors bring to the characters, and sometimes you don’t get the actors until a few days or a few weeks before you shoot them. And a lot of the time, that’s when the magic happens."
Interestingly, the filmmakers have turned to a genre far removed from superheroes for inspiration. For the Russos, the Western has always provided the perfect blueprint for combining enormous scale with quieter, more intimate character moments, and Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West was key, according to Anthony.
"Joe and I grew up fans of all types of cinema, but Westerns have always been very special to us. Throughout cinema history, the Western has been declared dead for decades, and then you can still make one of the greatest examples of the genre." Superhero fatigue be damned, eh?
In Avengers: Doomsday, beloved heroes from three distinct universes will be set on a deadly collision course and face an existential threat unlike anything they’ve ever encountered.
Avengers: Doomsday is set to be released on December 18.