Marvel Studios' Avengers: Endgame marked its five-year anniversary on April 30, and composer Alan Silvestri has now explained why he feels one sequence in particular has had such a lasting impact.
We are, of course, referring to the "Portals" scene.
During the climactic battle, Thanos manages to defeat Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America - but Steve Rogers isn't about to stay down. As the Sentinel of Liberty dusts himself off and prepares to fight until his last breath, he hears a familiar "on your left," and turns around to see Black Panther and the others recently-revived heroes assembling through Doctor Strange and Wong's mystical portals.
While speaking to Games Radar, Silvestri said he believes this moment has become so beloved and iconic because of what Rogers had experienced in the build-up.
"The spectacle [of Portals] is ultimately overwhelming, but I think it's emotional because we've never seen every ounce of optimism destroyed in Captain America," he says. "In a sense, his soul was dead, he was hopeless, he had given up. We had never seen this in him before. It's almost biblical that in his darkest moment a blessing appears – then another one, then another one."
"So, we start with basically a funeral scene – I'm burying Captain America with this trumpet! From there not only does he come back to life, but everyone in his world is coming to help him. It's just an incredibly powerful image to have Cap rise from the dead, then be supported and surrounded by everyone to vanquish the demon. It’s a very biblical, emotional event that Joe and Anthony [Russo, directors] captured in an unbelievable way."
Silvestri went on to describe what it was like watching the scene with his score added for the first time with directors Joe and Anthony Russo and Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige.
"What was most fun was I knew what it was going to be, but for Sandra [Silvestri's wife] and I to sit there watching Joe [Russo], Anthony [Russo], and Kevin Feige see it for the first time was just breathtaking. In the end, they are my audience, if they don’t like what I do the audience will never see it and hear it."
"It was amazing to see the impact that it had on them," he continued. "They were very concerned about that scene, it was such an important one in the Marvel universe. And when we saw the last element, which was the music, come into it and see wow, that it was really going to do what they were hoping it would do, It was fantastic."
You can have another look at the scene in the player below.