AVENGERS: ENDGAME Director Joe Russo Asks Fans To Be Patient With Multiverse Saga; Casts Doubt On MCU Return

AVENGERS: ENDGAME Director Joe Russo Asks Fans To Be Patient With Multiverse Saga; Casts Doubt On MCU Return

Avengers: Endgame director Joe Russo has shared his thoughts on the mixed response to the Multiverse Saga, while also sharing some insights into whether he and Anthony will return to the MCU in the near future.

By JoshWilding - Apr 19, 2023 06:04 AM EST
Filed Under: Avengers: Endgame
Source: Radio Times

The Russo Brothers joined Marvel Studios during Phase 2, taking the helm of a movie, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, that reshaped the MCU. At the time, little did we know they would ultimately tell the story that closed out the Infinity Saga across the epic two-parter that was Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame

Since then, Joe and Anthony have moved on and are running their own production company, AGBO. The former recently spoke with Radio Times and weighed in on the mixed response to the Multiverse Saga in the wake of those negative reviews for Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania

"There’s nobody better at telling stories than Kevin Feige right now," Joe stated. "If you’re going to bet on anybody, you bet on him."

"I think that the type of story that unfolded in the phases that we worked on [was] a very specific kind of story that wrapped itself up in those phases and now it’s time for a new story, and I think that’s the direction that Marvel’s headed in. They’re telling you a very different story, a very new story and I think the audience just needs to be patient with the redirection because you can’t keep telling the same story over and over or you lose the audience."

"I think they’re taking some very big swings and they’re playing around with the tone," the filmmaker continued, "and they’re championing diversity as much as anyone in the storytelling space right now and all of these things are huge wins for large-scale storytelling."

When it comes to a possible MCU return (they've said on multiple occasions that Secret Wars is their favourite story), Joe reiterated past comments that they're busy focusing on AGBO for the time being, seemingly shooting down our hopes that they'll be part of this Saga. 

Despite that, Russo has some hopes for his and Anthony's filmmaking future. "[We] haven’t really done anything in the pure fantasy space...Conan the Barbarian was a movie we loved as kids. It would be fun for us to play around in that world."

If the duo tackles a project like that, then we're guessing it would be an original story released through AGBO. 

As for the MCU, it's still early days for the Multiverse Saga and far too soon to write it off. However, with the recent controversies surrounding Kang the Conqueror actor Jonathan Majors, Marvel Studios will have to make some firm decisions about the future sooner rather than later. 

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WarMonkey
WarMonkey - 4/19/2023, 6:22 AM
You also lose your audience when your story sucks. I'm not waiting around to find out if it's good or not, start it off good and I will watch. They didn't so I'm moving on to something more interesting and fun.
VictorAlonzo
VictorAlonzo - 4/19/2023, 9:47 AM
@WarMonkey -
KWilly
KWilly - 4/19/2023, 6:24 AM
"There’s nobody better at telling stories than Kevin Feige right now"

James Gunn hearing this:
bobevanz
bobevanz - 4/19/2023, 6:29 AM
Feige signs the checks and writes down his shower thoughts, to use 10 years later lol. They'll come back for Secret Wars, the seeds have been planted years ago. But first, they need to direct the Community movie woo hoo!! I expect an announcement on their podcast with a Dan Harmon episode
Origame
Origame - 4/19/2023, 6:34 AM
Ok. But how patient do we need to be?

Currently the multiverse saga is at 18 different projects. Keep in mind the entirety of the infinity saga was 23 projects. And if you count the actual length of the stories, the multiverse saga is already longer than the infinity saga. And we don't even know who the main characters are for the multiverse saga. That's a lot for us to vaguely/maybe get set up for the avengers movies.

Besides, when you get down to it so far it's really not all that different from the infinity saga. It's still a powerful supervillain planning mass destruction to preserve life. They really just upped the number of how many will die (and its not like either universal or multi universal are comprehensible, so it's like saying "infinity plus one") and giving us characters from non mcu movies.
SauronthePower
SauronthePower - 4/19/2023, 7:56 AM
re: Pure Fantasy Stories

Eternals 2 🤷‍♂️??
TyrantBossMedia
TyrantBossMedia - 4/19/2023, 8:03 AM
“ There’s nobody better at telling stories than Kevin Feige right now.”

Feige isn’t telling the stories. He is hiring the crappy writers in Phase 4 and 5 and the directors in those same phases who together are telling those horrible stories.

Feige seems to be green lighting these terrible ideas and nobody has been keeping him in check…..until Disney started losing money.

Suddenly there are budgetary restrictions and hiring criteria for directors.
Much like there was when Perlmutter was Feige’s checks and balances.
VictorAlonzo
VictorAlonzo - 4/19/2023, 9:51 AM
@TyrantBossMedia -
TheHumanSpider2
TheHumanSpider2 - 4/19/2023, 8:35 AM
A complete Phase went by, 3 years wasted...yeah, how about NO?
TheHumanSpider2
TheHumanSpider2 - 4/19/2023, 8:36 AM
Also, Feige doesnt write shit
Scarilian
Scarilian - 4/19/2023, 8:38 AM
Fiege is not telling the stories, he's hiring terrible writers who insert their own views and then he's either not overseeing them or he's making it even worse by encouraging them. Any creative control he has had led them down even worse paths, shoving in characters or mandating aspects nobody wants.

The Multiverse Saga is now longer than Phase 1-3 and all of it is utter garbage content that has damaged the brand. It's impossible at this point to salvage this mess because Phase 5 & Phase 6 are reliant on what you established prior. The shit outweighs the good and the general audience is rejecting it. Even Guardians of the Galaxy 3 is looking set to under perform, pre-sales are below Ant-Man 3 and the Eternals.

This house of cards is collapsing constantly and at the same time they are actively dismissing what the fans actually want in favor of shoving in characters nobody cares about. An Echo series nobody will watch, an Agatha series that nobody will watch, a rushed Mephisto special because they couldn't be bothered to research who he was for the WandaVision series and think that Mephisto will be popular because of the meme. They are driving this franchise into the dirt at a rapid pace.

You can't have an Avengers film be successful if all your new Avengers are either disliked or generally result in audience ambivalence and your main villain is an abuser who is established in a film people barely watched. You haven't even bothered to develop most of the new characters beyond mere stereotypes, race and sex swaps of pre-existing characters or plot devices such as America Chavez, Monica Rambeau. The origin of a majority of your heroes now is that they achieved their powers without any struggle or strife. Captain Marvel got hit by engine goop, Monica walked through a barrier, Kamala got her powers sent to her in the post.

At the same time the general audience have completely moved onto other projects that respect them, rather than Disney who thinks the best option is to make media directly insulting them. Combined with the disasters at WB due to James Gunn making all the current slate of DC movies irrelevant, I think the damage is so bad that even if you were to do a full reboot now you'd struggle to get an audience. Superhero movies just offer nothing new, everything is a comedy blended with something else because originality is dead.

If we are lucky, the under-performance of GotG3 coupled with Ant-Man 3 bombing and The Marvels set to under-perform or bomb will result in them just scrapping the MCU waiting a few years and rebooting in 2027 with the X-Men, Fantastic Four and Avengers.
VictorAlonzo
VictorAlonzo - 4/19/2023, 11:08 AM
@Scarilian -
WEAPONXOXOXO
WEAPONXOXOXO - 4/19/2023, 8:41 AM
Disney doesn't want to pay them what they deserve.
Scarilian
Scarilian - 4/19/2023, 8:42 AM
The writing is so shit that they legitimately thought removing Kang's backstory so they can use it later and killing off Kang in every appearance would make him some kind of underdog that people liked. [frick]ing stupidity.
Scarilian
Scarilian - 4/19/2023, 8:47 AM
Remember how the Infinity Stones were a thing of great importance, yet Doctor Strange had a magical 'goodest book ever' that can solve any problem, Thor had a magical 'wish granting entity' that can grant any wish, Thor had an entire council of Gods who sat by and did nothing, the Eternals were just chilling on Earth ignoring the fate of countless realities.
pitbull76
pitbull76 - 4/19/2023, 9:36 AM
@Scarilian - I don't know where they went wrong with Thor but at some point they did.Also how do u have a character nick named god of thunder and barely have him utalize hhit
VictorAlonzo
VictorAlonzo - 4/19/2023, 9:17 AM
🦬💩
pitbull76
pitbull76 - 4/19/2023, 9:31 AM
I loved the infinity saga I watch ever movie up to end game.Then they started with the tv shows and if u wanted to keep up you had to watch the tv shows it just all became to much for me I mean for how many movies and tv shows they put out Marvel fatigue was bound to set in. All I want at this point is to hit fast forward and get to the X-Men and Fantastic four.
Matchesz
Matchesz - 4/19/2023, 9:50 AM
They should have immediately entered Dr Doom after Endgame and introduced the Fantastic Four for phase 4. Multiverse could have waited but I understand why they wanted to rush it with all the actors getting older and all.. It's just too much and none of the stories are relatable anymore. I remember back when Spiderman 2 and Ironman came out all they would talk about is making the characters relatable which was important. But now everyone's cracking some corny ass joke some Rick and Morty writer thinks is hilarious with a bunch of social justice warrior yes men/women/them/their's circled around him, the magic is gone.
VictorAlonzo
VictorAlonzo - 4/19/2023, 10:00 AM
@Matchesz -
TheOtherOn
TheOtherOn - 4/19/2023, 9:58 AM
Why come back to a sinking ship when you already left it on a high note? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
VictorAlonzo
VictorAlonzo - 4/19/2023, 11:12 AM
What if- Disney is purposely tanking the MARVEL brand, hoping to build anew with more seriously toned versions of classic films in the next 5-10 years?


🤨

Cinderella?

Snow White?

Hansel & Gretel?

Sleeping Beauty?



You'll see. Just wait.
Scarilian
Scarilian - 4/19/2023, 2:18 PM
@VictorAlonzo -
If they wanted to end the Marvel brand they have the ability to do so without just flushing money down the toilet, angering people and generally tanking their own share price. It can damage the reputation so much its unrecoverable. The reality is they simply don't care about the fans or fanbase, these movies are primarily their own ego trips at this stage coupled with trying to force aspects they want you to care about.

5-10 years would not be enough time for people to desire another MCU attempt, after it collapses we'd probably be looking at 20-30 years before a reboot because otherwise people would just expect RDJ or Chris Evans to show up in some form.

As for all the films you listed/questioned as examples, they all have or will perform poorly because of other Disney ideologies influencing them. People don't want serious superhero movies just for the sake of it, they want well written stories and Disney don't bother with that.
String
String - 4/19/2023, 11:52 AM
To be totally honest, I would be more interested in Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely back in the MCU than the Russo brothers. That duo deserves more credit for how they were able to pull the MCU together during Phase 3 with Infinity War and Endgame. I believe that is what is missing in the MCU during Phase 4 -the interconnectivity with the characters and films. And arguably, Markus and McFeely also wrote perhaps the best MCU trilogy with the Captain America films. The reason why the MCU felt so interconnected with its stories and characters during the Infinity Saga is because Markus and McFeely had written a quarter of the films by Endgame. Russo brothers were great collaborators, but you need great writers to start that process.
obarium
obarium - 4/19/2023, 4:08 PM
I'm still enjoying what Marvel is putting out, but just personally, it has been the stuff that isn't obviously linked to multiverse stuff that I have enjoyed the most. Hawkeye, Ms Marvel, Eternals, She-Hulk, Shang-Chi, and Black Panther 2 were all very enjoyable for me. There were obviously some bigger things teased in those projects, but they all felt contained enough to not muddy the main story they were telling.
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