While the majority never doubted that The Avengers would be a success, a lot of box office analysts didn't think it would even manage to beat Iron Man 2's haul of $620+ million. Well, $1.5 billion later and it's fair to say that they couldn't have been more wrong (although it's doubtful that anyone predicted that it would become the third highest grossing film of all time). The superhero ensemble was also a critical success, receiving unanimous praise from fans and critics alike. Talking to MTV News' Josh Wigler, Kevin Feige had this to say about those incredible figures and why writer and director Joss Whedon was the right man for the job.
"We've had the good fortune of having a lot of dreams come true. I still remember six, seven years ago, thinking about casting Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man. 'It's outside the box! It could be like Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow! It could take off!' Clearly, we're there now. That being said, you can never honestly expect this kind of success and be any kind of reasonable human being. I was just hoping it would be the biggest Marvel Studios movie of all time. It's got to beat 'Iron Man 2' or we really screwed it all up. And we more than doubled that."
"We believed that Joss could handle the spectacle, along with the amazing crafts people and technicians we hired, but never letting the characters get lost among the spectacle. We knew it would be a big movie with big visual effects. But I never wanted these great character who we love and have established in other films to get lost in the spectacle. 'And now they fight aliens!' We wanted the characters to stand out, and that's Joss' signature. I think he did his best job yet with 'Avengers.'"
As for how he feels about Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment's plans for a
Justice League movie and the different approach that the studio is clearly taking, it's clear that he believes Marvel's way was the right approach despite offering a diplomatic response. It's also interesting to note what he says about the team dynamic we'll see in James Gunn's
Guardians of the Galaxy. To read more of Feige's comments on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, be sure to click on the link below to head on over to the site.
"There's no rule that say you have to do it one way or the other, though I believe that what was unique about 'Avengers' was not that it was a group of superheroes, but a group of superheroes you knew and loved from other [films] all coming together. It wasn't like 'X-Men,' which is inherently a team-based film, or 'Guardians of the Galaxy,' which we're working on right now and is also a team-based film from the start. It was all of these people from other stories coming in and merging for one story. That's what was cool to me about 'Super Friends' when I was a kid and that's why I wanted to do 'Avengers' the way we did it."