With Avengers: Endgame, the highly-anticipated sequel to 2018's Avengers: Infinity War, arriving in theaters in China on April 24, the film's directors, Anthony and Joseph Russo, also known as the Russo Brothers, sat down for a roundtable interview with media on Thursday in Shanghai to talk about the new film and other topics of interest.
No spoilers
The Russo Brothers have pleaded with fans not to reveal plot details after some footage and images reportedly leaked online recently. At the beginning of the interview Joe "warned" reporters that there should be "no Endgame questions."
"We were protecting this movie for three years, and so many fans have so much investment. I think Marvel is unique in that so many fans around the world are so passionate about it that they want the story to be fresh when they walk into the theater. We want to make sure we're giving it to them that way," Joe said.
The brothers were happy to talk about the strategies they used to keep the film's secrets. "So what it is with the trailers is that you take all the footage from the movie, even footage that you're not using in the movie, to build the trailer, to get people to say 'That's the movie,'" Joe explained. He also admitted that if they want to make the trailer "work" (mislead the audience about the plot), they can use computer animation.
That's how the Russo Brothers keep audiences guessing all the time.
"As to whether or not that's psychology, guess it at all times, whether or not that's the actual story. For us, we were way more interested in the surprises of the story. They won't figure out what the story is," Joe said.
"Everyone's so sophisticated now at picking up the story," he mentioned, but what they want to do is "to shift perspective constantly for people, so that they don't know what's coming."
Talking about the MCU
Is Avenger: Endgame the end of the story of the Infinity Stones?
"This is the conclusion, you know? It's the final chapter. So, if you are reading a book, you know what you do when you get to the last chapter," he said, making the motion of closing a book.
"Close the book."
"I mean, I think the MCU certainly is going to be very different after Avenger: Endgame. This is the ending of the story that's been told for the last 10 years. And then they'll tell a new story for the next 10 years," said Anthony, who also expressed his willingness to work with Marvel in the future.
"I think, you know, we would love to work with Marvel again. We've had an amazing experience with them. They're like family to us. We get along very well with everyone there. And you know, we just need to find the right story to tell that we're excited about and then we will tell it."
If you are chatting with someone who has no idea about Marvel or the superheroes in its universe, Anthony would suggest you to start the conversation with Iron Man, the starting film of the MCU that led to the birth of the Avengers franchise.
Anthony said that "part of the reason why the Marvel Universe works so well was because the access point to it for a lot of people was Robert Downey Jr playing Iron Man. And I think that character, he has an incredible humanity, to the character, he's extremely reliable, and entertaining. And I think that was a great access point."
Getting closer to the Russo Brothers
When it comes to making movies, the Russos have their standards. Mentioning the "Loki backlash" (the character Loki's death in the last Avenger film caused outrage among his fans in China), Anthony said, "We would still make the same decision."
"We want to tell a great story, if we feel it's a great story, we feel like it's the right choice to make for the characters to keep things interesting and compelling and complicated and exciting, we will commit to it, even if it's hard. You know, the ending of Infinity War was hard to commit to, but we knew that we had a special opportunity there to tell a story, to make a movie that people don't normally get to make, you know, which is where the bad guy wins. You know, it's very rare for that to happen," he added, saying that he believes fans "still enjoyed the movie, even though it was a sad ending."
Still, Russo brothers showed their love for fans.
"We love to meet the fans, and shake hands, and take photos, and sign autographs, we will stay lot of hours doing that just to make sure, because we aren't here without them. We're not here without the support of the fans," said Joe.
Meanwhile, Anthony revealed that "it's been an agenda of ours to develop a deeper relationship with China. To figure out a way, figure out the right movie for us to do where we sort of intersect with the cultures, and in an interesting fresh way. We don't have that movie yet. It's something we're still looking for still. But it's definitely something that's really big on our agenda."
"Even though we're finding a great connection point with the Marvel movies that we've been doing, we'd love to find something that is more specifically Chinese and by that connection point… We have lots of relationships, hearing lots of good friends here. And a lot of that always comes out of friendships, comes out of having a common vision. You know, Wolf Warrior 2, we did a lot of work on that movie, because we're friends with Wu Jing," Joe added.
The Global Times asked if the directors had any advice for audiences about to watch Avengers: Endgame, to which Joe replied, "Don't eat or drink for two hours before you see the movie, so that you don't have to go to the bathroom during the movie. It's three hours and there's not really a good place to go to the bathroom. It's a pretty relentless film, lots of surprises in it. And if you get up, you might miss one."
"Or bring a snack with you because you may get hungry," Anthony added.
Source: Global Times
