The Russo Brothers Think Fans Will Be “Surprised” By Avengers: Doomsday
Directors Joe and Anthony Russo talk connecting Avengers: Endgame: Encore to Avengers: Doomsday, coming back to the MCU, and more.
“It’s an interesting exploration between good and evil by having Robert [Downey Jr.] play both [Tony] Stark and [Doctor] Doom,” Joe Russo admits.
Joe, along with his brother Anthony Russo, sat down with Fandango correspondent Chris Tait to discuss Avengers: Endgame Encore, the theatrical re-release of 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, and Avengers: Doomsday, the Russos’ return to Marvel Studios, in Big Ticket’s first-ever double-feature episode.
“When we made Endgame,” Anthony explains, “we were not thinking of the story beyond it. We were very focused on, ‘How do we complete this storytelling arc that we’d been engaged with since Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but also for the entire MCU?’ That was our creative limitation and focus on that movie… It wasn’t until years later that we started to think about, well, ‘What’s a road beyond that?’, and that eventually materialized into Avengers: Doomsday.”
Leading up to the release of Doomsday in December, it made sense to re-release Endgame in theaters, so audiences could understand how it connected to the events in Doomsday. Enter: the Encore, which includes four new post-credits scenes directly recontextualizing Endgame to preview Doomsday. Two of them star Doctor Doom — in one, he forges his trademark iron mask to the same metal clanging sounds at the end of the original Endgame, and in the other, he uses Latverian magic to grab Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) from a secure underground prison.
In comparing the villains from Endgame and Doomsday, Joe notes the difference lies in brains and brawn: “Thanos [played by Josh Brolin] was just like a brute force of nature. He would push his way through every problem. Doom is much more Machiavellian and manipulative than Thanos in that regard.”
But a new villain needs a good team to fight them. Doomsday features the mightiest heroes from across the Multiverse, with returning favorites and new heroes introduced in Phases 4 through 6. One of the most-anticipated returns? The X-Men. First looks at Doomsday feature Professor X (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (Ian McKellen), Mystique (Rebecca Romijn), and Cyclops (James Marsden), as well as a scene of newly-introduced X-Man Gambit (Channing Tatum) fighting Shang-Chi (Simu Liu).
“We were fans in a movie theater watching [the X-Men] movies at midnight screenings,” Joe gushes. “And so to be able to work with those actors is like a dream come true for us.”
Anthony agrees: “We never imagined the day that [Marvel and the X-Men] could find their way back to one another. The fact that we can sort of be the facilitators of that through this movie is like, we have to pinch ourselves.”
With tons of exciting character match-ups to come, fans are eagerly awaiting more content about Doomsday. The Russos, however, insist that they’ll will have to be patient, with Joe likening the audience anticipation to Doomsday to kids on Christmas. Fitting, since Doomsday releases a week before the holiday.
“It’s like, you know, when you run downstairs on Christmas and you grab a present and you don’t unwrap it and you shake it and you try to guess what’s in it. We have to say to the kids, ‘Don’t shake the presents. Just wait and open the present.’… Don’t shake the presents. Your parents give good presents. It’s more fun to wait and open it,” Joe teases.
Check out the full Big Ticket interview above to see the Russo brothers break down bringing all the heroes together in Doomsday, character-centric narratives, and more.
Avengers: Endgame: Encore is in theaters now. Get your tickets here.
Avengers: Doomsday opens in theaters December 18. Get your tickets here.
