There are over two dozen films comprising the Marvel Cinematic Universe, leading many to believe that some grand, far-reaching plan must have been in place to reach this unprecedented accomplishment. But one of the MCU's notable directors says that's not really the case -- and never was.
"The way it works at Marvel, and I'm sure at some point somebody will talk in detail about this, but part of [Marvel Studios President] Kevin [Feige's] brilliance is that there isn’t really a plan," Avengers: Endgame and director Joe Russo told Deadline. "There's an idea, but you can't have a plan if the movie you’re making tanks. There’s no plan after that. Right?"
"So, it's really about, as the movie succeeded, there was sort of an enthusiasm about well, what else could we do? And then that's when new ideas would come out," Russo said. "And there was hopes. Oh, we hope one day that we can get to the story, if we keep doing this right maybe we could all get there, you know, like Infinity War and Endgame. But a lot of the stuff was made up in between the movies. And some of the best call forwards or callbacks were thought of after the fact."
"Like, we didn't have [Captain America]: Civil War broke and we didn't know that by showing you this scene with Zola […] in Winter Soldier where Cap goes into this basement facility and Zola's telling him about the Winter Soldier and there's an image of Stark's parents having been killed. And it looks like it’s implied that its connected. That was happenstantial."
"Then after the movie came out we were like, hey that’s a crazy idea -- that's how Tony could get so angry at Cap that he'd wanna kill him, if Cap's buddy had killed his parents," Russo said. "So we were retrofitting these ideas, right, and it's all part of the fun of it. But I think that in a lot of ways is the secret sauce of Marvel, it was riding a bucking bronco, it was not premeditated."
Marvel Studios launched the MCU with the release of Iron Man in 2008, and concluded the so-called Infinity Saga with 2019's Avengers: Endgame. Sony Pictures' subsequent Spider-Man: Far from Home served as an epilog of sorts to the Infinity Saga.
Whatever plan might have once existed for the MCU films was indeed fluid. Infinity War and Endgame were originally envisioned as a single film, and Civil War was also conceived as an Avengers movie before serving as the third Captain America film. Inhumans was originally slated for the big screen before it was transformed into the short-lived television series. And the "Planet Hulk" storyline was first intended as a standalone Hulk movie before being rolled into the plot of Thor: Ragnarok.
The next entry in the MCU, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, hits theaters May 6, with Thor: Love and Thunder and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever coming later this year. The Marvels, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania are currently scheduled for release in 2023.
Source: Deadline