Prior to directing Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame together, Anthony and Joe Russo made a name for themselves directing episodes of Arrested Development and Community. According to Joe Russo, working on these series turned out to be the perfect starting point for directing films set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Russo explained to BoxOfficePro how the directing he and his brother Anthony did on comedy series Arrested Development and Community helped to prepare them for handling MCU films, pointing to the ensemble casts both series featured and the complexity of the stories told within the 21-minute runtime.
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"We spent a decade squeezing complex comedy stories with many, many characters, both of those shows being big ensemble shows, into 21 minutes" Russo explained. "We’d call it ‘the Russo path,’ where we came in and squeezed it down to a density that we felt would elevate the show, because it would move so quickly that you’d miss half the jokes and have to watch it again. That was an agenda of ours. The same thing is true when we work on these Marvel films."
"We try to create a density in storytelling that makes them feel compulsive, irrespective of the length," Russo continued. "We’re very rigorous about storytelling points, and we spend months in the edit room twisting and turning the narrative a bunch of different ways until we think we’ve unlocked the best one. We’re vigilant about using test audiences to tell us whether we’re on the right track or we’re making bad decisions. With Endgame, it had one of the most incredible audience responses in Marvel history. Irrespective of the length, it’s been consistently embraced by the test audiences."
Avengers: Endgame will be the fourth film within the MCU that the Russo Brothers have directed, and the third to feature a massive ensemble cast. According to Joe Russo, the level of success they've had within the MCU can be attributed to their experiences in directing episodes for Arrested Development and Community. The three previous films the brothers have directed in the MCU have all scored Rotten Tomatoes critics scores of at least 85% and audience ratings of 89% or higher while netting nearly $4 billion at the global box office.
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Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, Avengers: Endgame stars Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Paul Rudd, Brie Larson, Karen Gillan, Danai Gurira, Benedict Wong, Jon Favreau and Bradley Cooper, with Gwyneth Paltrow and Josh Brolin. The film arrives April 26.