The release of Avengers: Endgame, if you somehow weren’t aware, is less than three weeks away now. And in addition to the Internet still drowning in fan theories about every conceivable plot point related to this much-anticipated final installment in Marvel’s 22-film story arc, the film’s directors have meanwhile been dropping a ton of interesting details in interviews over the last few days.
One such detail is that, as of now, no one seems to have correctly guessed how the movie will end. Among the myriad fan theories out there, some do get close, but it seems that pretty much everyone is wrong.
In an interview with journalist Jake Hamilton, which you can see in the video above, both brothers stress that surprising and delighting fans is job number one for them. With Anthony picking up the thread from there, in response to a question about whether the brothers have ever had an internal freak-out moment, feeling that a fan has gotten too close or guessed correctly: “Here’s the thing, the fans are so passionate and they spend such a long time living with these characters, thinking about these characters, and they’re using their imaginations to follow where these stories could possibly go. Sometimes people do get — they’re wildly off, sometimes they’re kinda next door to what might happen. … Here’s the thing, nothing’s ever that close … You can get kinda close, but it’s never exactly.”
Which is why, Joe Russo continues, they try to make “really surprising choices.” And what could be more surprising than killing off half your characters?
Meanwhile, speaking of the brothers, you may have noticed over the weekend this post on their official Instagram account, explaining how you can watch one MCU a day in chronological order until Endgame arrives:
In an interview with Fandango, however, Anthony Russo offers that if you’re perhaps pressed for time, there are really two MCU films you definitely should check out if you haven’t yet by the time Endgame arrives. “I think you see this movie after movie, the audience keeps growing for these films. So what that tells us is that people are seeing these movies who haven’t seen the previous ones. So it’s important that we are speaking to an audience that is perhaps seeing these stories for the first time.
“That being said, there’s certainly an interconnected story being told. I would say, certainly, Civil War and Infinity War are probably the two biggest lead-ins to this movie, in the sense that Civil War created the situation where the Avengers were divided.”
And as if all that wasn’t enough, we also got word in another recent interview that while they don’t have any plans at the moment, the Russo brothers could very well envision a scenario in which they cross over to the most unlikeliest of places once Endgame is all said and done — to the DC Extended Universe.
In a chat with MTV News, Joe Russo makes clear that it’s only a theoretical possibility at this point, something the brothers wouldn’t necessarily rule out automatically. But that it very much is a possibility, even if there are no plans yet to speak of. “I mean, our brains are so fogged at this point that I don’t know we can consider anything. But, you know, you never say, ‘never’.” All of which is to say, the brothers have certainly given us a ton to think about and ruminate over as the date for Endgame gets closer.
