Original subtitles

Hi, this is Joe Russo.

This is Steve McFeely.

And this is Chris Markus.

And this is Anthony Russo.

JOE: And that is Ava Russo, holding the bow right there.

That's my daughter.

I was very happy that she's the first person on screen

in Avengers: Endgame with Jeremy Renner.

Now, this scene was supposed to be in Avengers: Infinity War,

after Thanos snapped his fingers.

We thought it might be interesting to cut to

a vérité scene between Hawkeye and his family.

LAURA: Nice throw, kiddo.

JOE: I believe we tried it in one cut of the film, Anth,

and looked at it and went,

"Oh, that's never gonna work. It's too disorienting."

McFEELY: It was busy. Yeah. JOE: Yeah.

McFEELY: In that movie, not to do a commentary for a different movie,

but in that movie that ends with

people disappearing on a planet in space,

and they're in Wakanda...

JOE: In the jungle on Wakanda. McFEELY: If you added a third place...

ANTHONY: Right, we're already cutting between a lot of people

at that point in the film.

MARKUS: But it also works so well to restate

the finality of what happened in Infinity War,

when you put it at the beginning of Endgame.

JOE: I think so.

It brings you back emotionally very quickly.

There's a year between these films, and this movie helps to reset,

re-remind the audience of what happened in that movie

and how you felt at the end of that film.

ANTHONY: But through a brand-new perspective.

MARKUS: We didn't see Clint at all in Infinity War.

- Here we have him, and he is hit hard. - JOE: Yeah.

We're not pulling any punches at the opening of the film.

This is basically like a scene from a horror film

that opens the movie.

McFEELY: And also sort of draws people in.

I mean, presumably, everyone who goes to this movie,

by and large, saw the previous movie.

So, this is one of those instances

where the entire audience is ahead of the character

and filled with dread.

MARKUS: Yeah.

JOE: Absolutely.

ANTHONY: Which is an unusual move.

Usually, we never let the audience be ahead of the character.

McFEELY: No, this is playing for suspense and not surprise.

ANTHONY: Yeah.

JOE: Now, this song was resonant for a lot of reasons.

We felt like it was correct tonally,

but we also thought that the lyrics were appropriate for Marvel,

and what it's done,

and the expectations from giant pop culture films.

ANTHONY: This being the climactic movie of the 22-movie run,

it was nice to comment on our experience of these movies.

McFEELY: Did you have a different thought

about needle drops in this as opposed to score?

I don't think in Infinity War,

other than maybe a Guardians beat, that there are needle drops.

ANTHONY: We did like the fact that it made things feel different,

especially at that point in the movie.

It was an unusual choice.

And the way that stood in contrast to Infinity War.

It was important again,

'cause we're trying to let people know right away

that this is a different story.

JOE: Told from a different point of view in a different tone.

MARKUS: Yeah.

JOE: And so that does distinguish it right off the bat.

ANTHONY: Here's Hamlet's... McFEELY: Yeah, that's right.

You'll notice I bang on

about how scenes have to do more than one thing.

This is gonna catch you up to time and place.

This is also going to establish...

Again, spoilers, I assume you're only watching this

'cause you've seen the movie,

the device by which Tony is going to deliver his own eulogy.

So, it doesn't come out of nowhere.

It starts the movie, and it ends the movie.

JOE: And here's Robert.

Our VFX team did an exceptional job

of taking some weight off of him

and making him look like he is on death's door.

And the intent here was to make you believe, if momentarily,

that we may actually kill Tony Stark at the start of the film.

We wanted to...

You'll notice that we draw out

the moment where he lays down on the ground

and seems to let go as a way

to create a sense of tension

before introducing Captain Marvel as the savior.

ANTHONY: I would give a shout-out here

to our production designer, Charlie Wood.

I think that set in there is a big testament

to the level of detail

that he provides to the production,

and just the fact that we can tear apart this ship

as Tony and Nebula work on it,

you know, is pretty thrilling and not easy to achieve.

McFEELY: Yeah.

The heavy lift between both movies for Charlie was ridiculous.

MARKUS: Yeah, exceptional.

ANTHONY: Yeah, can you imagine production

designing these two movies back-to-back?

JOE: The amount of work is staggering.

ANTHONY: We all had a tall order,

but Charlie certainly had perhaps the tallest.

JOE: Let's talk about Tony in this film, and Tony's arc in this movie.

What is most compelling for all of us as storytellers,

I think, is making characters travel the greatest distance.

And so if you look at where Tony started in the Marvel Universe

as an egotistical, self-involved character,

by the end of this film, he is selfless.

And this movie, I think, is a large part of his journey,

and it will complicate...

Bring to the forefront the essential conflict of who he is as a hero.

McFEELY: And it tests him dramatically.

He certainly has been taking nibbles

at being a more selfless character all along the way.

I mean, certainly in Avengers, he was gonna die

by sending a nuke into space.

JOE: That's right, yeah.

McFEELY: By the time he gets to Civil War,

he's certainly trying to take things out of his own hands.

ANTHONY: Put a suit of armor around the world.

McFEELY: Yeah.

But by the time he gets here,

has a family to lose,

the sacrifice becomes pretty dramatic.

MARKUS: Well, I think in this movie, given the five-year jump,

he finally knows what he's missing and gets it,

and then gains resolution with his father.

He's doing the right thing in the other movies,

but he's not a complete person,

and by the time he gets to the third act of this movie,

he is whole, and can then die.

McFEELY: Yeah, not to jump too far,

but that's part of what the five years does,

is it allows all those characters to get really close to being

quote-unquote complete people, ending their arcs.

JOE: And now here's that moment.

We draw out

with the intention of trying to increase tension.

And then, gently, you'll notice the light changes on his face.

And the audience's anticipation, I think, rises,

hopefully, as we reveal

Captain Marvel.

MARKUS: And this is essentially

the B-side to the tag from Captain Marvel,

where she comes back

and the Captain Marvel tag is the B-side to the tag from Infinity War.

- So, it's press the beeper... - McFEELY: That's right.

MARKUS: ...she responds to the beeper,

and this is what she does in response to finding out what happened on Earth.

JOE: The missing narrative, of course,

is that she came to Earth, met the Avengers...

McFEELY: Right.

JOE: ...was brought up to speed on what was happening,

and that there's some sort of homing beacon on that ship that she tracks,

and brings the two of them back to Earth.

McFEELY: Pour one out for Cap's beard here.

MARKUS: Yeah.

McFEELY: Oh. Can I ask this while I'm just watching that?

You had various cuts where you didn't reveal Carol until here.

JOE: That is correct. ANTHONY: Yeah.

JOE: And we felt like it was not as successful of a reveal.

Yeah, we just didn't like the transition.

ANTHONY: Again, like, sometimes these movies,

because of the vast number of characters in these movies,

sometimes things can feel a little confusing

if you go too far down the road without sort of clocking...

McFEELY: It's a bit confusing,

but the idea will be that there'd be orange light on Tony's face.

He'd see something. The audience wouldn't see it,

and then only would you reveal

what happened there.

JOE: And she would come around the corner.

We didn't shoot a close-up of her bringing that ship in.

Which was probably what would be required in order to skip that.

And now there's the continuing story

between Cap and Tony.

This is the first time that they've seen each other...

- Yeah, since the end of Civil War. - ANTHONY: Since the end of Civil War.

JOE: And what we found fascinating about the opening of this movie,

or that we were all excited about,

was really examining how these heroes dealt with loss

and pain.

And again, just trying to understand who they are as humans

and examine their flaws,

and this is an amazing scene for Robert.

I think this is one of his best scenes in any of the Marvel films.

But he's clearly feeling an incredible amount of guilt.

He's probably drugged up here.

McFEELY: Right. JOE: And he can't hold back on Cap.

McFEELY: You'll note that everyone, if you examine this scene,

pretty much everyone is on point

in terms of their arc going forward, right?

Natasha, who is gonna remain the woman on the wall.

All her lines here are basically about,

"We gotta do something. We can't let this stand."

Steve's very similar.

Robert's... Sorry, Tony's close to giving up here.

He takes that loss as sort of a loss,

not that there's another chance at it.

Captain Marvel is all business.

JOE: Well, he's a futurist and he's exceedingly logical, Tony.

And I think without the potential

solve that Scott Lang brings by coming out of the quantum realm,

I think Tony correctly sees that

- there is no way to solve this. - McFEELY: Right.

MARKUS: And Cap's essentially proposing to do what Tony did in the last movie,

which is take the fight to Thanos, go out into space.

He did it, he failed.

JOE: Yeah, which Tony realizes would be suicide.

ANTHONY: To your point, Steve,

even Banner's line here is just exactly where he goes in the film,

which is like,

"Wait, we can't go back at it with what we already tried."

McFEELY: That's right, that's right. "We gotta do something different."

And Thor's, you know, halfway to being depressed here,

particularly in the next scene,

where he's already drinking beer and eating carbs.

ANTHONY: Yeah, he's chomping on a bread roll, if you notice.

Hemsworth wanted to eat something in this scene.

McFEELY: Did he? ANTHONY: Yeah.

MARKUS: Well, let's not forget that there are two scenes

that take place in this room.

JOE: It's the scene prior to that.

I said we'd lose.

JOE: The moment here is one of my favorite acting moments of the movie.

We lost.

And you weren't there.

ANTHONY: When he calls him a liar?

JOE: Yep.

Again, this is their essential conflict, and Tony can't get past it.

That's the other thing that I think five years helps with is that,

you know, sometimes healing takes years.

Captain Marvel

is an interesting addition to the situation

because she is so powerful

that she adds a potential opportunity for them.

So what Tony didn't see as a solution,

Cap potentially does, coming up here.

And he gets on board with her plan to take the fight to him.

McFEELY: And it should be noted, people might know this already,

but that's basically Brie Larson's first or second day as the character.

JOE: I think that might have been her first. Yeah.

That might have been her first day there if I remember correctly, that scene.

ANTHONY: We shot this before Captain Marvel was shot.

I know people who might.

NEBULA: Don't bother.

JOE: When we sit down in the room, we talk through storytelling.

We try to just play logic games with the narrative.

"All right, what would you do?

"What would you do if you were these heroes

"and Thanos destroyed half of life in the universe?

"How do you process it?

"You can't give up. You're a hero,

"even if that means potential certain death."

You've got a very powerful addition in Captain Marvel.

And so what's fun about this for us is that we're setting it up

to play as if it's going to be an action-adventure movie.

The Avengers chasing Thanos through space,

trying to retrieve the Gauntlet from him.

MARKUS: "Let's go get this son of a bitch"

could not be more of a '80s, '90s

trailer moment...

ANTHONY: Misdirect. MARKUS: Yeah, exactly.

ANTHONY: It doesn't work.

JOE: Trying to lead you to that belief again,

that the film is going to go on a certain track.

And then we completely derail it in 10 minutes.

ANTHONY: And to your point earlier, Steve, about the lines in this scene...

I mean, one thing that's always amazed me

about the work that you and Chris do is

how you're able to, in these movies,

as we've gotten larger and larger ensembles,

always being true to everybody's voice.

Finding a way for everybody's voice to ring true and matter,

and cut through the complexity of the story.

I mean, it's amazing.

McFEELY: In a good script, you should be able to pick out a line,

not tell me who said it,

but I should be able to guess who said it based on...

MARKUS: If you find yourself having a character say something

that anybody in the room could have said,

then it's time to go back to the drawing board,

figure that out again.

JOE: So, here the mission begins.

One of our favorite shots in the film.

Steve Rogers going to space for the first time.

McFEELY: It says a lot with very little. It's nice.

Okay.

Who here hasn't been to space?

- Why? - (CAROL CHUCKLES)

You better not throw up on my ship.

Approaching jump in three...

two, one.

JOE: It's interesting seeing the Avengers with Captain Marvel.

I think that she dimensionalizes them in a really great way.

Just from a pure power standpoint and what her abilities are.

ANTHONY: She makes them feel like children.

McFEELY: That's what I was gonna ask. What do you mean by that?

Like, they all take a back seat?

JOE: No, I just think it's like,

if you're talking about a collection of heroes,

and you're gonna go face Thanos, who still, we believe at this point,

has the Gauntlet.

You know, she is as powerful, if not more powerful than Thor,

and you suddenly have hope again.

Because they all know what happened at the end of the last movie.

McFEELY: Right.

JOE: He walked through them like they were paper.

McFEELY: Right.

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

McFEELY: Let's talk big picture here.

Put yourselves in our positions.

They're heading after a foe who has the ultimate weapon,

a comically powerful weapon.

It allows him to do anything, see anything...

JOE: Control the universe.

ANTHONY: We don't even know the extent of it.

McFEELY: The extent of it, right?

So, he is basically omniscient and omnipotent.

MARKUS: And who beat them down silly...

McFEELY: And he's already done it once, right?

MARKUS: ...in the last movie.

McFEELY: So, how do you...

What is a two-hour movie, where you're playing cat and mouse

with that guy or trying to get him,

or punch him in the face, or steal stones from him?

Even in the comics, which are lovely,

he just sort of decides to tie one hand behind his back.

You know, that's how it's solved there.

So, at one point in the room, everyone's getting real frustrated,

"What is the story here?"

And I think Trinh Tran, our executive producer, just said,

"God, I really wish we could just kill him."

And we all went, "Wait a second. Could you? What does that mean?"

And it sent us down this whole road,

where we solve the issue in the first, what, 12 minutes?

I don't know when this happens.

JOE: Yeah, very, very quickly, but what's great about it is that

it allows for a very different kind of movie to unfold.

McFEELY: That's the thing.

MARKUS: And effectively.

JOE: One that's reflective and pensive

and character-orientated rather than plot-orientated.

MARKUS: And they only accomplish what Thanos lets them accomplish.

McFEELY: That's right. That's why it makes sense.

MARKUS: He has finished his job and he lets them kill him.

JOE: There's a little bit of an equation

where, you know, once you introduce a villain plot,

it doesn't allow for...

And then the heroes become aware of it,

it does not allow for a lot of character moments.

So what's great about what happens here is

he disappears for a long time.

McFEELY: Yeah. His reintroduction is the midpoint.

So he gets killed here.

This is basically halfway through Act One.

(CHUCKLES) The Avengers are gonna roll around in grief, you know?

JOE: Which is great, 'cause we...

The point of this film is to bring to close those characters.

We need to be re-reminded of who they are and what they believe in,

and what their emotional needs are.

MARKUS: And we wanted to restate

the finality of what happened in Infinity War.

There is no "Get Out of Jail Free" card.

This isn't going to be, you know...

"Did we not show you our hands were crossed behind our back?"

McFEELY: Right.

MARKUS: Nope, we're cutting off heads.

JOE: And this is where we understand the pain that Thor is feeling,

clearly, as he takes it out on Thanos.

MARKUS: I love how empty that is.

McFEELY: I was just saying it is, but it's...

It gets a laugh every time I'm in the theater,

or, like, a nervous shock, right?

ANTHONY: People laugh at that, and I was always shocked by that.

McFEELY: But I think the Silvestri score and the long slow walk here make you go,

"Oh, crap. Yeah, this is... We got nothing now. (CHUCKLES)

"Where is this movie going?"

ANTHONY: I always loved Cap's reaction to this here.

It's so amazing what Evans did there.

JOE: I think it might be nervous laughter

'cause it's subverting expectations.

McFEELY: I think it totally is nervous laughter.

JOE: What story are you going to follow now?

Where the hell is this movie going?

ANTHONY: I think some people are delighted

to see Thanos' head chopped off.

MARKUS: I bet they are.

And then these three words do seem to set them back a bit.

ANTHONY: Yeah. McFEELY: Right.

JOE: Well, we wanted them to be resonate.

It's the reason that they come on so slowly,

as sort of a, "I can't believe they're actually doing this"

as each word pops on.

You'll notice that, from a color timing standpoint,

we've altered the mood and the tone of the movie

for, I think, probably the next 20 minutes or so.

McFEELY: You mean, it's cooler?

JOE: It's cooler. It's drained of life.

McFEELY: Sure, that makes sense.

JOE: We went with a sort of fluorescent green in this room.

Everything feels a little off and painful.

McFEELY: Right.

MARKUS: I love that we come back to this very human recovery moment,

where it's not superheroes plotting,

it's people just trying to get through another day after this has happened.

JOE: Well, I think you can count on one hand in both movies,

the times where we exit the point of view of our heroes.

McFEELY: Yeah, show regular people? (CHUCKLES)

JOE: We show regular people. McFEELY: Yeah.

ANTHONY: I remember us talking about this.

You know, it's like, yeah, if you're gonna have a story point

where you kill half of all living things,

you have to go beyond the heroes.

McFEELY: Right. MARKUS: Yeah.

JOE: And seeing every person's point of view of it,

and how it affected the world.

That was the intention with this scene, was to just show you

that everyone is in pain,

and how would you recover from this staggering event?

MARKUS: And I think this is some of the best acting Evans has done.

ANTHONY: Evans? McFEELY: Yeah, it's a lovely moment.

JOE: He's very settled and internal in the scene.

MARKUS: He's feeling the exact opposite of what he's saying.

JOE: That's another great moment. Right there. You see it in his eyes.

McFEELY: Yeah.

ANTHONY: It's hard to get Captain America

to that kind of a moment.

MARKUS: Yeah.

McFEELY: So, again, it's setting the stakes of the world.

This is where we are now.

It's also, just on a writing level,

it's tagging Peggy Carter for now the second time.

It's preparing you for Cap's arc over the course of the movie.

ANTHONY: Talking about it, that's one of my favorite lines in the whole movie...

"Otherwise Thanos..."

McFEELY: "...might as well have killed all of us."

ANTHONY: I love that line.

MARKUS: And now, shortly, you're about to be introduced

to the hero of the entire film.

McFEELY: Right. MARKUS: The savior of the universe.

JOE: The hero of the Infinity Saga.

MARKUS: This rat.

McFEELY: Now, we have a rule in writing that, you know, sort of coincidences...

You're sort of allowed them in Act One. (LAUGHS)

A coincidence late in the movie is perhaps lazy.

I'm delighted that a rat has saved the universe.

ANTHONY: Yes. McFEELY: But it absolutely is,

you know, a coincidence.

MARKUS: Well, when things like this happen, often rats are all that's left.

McFEELY: And arguably, it's one in 14 million chances.

JOE: I was gonna say, there were 14 million versions of this story

where the rat did not step on that button.

MARKUS: And have you seen the last of that rat?

I don't know. (CHUCKLES)

But here we have Scott Lang.

JOE: Now, what's wonderful at times in Infinity War and Endgame

is taking characters, even in Civil War,

who present in different tones in their own franchises,

and pulling them into this tone.

And Paul Rudd's ability to make you care about him

and feel vulnerable is exceptional.

And I think watching what's happened to the world through his eyes

makes it even more painful for us viewers.

And truly for me, one of the saddest moments in the film,

and there are a few,

is when he reconnects with his daughter.

MARKUS: Yeah. McFEELY: It gets very dusty...

JOE: And it's his performance in that moment, and just...

When you have a character that is traditionally funny,

and now they're, you know, they're surrounded by pathos,

- it makes it doubly emotional for you. - McFEELY: Right.

I mean, really, for regular humans, it's this...

It's this San Francisco beat, and it's the grief counseling scene,

and that's pretty much where we go. Everybody else is a superhero.

ANTHONY: Well, it's also... Yeah. That moment where he sees his daughter,

that's coming up here, we must have dealt

with that piece of footage hundreds of times in the editing room,

and I tear up every single time I watch it.

- I can't not tear up when I watch it. - JOE: It's all in his face. It's just...

MARKUS: Well, it's also...

And I think it's an improv. I don't remember writing it.

When he says, "You're so big," it kills me.

JOE: Yeah. ANTHONY: Yeah. He breaks on that.

JOE: Now, this is sort of...

We got to explore, I think, with this five years later,

a bit of "what if" and how the world would be different.

McFEELY: Yeah, that was one of the ideas, was,

you know, when Chris and I sat down,

while we're all shooting Civil War.

In the afternoons when people are doing their jobs,

Chris and I had nothing to do, so we came up with this manifesto,

all the many, many things you could do in these two movies,

and one of them was, you know, the "what if" section.

What if we were able to show alternate versions of our heroes?

But instead of a fantasy, it's really just the natural progression

of a five-year jump after a terrible event.

So this, we did call this sort of the "what if" section.

JOE: And then infusing that with emotion and real stakes.

I think what is so sad about this scene is that any parent,

thinking about missing five years of any of their children's lives...

ANTHONY: Watch Paul Rudd. JOE: ...is profound.

ANTHONY: Watch.

JOE: It's that look right there.

He can't process it.

McFEELY: He wants to cry. Yeah.

- You're so big! - (BOTH LAUGH)

McFEELY: And he's 70 years old. Like, it's crazy.

- (LAUGHTER) - He looks so good.

ANTHONY: Steve, I was gonna mention something just about our process,

what you brought up before, like, in the afternoons,

you were saying when we're shooting Civil War and you and Chris don't have

anything necessarily to do.

I mean, our process on set is always, we start the mornings together

when we're shooting because that's when we'll typically rehearse a scene.

And sometimes during the rehearsal process,

certain issues may come up for a variety of reasons.

We see how the scene's playing and sometimes Steve and Chris

will go away and tweak the scene a little bit

while the actors are getting ready before we actually start shooting.

And it's usually pretty minor stuff,

but it's kind of how we get through our shoot day.

McFEELY: And that can happen on... Big movies can allow that

because we're probably shooting one scene all day.

MARKUS: Yeah. McFEELY: It's different than television,

where you might be doing eight pages, and that's several scenes.

But, again, the screenwriter on a big Marvel movie is...

It's important to have around for the first couple hours,

and then we'll go to craft services and have a bagel.

MARKUS: That's why we're all 300 pounds right now.

ANTHONY: Yeah.

Balance in all things, guys.

MARKUS: This scene is Natasha on the wall.

This is the way she has responded to what has happened.

She refuses to let up, even if it seems somewhat pointless by this point.

Where are you?

RHODES: Mexico.

The Federales found a room full of bodies.

MARKUS: And Scarlett is great here. ANTHONY: Yeah.

JOE: Yeah, I think Scarlett's fantastic at really

conveying the internal life of Widow,

who, to me, is one of my favorite characters.

Again, for characters who can travel a distance,

if we find that that creates the richest arc for them...

She starts as a villain.

Of course, not on screen, but, you know, you go back to,

I think one of the most critical scenes in the life of her character

is in the bedroom in Winter Soldier, between her and Steve Rogers

where she still is, she's still committed

to morally gray, to a morally gray existence.

And Steve says to her,

"I can't trust you if you stay there, if you stay in that space."

McFEELY: Right. MARKUS: Yeah.

JOE: "We can't have a relationship that extends beyond..."

McFEELY: That perspective was her armor. And over the course of several movies,

she put that down and embraced a more heroic point of view,

so much so that she's the last person on the wall.

Really, the point here is that Captain America is thinking of giving up

- and Natasha is not. - JOE: He comes here to convince her

- that maybe it's time to move on. - McFEELY: Yes.

JOE: And that this is an unsolvable problem.

And that maybe they should just focus on the future

and how to take care of people moving forward

because they can't fix what's happened.

My favorite scenes always, in all the movies we've done,

- are between Steve and Natasha. - McFEELY: Yeah.

ANTHONY: Think about how complex this scene is for her.

'Cause yet again, it speaks to the very complex history

that she's had with Steve Rogers, right?

For Natasha, but also her complex... The whole scene started, you know...

Earlier is about her complex history with Hawkeye.

McFEELY: Right. ANTHONY: You know, it's just like...

JOE: Well, you know, she goes on a journey

from individualism to community.

- She is becoming part of a family. - McFEELY: Right.

JOE: And the Avengers are her family, and the world is becoming her family.

And she, you know... Scenes that I love

are her in the bedroom with Cap in Winter Soldier,

her in the church in Civil War,

where she says, you know...

McFEELY: "I didn't want you to be alone."

JOE: "Keeping the family together is more important."

McFEELY: Right. JOE: Right?

Now, she's traveling a distance. She's becoming a leader.

And she's understanding the value of community over self,

which is something that she gained

from her experience with Steve in Winter Soldier.

And here, and this is what we're gonna track

all the way up to that cliff in Vormir, is her willingness to self-sacrifice

to bring back the community and the family

and make it whole again.

I think we both need to get a life.

You first.

(DEVICE CHIMES)

SCOTT: (ON SPEAKERS) Oh, hi, hi! Uh, is anyone home?

This is, uh, Scott Lang.

JOE: Now, the plot begins.

ANTHONY: Right. McFEELY: It's basically the act break.

ANTHONY: The plot begins, and also we get to watch

- the amazing dexterity of Paul Rudd. - McFEELY: Yeah.

ANTHONY: This scene is... The way he can dance...

McFEELY: Right, 'cause it's pure exposition.

This is some broccoli, some vegetables. You gotta get through this scene.

JOE: And the direction was...

ANTHONY: But he's carrying emotional weight in this scene,

but he's also very funny. It's very complex.

JOE: Well, he's only had

a very limited amount of time to process what's happened.

Everyone else has had five years.

McFEELY: Well, however long it takes to drive across the country.

JOE: Exactly, he got in the van, drove across country.

He's frantic, he hasn't slept. He thinks he may have a solution,

and he goes to the only people he knows who might,

one, believe him, and, two, be able to execute the plan.

Or at least, you know, help him move forward with his thoughts.

ANTHONY: This is a great moment where you guys wrote a great line,

and the actor just fully nails it, when he...

What's his prelude line to where he goes,

"Is that anybody's sandwich?"

- It's totally unpredictable. - McFEELY: Oh, God.

MARKUS: I forget what he... McFEELY: That's right, that's right.

MARKUS: But, yeah, that sandwich is the secret star of this scene.

McFEELY: I think it's just 'cause I like peanut butter sandwiches.

ANTHONY: (CHUCKLES) Who doesn't?

(MUFFLED) So...

what I'm saying is...

JOE: Again, when you take a character

that normally presents as funny, and you...

You put the burden of stakes on him

that are, you know, half the universe,

it unlocks something else in him as a character,

and this frantic, desperate quality,

I think is really a unique shade for Scott Lang.

McFEELY: Yeah, he carries that into the next scene with Tony.

- He sort of gets into it with him. - JOE: Yeah.

MARKUS: It's also... This is, you know,

sort of mirrors us sitting in a room, trying to figure out

how the hell to get out of the corner

we wrote ourselves in at the end of Infinity War,

and entertaining the idea of a time machine,

and then feeling that

that was the stupidest idea you could possibly have,

but then realizing that the Ant-Man franchise,

which we hadn't dealt with yet,

had legitimately, if you believe the science,

the seeds of a time machine in it,

which was a breakthrough.

ANTHONY: That's a good point, Chris.

We do all qualify a lot of our pitches to one another with,

- "It's crazy. It's crazy." -MARKUS: (CHUCKLES) Yeah.

McFEELY: "It's crazy. It's crazy. I know it's crazy. We should stop."

- I get emails... - MARKUS: "Okay, this sucks, but..."

JOE: Ultimately we realized that, look,

time travel doesn't exist.

(CHUCKLES) So it is a ludicrous notion. It's a construct of genre filmmaking.

And, you know, I think when we all bought in on it

was when we realized the emotional scenes

that could take place between the characters

and people that they loved who are no longer with them.

McFEELY: It's those scenes, we'll get to them, are gonna do many things.

They're gonna collect stones, but they're gonna repair people.

JOE: So, ultimately, if you're entertained

by them coming up with the plan,

executing the plan, and then you're emotionally fulfilled

by what they do while they're executing the plan,

- it's worth the construct. - ANTHONY: That's a nice Audi.

MARKUS: Speaking of emotional change,

seeing Tony with his daughter is a whole new Tony.

McFEELY: Right. It's a brand-new Tony. It gives him stakes immediately.

Tiny thing, it's planting Rescue

so that Pepper in armor doesn't come out of nowhere.

Quantum fluctuation messes with the Planck scale...

which then triggers the Deutsch Proposition. Can we agree on that?

JOE: Tony's only choice here is to protect his family.

McFEELY: Right.

JOE: Because what they are recommending could,

A, kill them,

B, mess with the current status quo.

McFEELY: In some unspecified way.

JOE: They could do something irreversible

that could take his daughter away from him.

McFEELY: Right. MARKUS: And that's very much a new Tony.

I mean, contrast this guy with, say, the one who testified

in front of Congress in Iron Man 2. He was just...

"I'll do whatever I want with my technology,

"and everything will be fine, 'cause I'm Tony Stark."

Here he's a very cautious,

- protective kind of person. - JOE: Wizened.

McFEELY: And just on a blunt level, it's the hero

refusing the call to action.

JOE: Well, and what Tony does is

he takes all of his energy and puts it behind

whatever his point of view is.

He does it in Civil War. He does it here.

McFEELY: That's true.

...is based on Back to the Future?

- Is it? - No.

Good. You had me worried there.

'Cause that would be horseshit.

JOE: His belief system is critical to who he is as a character.

Even though it's buried,

or he buries it,

and uses a layer of snark and humor to, you know, cover that...

What we'll discover later in the movie is a very big heart.

McFEELY: Right.

...to bring everyone back, and you're telling me that you won't even...

That's right, Scott. I won't even.

JOE: And this was a tough scene,

I think to write and to execute because, you know, they are coming to

perhaps the greatest hero in the Marvel Universe

and asking him to help reverse what has been done.

McFEELY: Right.

JOE: And he needs to have an emotional reason to tell them no.

McFEELY: Right, and they can't express it so much. This is delicate.

You can't hammer home the point, like,

"You should risk your daughter's life on this plan." (CHUCKLES) Right?

JOE: Steve knows it. It's the look in his eyes.

It's what he says.

"Well, he's not wrong.

"We could be messing with things here that we don't understand."

ANTHONY: Well, that's the thing, too.

The premise here is a very complicated premise, right?

You know, bringing people back from five years ago

is a messy proposition any way you look at it,

not even talking about the time travel complexities of it.

You know, that's something I know some people like to think about,

after watching the movie...

McFEELY: It's like, if you were in a plane,

what happens now when you come back?

ANTHONY: Or what happens to everybody who's remarried...

McFEELY: That's right. JOE: Or you have kids. How do you...

But that's, I think, one of the most compelling things about the movie,

is doubling down at the end and not reversing it.

McFEELY: Oh, right, yeah.

JOE: So the Marvel Universe, moving forward,

takes place five years in the future,

- and it's a really complicated future. - McFEELY: We gotta own it.

JOE: So we gotta talk about Professor Hulk here.

McFEELY: Yes, we called him Smart Hulk throughout the shoot.

I guess it's okay to talk about how his arc, this event,

the creation of Smart Hulk, used to take place in Infinity War.

He was fighting in Wakanda.

The whole arc of the story

was Banner and Hulk were not getting along.

Hulk wouldn't come out to help him.

And at his hour of greatest need, they make some sort of compromise,

and Smart Hulk rips out of the armor

and beats the crap out of Cull Obsidian and destroys him.

It was pretty clear that the movie could not handle this weird success.

The movie needed to just stay

in its succession of losses in the third act,

which meant some hustling on the part of VFX late in the game.

MARKUS: Yeah, cutting that out was a decision made

during the editing process on Infinity War,

by which point we had already shot Endgame.

JOE: We had shown it to a few audience, to a few test audiences,

and none of them would accept it.

I think it was just happening too quickly.

ANTHONY: Maybe that's it. We just didn't have enough...

'Cause we were in the climax of the movie,

I don't think we had enough space to really tell that story...

McFEELY: We did not have it. JOE: ...in a way that felt satisfying,

where you weren't just focusing on,

"Oh, my God, there's a madman with almost a complete Gauntlet

"who's gonna undo half the universe."

McFEELY: Right, imagine before Thanos shows up,

we had a scene where Hulk comes out of the bushes,

and Natasha says, "Hey, big guy, sun's getting low."

And he says, "Oh, Natasha, that's not... We don't need that now."

You know, and speaks in perfect English,

and you're supposed to be kind of delighted and jarred by it,

and then they're all gonna get dusted. It was just tonally off.

JOE: Instead, they were all jarred. McFEELY: (CHUCKLES) That's right.

ANTHONY: It's amazing how well it worked out because the fact that in five years,

I mean, one of the great joys of this was thinking about

how every Avenger has their own

unique road forward through those five years,

and that gave Banner a very unique road, and probably,

perhaps the most exciting road.

McFEELY: Well, the snap worked out for him in a way, right?

He is his best self. He is sort of the last remaining superhero.

Many Russos want to take pictures with him in the diner.

For most other people, I guess Tony aside, it didn't work out.

JOE: Yes, that was my other daughter, Lia.

I have to mention that, so I don't get in trouble.

- (McFEELY LAUGHS) - The other thing, yes,

I think the core conflict of who Banner is,

is that there are two characters fighting over a host body,

and they hate each other,

and that's been the story with him for years.

At some point, Banner, who's an intelligent human being,

decides, "What if we put the hate aside,

"and we try to resolve this in a way that is holistic?"

And he merges the two of them.

Shit!

MORGAN STARK: Shit!

(WHISPERS) What are you doing up, little miss?

- Shit. - Nope. We don't say that.

Only Mommy says that word.

She coined it. It belongs to her.

Why are you up?

JOE: And then we should catch up now.

We just saw, a second ago, Tony with Peter Parker's photo.

Clearly, this is like his other child that he's lost.

You know, and that's...

McFEELY: It spurs him to action? JOE: Spurs him to action.

Makes him consider that, you know,

even though he has this child, he still lost a child,

and there may be potential to bring that other child back,

and he's now in conflict.

McFEELY: Right. JOE: He solves...

McFEELY: Time travel, relatively quickly.

MARKUS: Well, he's been given...

JOE: Built on the shoulders of Hank Pym, by the way.

MARKUS: Yeah, Hank Pym and Scott Lang have given him a scientific lead,

and Tony has never been able to let one of those lie.

Love you tons.

MARKUS: And of course...

I love you 3,000.

MARKUS: "I love you 3,000," which is now a meme and a T-shirt.

(WHISPERS) 3,000. That's crazy.

Go to bed...

McFEELY: Robert's ridiculously good with kids.

ANTHONY: Really.

I hear from a lot of people

that some of their favorite scenes in the movie

are when Tony is being a father

with his daughter here.

Some people just love to see that dimension of him.

JOE: And this is him basically asking Pepper for permission.

McFEELY: Right. He doesn't make decisions on his own anymore.

It's five years later. He's a family man.

JOE: And, again, he knows what's at stake.

And he's seeking counsel here

from the smartest person in his life.

ANTHONY: I think he regrets what he's done.

He just needs her to...

That's right.

JOE: And she points out the essential conflict to him as a hero,

which is he can never rest

until everyone is safe.

Nope. And I can't help everybody.

MARKUS: Which will come back.

Sorta seems like you can.

Not if I stop.

I can put a pin in it right now and stop.

JOE: Again, another...

McFEELY: Adults in the room talking. JOE: Yeah.

McFEELY: This is why I'm particularly proud of the movie,

but I also recognize it's different than many of the other Marvel movies.

It's three hours in part because we let people talk

and work stuff out, and it's not all action.

I mean, there's no action in this movie until the third act.

MARKUS: There's a lot of humanity in here.

ANTHONY: Yeah.

JOE: Sublime acting on both parts. McFEELY: Well, that, too, for sure.

ANTHONY: This part of the movie is not for the six-year-olds.

McFEELY: No. MARKUS: And yet,

I don't think they mind.

McFEELY: Smart, hip six-year-olds.

JOE: Every time Gwyneth Paltrow comes to the set,

it reminds me that she is one of the greatest actresses in the world,

and, you know, how lucky we are to have someone like her playing Pepper

and being able to give us a scene like that.

It's literally the resolve scene between those two characters.

McFEELY: Right. JOE: And ultimately,

which leads to Tony's death.

...no idea. We're talking about time travel here.

Either it's all a joke...

JOE: Smart Hulk is one of those characters

that we really didn't see in full,

until, like, the last week before we delivered the movie

because the VFX take so long on a character like that.

ANTHONY: We should give credit to Mark Ruffalo,

who, obviously, is an amazing actor.

He worked so hard figuring this character out,

because, you know, he's been playing these two versions.

You know, he's been playing Banner. He's been playing Hulk,

but sort of figuring out who the combination of them is,

was a real journey for him. We did a lot of experimentation.

Spent a lot of time on a motion capture stage,

playing with different ideas with Mark.

And he worked really hard to find this character.

JOE: Well, 'cause the peanut butter and chocolate of those two

would create something else.

MARKUS: This was also another time, like,

when we first saw the rendering of Thanos.

When we first saw a sort of crude version of Smart Hulk...

- It's Scott. - STEVE: As a baby.

MARKUS: ...that Dan DeLeeuw and his team had worked up,

we realized how funny it was going to be.

JOE: Yeah, and seeing him behave. McFEELY: Right. Yeah.

Human behavior, small human behavior in this body

automatically becomes charming, yeah.

JOE: And I think what the value to this scene in the movie is, you know,

the laughs don't start until, really, Paul shows up

and starts talking about the quantum realm with Steve and Natasha.

And then they slowly build. They build you back in.

So, we... You know, this...

I think this movie has a really nice shape to it,

where you come in and you are...

You swim around in the waters of pain and loss,

and then it slowly starts to pull you out of that

and then the diner gets funnier,

and then this scene certainly

is the funniest scene in the movie up till that point.

It also relates the tone with which we're going to be

dealing with time travel in this movie.

McFEELY: Right. That second hour is often for laughs.

JOE: Yes. We're gonna have fun.

Here's a classic Tony Stark entrance.

ANTHONY: Yep. He loves his cars.

JOE: And he loves an entrance.

ANTHONY: I love the restraint that you guys wrote this reunion,

or reconciliation, with.

McFEELY: Where it doesn't get sloppy?

ANTHONY: Yeah, exactly. It's sort of...

It's a really hard... You know, it's like,

how do these two repair the water that's under the bridge between them?

McFEELY: Right. MARKUS: Yeah.

McFEELY: They both are ready for it.

It's been five years. The five years helps.

MARKUS: Yeah. McFEELY: A lot.

JOE: It's been, since Civil War, has it been six years?

McFEELY: Oh, sorry, the five-year jump, but, yeah, it depends on the timeline.

But if we say it's 2016, it's been seven years.

- (McFEELY LAUGHS) - JOE: Eight years? I don't know.

ANTHONY: Wow.

JOE: We'll let someone else figure that out.

MARKUS: Well, they finally need each other again.

McFEELY: Yeah.

Keep what I found, I have to, at all costs.

JOE: And this is, I think, the best way that Tony can apologize.

Or that he knows how to apologize.

McFEELY: Right, well, with the answer.

JOE: Right. MARKUS: With the answer

and with the fine offer of one complimentary shield.

McFEELY: That's right.

ANTHONY: The offer of what, sorry?

McFEELY: Complimentary shield. MARKUS: This shield,

which we haven't seen since...

You know, it's hard to believe we did an entire Avengers movie

- without seeing that thing. - JOE: Yeah.

ANTHONY: It is hard to believe.

JOE: But that's the, I mean...

That's the value, I think, in serialized storytelling

and telling a mosaic like this, is that you...

If you make choices that take years to resolve,

the audience feels that.

Because they, too, have waited years for this to resolve.

And it has been since 2016,

since these characters have had a pleasant scene between each other.

ANTHONY: Another...

There's a shot you typically associate with an Avenger movie.

MARKUS: Yeah. McFEELY: Right.

MARKUS: I remember sitting on set

watching many takes of a close-up of a taco

wondering, "What are we doing?"

(LAUGHTER)

It's all worth it.

JOE: Again, we're slowly tonally shifting you

away from Infinity War and the first part of this film

into a place where we're...

You know, we go from pain and loss to celebration of these characters

and who they are together.

And this is also part of the "what if" scenario, right? Is the...

You saw the Avengers collect in the first Avengers film.

McFEELY: Yeah, this is a callback to that.

JOE: And now you're collecting this sort of odd, broken version...

McFEELY: Broken Avengers, that's right.

JOE: ...of Avengers and how they've all changed since that first film

and they're gonna re-form a family.

ANTHONY: So of all the journeys

these characters have had during these five years,

one of the ones that brings me the most joy and delight is Thor's

because the depths that that character had been driven to

over the course of his arc through the MCU,

and especially most recently in Infinity War.

He lost his mother, he lost his father, his planet was destroyed.

Thanos shows up in the beginning of Infinity War,

kills his brother, kills Heimdall, kills many of his people.

Thor's sort of mission of vengeance in Infinity War ends in failure.

Like, you can't get any lower.

So where do you go when you're at the bottom?

Sometimes, the road forward is like the...

It's amazing what the human psyche will do.

It's like sometimes the only road forward is humor.

MARKUS: Yeah, and to shut down everything that hurts.

JOE: He lets go. McFEELY: Right.

ANTHONY: Exactly. And on a storytelling level, it's like,

how do you bring an audience forward in a story like that?

McFEELY: Yeah. Again, the five-year jump

should treat each of your six major characters differently.

And Thor went inward.

Right? He gave up.

JOE: They all process their grief in different ways.

McFEELY: Exactly.

Clint's is similar, but different, right? He gets rageful.

Hulk puts it all together.

Banner sort of grows as a result of it, but not everyone can do that.

THOR: Are you here about the cable?

MARKUS: Thor is clearly numbing the pain.

McFEELY: Right.

JOE: He's regressing.

ANTHONY: And you know what? He survives by doing that.

McFEELY: Right. ANTHONY: You know?

JOE: And this is, by the way, I should point out,

the performance from Hemsworth is very difficult,

to play pathos and humor at the same time.

McFEELY: He makes it look really easy. JOE: He does.

McFEELY: I think he enjoyed doing this.

There's sort of an image that he has out in the world

that he got to play with.

And I remember watching this on set thinking,

"Oh, my God. This guy is just...

"He's bringing all shades to these just couple of minutes."

JOE: Well, you have to commit to it emotionally.

And by doing that, you make it funnier, but you also make it sadder.

McFEELY: Right.

JOE: And those two can compete with each other

and cancel each other out if they're done incorrectly.

It is why this is such a small target to hit as an actor.

Very few actors that can pull it off.

...rip off your arms, and shove them up your butt!

ANTHONY: He really hates that kid.

- NoobMaster. - McFEELY: NoobMaster69.

Let me know if he bothers you again, okay?

Thank you very much. I will.

So, you guys want a drink? What are we drinking?

I've got beer, tequila...

JOE: I mean, I wanna see this.

I wanna see, like, seven seasons of this show.

(McFEELY LAUGHS)

Thor, Korg, and Miek hanging out in this cabin.

This feels like a sublime BBC comedy.

MARKUS: I'm also very fond of the fact that

the magical weapon he took the entire last movie to get a hold of

is now a bottle opener.

ANTHONY: And kudos to our sound design team.

That ring out on that bottle cap opening is very sweet.

JOE: Now here's the transition of the scene. It comes in, it's like...

It's much broader at the beginning of the scene, and then suddenly...

McFEELY: Slowly I turned... (CHUCKLES)

JOE: Suddenly he goes deep and emotional,

and you can see all the pain that he's hiding.

Um, yeah, we don't actually, say that name in here.

JOE: And I think it's what keeps the scene from becoming unmoored,

tonally.

McFEELY: He's a child there.

JOE: He is. Look, he clearly blames himself for the loss.

That's why he chopped Thanos' head off.

He had an opportunity to do it at the end of the last movie, didn't.

He wanted to enunciate his vengeance,

and he failed.

Nope.

JOE: And what's great about this character is that we commit to it

and he doesn't change by the end of the film.

- He continues to be this person. - McFEELY: Right.

ANTHONY: He's gonna carry this experience

with him forever moving forward.

You don't just wash it off.

He doesn't just go back to being who he was.

McFEELY: Well, that's again the... MARKUS: Yeah, he's sober at the end.

McFEELY: That's true.

MARKUS: He is accepting who he is. That's his whole arc.

It's what everything Frigga tells him, is to accept who you are,

and this is who he is.

McFEELY: Endgame is the concluding chapter

for most of our OG Avengers' arcs.

And remember where he started in Thor.

Right? And Thor 2.

The obligation of the throne.

He thought he wanted it.

It certainly had been thrust upon him. It was expected of him.

Expectations weighed on him his whole life.

And the arc that he goes through is to get rid of expectations,

is to embrace the guy that he is, not the one he's supposed to be.

JOE: Which I think is one of the more powerful messages of the movie.

McFEELY: Yep.

JOE: Embrace who you are and not who people expect you to be.

(SNIFFS)

(CHUCKLES QUIETLY)

There's beer on the ship.

(BOTTLE CLATTERS)

What kind?

JOE: Again, it ends with a joke, but he's got tears in his eyes.

McFEELY: Right. JOE: Which is what grounds it.

MARKUS: And it's a pretty rapid gearshift in tones to come to this.

ANTHONY: Yeah. McFEELY: Right.

JOE: It's like each of these characters are in their own movie.

And they have to be pulled out of it and brought back to the main story.

McFEELY: Do you guys wanna talk about your influences here for this?

Which is essentially a oner for...

Is it the whole time?

JOE: Yeah, it's a oner through to the reveal of Natasha.

But it is, you know,

- shot over the course of two nights. - ANTHONY: Two nights, yeah.

McFEELY: Two nights in Atlanta to look like Tokyo.

I wanna say you kept referring to Black Rain?

Is that right? (LAUGHS)

JOE: It was the sort of neon look of Black Rain.

Of course, the water drops falling from the sky.

ANTHONY: Yeah, look, part of the fun, again,

is to show the wide variety of experience

that all these people were going through.

McFEELY: That's right.

ANTHONY: And so by pushing things stylistically here,

we had a perfect excuse for doing that

'cause Hawkeye had gone to such a dark and fringe place

- compared to everybody else. - McFEELY: Right.

And remember, just a small thing,

had we not started this movie with his family snapping,

- this wouldn't be nearly as effective. - ANTHONY: No. You're right.

McFEELY: You'd have to remind yourself who the hell this guy is.

It had been a year since you'd seen him.

JOE: I think there's very few directions you could go as a character

when your entire family dies in front of you,

or disappears in front of you.

ANTHONY: Do you see the flare in Jeremy's eyes

when he's performing that scene,

- when he realizes what's happened? -McFEELY: Yes.

ANTHONY: There's an anger in him, you know.

JOE: And now he's traveling the world

punishing bad people who survived the snap.

So this is a way for him to feel...

Feel some sort of sense of purpose,

even though it is a dark purpose.

You shouldn't be here.

McFEELY: It's also the beginning... Again, scenes do more than one thing.

The beginning of, you know, a four-or-five beat arc

of Natasha and Clint, you know,

reminding you of their relationship, what they'll do for each other.

JOE: There's no one who could have pulled him out of this other than her.

No one else shows up and gets him to come home.

MARKUS: Well, it's also...

It's implied that this is essentially what he did for her...

McFEELY: That's right.

MARKUS: ...when he pulled her out of being a Russian agent.

JOE: That's right. It comes full circle, their relationship.

Right? 'Cause he had an opportunity to kill her, and he...

McFEELY: Made another call. JOE: Yeah.

And changed her life.

And now here she is changing his.

ANTHONY: These actors understand each other so well. I mean, like this...

Scarlett and Jeremy are able to pull out of one another

so much subtlety in their performances.

McFEELY: Think about it, she works well with a lot of people.

Like, she gets good stuff out of Evans.

I mean, like, she's...

ANTHONY: Yeah. McFEELY: ...maybe the linchpin.

One side there, Lebowski.

Ratchet, how's it going?

It's Rocket.

Take it easy. You're only a genius on Earth, pal.

(THOR BELCHES)

RHODES: Time travel suit, not bad.

JOE: Now, here we go.

Time travel,

humor, interpersonal relationships

between the characters that we're playing with that, you know,

in a way that you've never seen before because they've all changed.

MARKUS: Yeah. And yet,

laying out some very important rules and clarifications

that would not be particularly trackable

if it wasn't an entertaining scene at the same time.

So we're telling you how many Pym Particles we have,

letting you know that our time theories

- are maybe not the ones you expect. - McFEELY: Are different, right.

Right.

ANTHONY: And like before, Chris, how you were saying,

sometimes the scenes are proxies for our own conversations.

MARKUS: (LAUGHING) Yeah.

ANTHONY: This scene is ripped right out of...

McFEELY: That's right.

ANTHONY: ...a late-night session.

McFEELY: Conference room in Burbank, yeah.

Time doesn't work that way.

Changing the past doesn't change the future.

JOE: I mean, this is...

I love Ruffalo's performance here

and the way that...

McFEELY: He's strangely

- the adult in the room. - JOE: ...Hulk moves.

Yeah.

Well, he is. He's trying to bring sanity to the situation.

He's a scientist.

MARKUS: And speaking of scientists,

his explanation is essentially what we were told

by genuine quantum physicists

brought into the writers' room to explain time travel to us.

MARKUS: They said this. McFEELY: That's right.

JOE: By the way, this is...

This movie has my favorite performance from Don Cheadle in all the films.

McFEELY: He has a lot of fun stuff, yeah.

It's mostly almost all funny,

but, yeah, Cheadle's doing good work here.

- All right, Clint. - (BEEPING)

JOE: Don is an amazing actor, and again...

MARKUS: Supersmart. JOE: ...the embarrassment of riches

when you're working on these movies.

How deep the bench goes on these films is just insane

from a talent standpoint.

And then we thought if they have to test this,

certainly the most compelling person to test it would be Hawkeye,

who could revisit his family, if only momentarily.

ANTHONY: Well, also, I think it was us trying to honor stakes, as well,

which is the idea that...

Well, Ant-Man was trapped in the quantum realm for five years

and something very bad just happened to him

when Smart Hulk was experimenting.

So it's dangerous to volunteer for time travel experimentation.

Who's motivated on that level?

McFEELY: Who's got a bit of a death wish?

Right.

MARKUS: Again, props to the effects team,

because those boots don't exist.

JOE: Yeah, that entire suit is CG. MARKUS: That is amazing.

ANTHONY: The way the effects team designed the wrinkles on those boots.

I was just like...

- They're so imperfect, it's perfect. - MARKUS: Yeah, and they've got...

- They've got mud on them. - JOE: And none of this suit exists.

MARKUS: It's fantastic.

McFEELY: But it was important to have sort of unifying outfits.

It's a new wrinkle for the Avengers,

the idea that they're gonna have a team lineup,

you know, that has a practical reason.

JOE: And the tragedy of that moment is that clearly

they had put a timer

on Clint's trip back to the past

to make sure that he, in fact...

McFEELY: Didn't stay. JOE: ...did return, yes.

Hey. Hey, look at me.

You okay?

ANTHONY: We did a version of this scene

where Hawkeye attacks Smart Hulk

'cause he's so angry about being pulled back.

JOE: He's kidding.

He confused Steve.

- Steve was trying to remember... - McFEELY: I'm there usually every day,

- but sometimes I go and have a bagel. - JOE: I thought he was gonna talk

about the orange slice joke that we cut out of the end of it.

ANTHONY: Oh, my God, I forgot about that.

JOE: Where Rudd is holding an orange slice

and says, "Anybody want an orange slice?"

McFEELY: So this is what we call sort of the time travel brainstorming scene.

Right? Is that where we are?

JOE: Yeah, where you start to lay out the plan, right?

They know that it can work.

They know the suits work.

That Tony's, you know, space-time GPS works.

ANTHONY: Plotting the time heist. JOE: Right?

And that you can navigate the quantum realm to other points in time.

McFEELY: It was when hitting upon this idea

that the second act would be

going back to the movies of the MCU and seeing them from new points of view.

The idea that we could sort of talk about them

and sort of comment on them was kind of delightful.

This is a good example.

Thor: The Dark World has a kind of confusing backstory

that involves Dark Elves

and an every 5,000-year...

MARKUS: And a stone that is not a stone. McFEELY: ...astronomical event.

Right. So we thought we would...

It's called hanging a lantern on something.

JOE: Well, you get the opportunity to go back and have a little fun.

McFEELY: That's right. ANTHONY: Yes.

McFEELY: There was an embarrassment of riches here.

We probably had 15 pages of stuff.

JOE: Oh, yeah. ANTHONY: Amazing, you're right.

JOE: There was a scene that we cut that was entertaining,

but it ultimately didn't work, where,

if you remember, they were watching the Battle in New York.

MARKUS: Oh, yeah. McFEELY: That's right.

JOE: Right? And Rocket had a great joke, where he was like,

"Oh, my God. How long did you fight these guys?"

And he was referring to the Chitauri.

And I think Steve Rogers says, "A couple of hours."

McFEELY: "Hours?" (LAUGHS)

JOE: "All you gotta do is blow up the mothership!"

McFEELY: "Everybody knows that!"

JOE: "Everybody knows that!"

McFEELY: "They're the suckiest army in the galaxy."

JOE: Yeah. ANTHONY: Here, Hemsworth...

JOE: It felt a little too inside baseball.

ANTHONY: After Hemsworth performed this scene a couple of times,

we shot him first in a couple of camera setups,

all the actors in the room applauded him.

JOE: Yeah.

Again, emotional commitment to a comedic performance

sets up him seeing his mother in the past.

McFEELY: That's right. He just... JOE: And what she means to him.

McFEELY: ...name-dropped her there. JOE: And there, we've got...

One of our favorite Easter eggs in the movie is the Ben & Jerry's.

MARKUS: Oh, yes.

McFEELY: Hunka-Hulka is a deep cut there, yeah.

MARKUS: Is that... McFEELY: It's Hunka-Hunka Burnin' Fudge.

MARKUS: Hunka-Hulka Burnin' Fudge.

Do you wanna go to space? You wanna go to space, puppy?

JOE: And now we're taking each scene to sort of remind you

where the stones existed in the past,

which characters were involved in those moments with the stones,

so that as those scenes start to reappear in the film,

hopefully, you remember them.

McFEELY: It should be noted, I've seen this on the Internet

that Nebula doesn't know about the exchange that's required at Vormir.

No one knows other than anybody who was there.

She just knows her sister didn't come back.

JOE: She knows her sister went there with her father

and her sister didn't come back, and he left with the stone.

So only assumptions can be made about what happens on that planet,

but who knows?

She could have tried to stop him and he murdered her.

We have no idea.

ANTHONY: He could have simply murdered her,

because he finally got what he wanted.

McFEELY: That's right. Got what he wanted

and, "You betrayed me."

JOE: The only one who really knows is Red Skull.

McFEELY: Right.

STEVE: All right. We have a plan.

Six stones, three teams, one shot.

ANTHONY: Speaking of Red Skull, have you guys thought about

whether or not Cap runs into Red Skull when he's returning the Soul Stone?

McFEELY: He would have to. MARKUS: Many times.

JOE: Yes, he would have to. McFEELY: Well, I guess,

if Red Skull has been released from his bonds...

MARKUS: I don't think... He's not released.

McFEELY: Well, what's he doing there? ANTHONY: At the exact moment...

JOE: The exact moment the stone... MARKUS: He's the guardian.

McFEELY: But there's no Soul Stone there.

MARKUS: But it may come back.

McFEELY: But he goes back the moment before.

Yeah, that's true.

ANTHONY: It's fun to think about.

JOE: Here they are in their suits.

As you said, this is a new team, a new mission.

Costumes just represent either identity,

emotional state, storytelling,

and when they're working at their best.

And this is storytelling. This is...

- A new team has collected... - McFEELY: That's right.

JOE: ...for their greatest mission.

Whatever it takes.

JOE: And it includes some of the Avengers and some of the Guardians.

ANTHONY: Everybody's an Avenger now. MARKUS: Some of the Ant-Men.

SMART HULK: Trackers engaged.

You promise to bring that back in one piece, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, I'll do my best.

JOE: Clearly, they had shrunk the ship

prior to departure

for traveling purposes, right?

McFEELY: They're giving out Pym Particles.

JOE: It's a little easier to travel with a small ship.

Great. By the way, this is a moment to talk about Alan Silvestri.

- That score is phenomenal there. - ANTHONY: Yeah.

McFEELY: Literally, it's one of his best. And he has a lot of bests.

JOE: And that Avengers theme, I think, has become

so Pavlovian, in a way.

It's an amazing tool to have as a filmmaker,

a theme that is that resonant and memorable and that can...

ANTHONY: Rousing. JOE: Rousing, and pull the emotions

out of the audience the moment that they hear it.

And now here we are sort of reinventing

famous moments from the Marvel Universe.

Just yards away, in an alley...

McFEELY: (CHUCKLING) Just this...

JOE: Yeah.

MARKUS: The hilarious excess of the original.

JOE: I can't remember, was this scripted?

McFEELY: Yeah. Yeah. MARKUS: Yeah.

JOE: I just remember one of our stunt players going ape (BLEEP) as...

McFEELY: Oh, as the original Hulk?

No, yeah, the idea was that Hulk was gonna do something awful

and embarrass the heck out of Smart Hulk.

ANTHONY: Yeah. It led to him...

MARKUS: This half-hearted growling from Ruffalo is...

JOE: Yeah, an act. Yeah, that was an improv

on the motion capture stage, I believe.

McFEELY: What was?

JOE: Him walking out there and doing that.

MARKUS: And here we have...

JOE: It used to end with just him saying,

- "I'm sort of embarrassed." -McFEELY: "It's gratuitous."

JOE: Yeah, "It's gratuitous." Then he would jump away.

I think that might have been...

ANTHONY: First, it came from our visual effects team, actually.

They animated a version of that that then we tried to reenact

on the motion capture stage.

But the idea came from Animation, of him going... (GROWLS)

MARKUS: And this is one of those delightful things,

is we realized that we could bring back dead characters

as long as we're traveling through time,

and the Ancient One died in Doctor Strange,

but she would be the keeper of the Time Stone during this period.

JOE: What's fun about Smart Hulk is that he has Hulk's aggression.

Let's start over, shall we?

JOE: Banner is different.

He's not as sort of pensive...

ANTHONY: It's a combination of the two. JOE: ...and thoughtful and awkward.

- Talk about dead characters... - McFEELY: That's right.

JOE: Loki makes a return.

MARKUS: Actually appears in a couple of these.

McFEELY: That's right. Yeah, tons of Loki.

All right.

McFEELY: This was shot in Durham Cathedral?

JOE: That is correct.

McFEELY: In the UK in April of2017,

a full two years before it would come out.

MARKUS: Yeah, this is one of the only, a couple things we shot

during the shooting of Infinity War for Endgame.

JOE: What can be compelling about these scenes

is how they don't go to plan, right, how they go wrong.

And they can go wrong because characters are ill-equipped,

a mistake happens, something unexpected happens,

or you're emotionally ill-equipped.

And Thor is not prepared

emotionally for what he is seeing.

ANTHONY: Well, this is a guy, again... JOE: He's broken.

ANTHONY: He's been repressing himself

and he can't do it any longer, seeing her.

McFEELY: Again, this is a stone collection section, right?

We're gonna go back and get six MacGuffins, God help me,

then bring them back to solve the problem,

but if each one of them is just picking one up

- or some kind of heist... - JOE: A shopping trip.

McFEELY: A shopping trip, it's not...

- It's not worth the real estate. - MARKUS: Yeah.

McFEELY: So this is a particularly valuable

piece of real estate here where...

Rocket, right here, by the way, gets to express why he's in the movie.

Right? "This is how I feel about what we're doing."

And then, of course, in the next few scenes,

Thor's gonna get to address issues with his mom.

...plenty of people who are only kind of gone...

...and you can help them.

JOE: And this is a rare emotional moment for Rocket.

McFEELY: Right.

...make schmoopy talk to Pretty Pants...

and when she's not looking, suck out the Infinity Stone...

and help me get my family back?

JOE: One of our favorite characters.

Rocket. He reminds me of Louie De Palma from Taxi.

(McFEELY LAUGHS)

MARKUS: He's about the same height.

- You can do this. - (EXHALES)

You can do this.

ANTHONY: But again, a complex scene.

Credit to Sean Gunn, who performs Rocket on set.

I can't do this.

All right, heartbreaker, she's alone. This is our shot.

JOE: He and Thor make a fantastic odd couple.

McFEELY: Yeah, it's one of the few pairings we repeated.

JOE: Yeah.

Well, it's sort of a...

Because it changes so dramatically from what it was in Infinity War.

McFEELY: That's a good point. It's almost like a new pairing,

against depressed Thor.

JOE: Yeah, it almost inverts in a way,

where Thor is rooting for...

I mean Rocket's rooting for the godlike Thor,

and now he's trying to pull him together.

- Hey. - We got this.

JOE: For viewers who are paying attention, this is your first hint

that these two are on a doomed mission.

"Watch each other's six."

MARKUS: Yeah. It's one of the joys of

making this kind of wish-fulfillment movie

is you can take two characters

who are probably the two most Earth-bound Avengers,

put them in a spaceship, and send them through space

and it all makes sense. (CHUCKLES)

JOE: And just a little reminder of their history together.

These two are another great odd couple...

McFEELY: Right.

JOE: ...who also

have some physical issues over which they can relate.

McFEELY: Right, their one moment really comes

when she puts her hand through the energy bars.

Note that each one of these stone missions

has a different purpose in the film.

This one gets the antagonist back on story.

And it also does a lot of things with Nebula and her story.

ANTHONY: Which is a huge turning point in the movie.

MARKUS: Yeah. McFEELY: Yeah.

And took a while.

I think it took us a while to come up with

- duplicate Wi-Fi issues. - (McFEELY AND MARKUS CHUCKLE)

JOE: And here is another dead character.

ANTHONY: Big moment. JOE: Now, of course,

this is not the same character.

This is a character who doesn't have the same emotional connection

to anyone else in the film.

Especially to Quill.

Doesn't have the same memories.

That's a unique thing that you can play with in a time travel film,

is revisiting dead characters

who could become part of the story going forward,

but are not the same people.

McFEELY: It takes a lot of juggling.

You have to remember this is a Gamora who is probably a day or two away

from the beginning of Guardians 1,

where she is sent to Xandar

to go steal the orb from Quill,

which means that she's already thinking of betraying Thanos.

She's not fully under his spell.

ANTHONY: I love that about it, though.

She's in such a different place than Gamora is back here...

- I mean, than Nebula. - McFEELY: Than Nebula is, right.

ANTHONY: Because Nebula, in their showdown later,

Nebula knows that her former self is incapable

- of making a step at this moment. - MARKUS: Yeah, she's fully committed.

And it's a great performance from Karen Gillan

that for a relatively affectless character,

there's a big difference between present-day Nebula and this one.

JOE: Yeah. Incredible performance.

ANTHONY: Yeah, her subtleties are amazing.

JOE: Yeah.

ANTHONY: With the control she has over that character.

JOE: She understands the different characters.

That's one of my favorite entrances in the film,

is Thanos, blood-splattered, zero explanation,

walking onto his ship.

This is a different version of the character than in the last film.

- A sort of enlightened stone collector. - McFEELY: That's right.

JOE: This is the butcher.

Her synaptic drive was probably damaged in battle.

Shh.

Bring her to my ship.

McFEELY: All this stuff has to be really clean and easy to understand.

So that took a while in both the writing and the directing and editing of these.

JOE: Yeah, I think the most work on the movie in editorial

- was done in this sequence... - McFEELY: From the Thanos story.

JOE: ...trying to track...

- I just think all the time travel stuff. -McFEELY: Well, for sure.

JOE: Trying to track it. McFEELY: Right.

JOE: How are we intercutting it so that you could retain

the narrative thread from the last scene

because you are moving between quite a few missions here.

And here we are looking at the backside of a famous scene from Avengers.

MARKUS: Speaking of backsides,

there's America's backside.

JOE: A completely different perspective.

And then probably the most controversial joke

in the whole movie, "America's ass."

Controversial for all of us.

- That was hotly debated. - McFEELY: Was it?

JOE: Yes.

MARKUS: But this also gives us an opportunity

to weave several movies together.

So when these guys show up,

you're actually referencing Winter Soldier,

not Avengers 1.

Because this is when HYDRA would have gotten a hold of that stone.

JOE: It's making them canon in that movie,

so the S.T.R.I.K.E. team...

McFEELY: Right, the S.T.R.I.K.E. team.

JOE: ...existed prior to the events in Winter Soldier.

McFEELY: I mean, again, just to point out,

if you don't do that beat there

where Loki, as he has before, particularly in Thor: The Dark World,

impersonated Captain America,

then you don't get a logical reason

for 2012 Cap to fight 2023 Cap

- because otherwise why would he... - JOE: He assumes it's Loki.

McFEELY: What does he think he's looking at?

JOE: Mmm-hmm.

McFEELY: He must assume this is Loki.

There's a lot going on here. This took a lot of... (CHUCKLES)

MARKUS: And this ridiculous beat,

"Hulk hate stairs," of not being able to fit the Hulk on the elevator

has a cascading effect that leads to the end of the movie, in fact.

ANTHONY: (LAUGHING) I love that.

MARKUS: Which is really satisfying.

McFEELY: Yeah, it sure is. JOE: Well, each of these missions

embrace a different tone, you know?

McFEELY: Yes. JOE: And this was an Ocean's Eleven

sort of a hijinks caper.

Where, as you said, simple choices

lead to a domino effect

that ruin the outcome for them.

So we snuck into a theater opening night

- in Westwood, the Village Theatre. - McFEELY: Los Angeles.

JOE: And watched this with 1,200 people.

And one of the most satisfying moments

of the entire screening

was when Cap walks out of the elevator

with the stone, having said, "Hail Hydra."

Obviously, this whole scene is built as a misdirect to make you anticipate

a reenactment of the fight with the exact same S.T.R.I.K.E. team

in an elevator.

- And Cap, the wizened Cap... - McFEELY: Yeah.

Well, this is another example, I mentioned it earlier,

where the audience thinks they are ahead of the story,

and at the beginning of the movie, the audience is ahead of the story

because they know that Clint's family is gonna get snapped.

They assume there's gonna be a second fight here

and they are fine with it, because they like the first fight.

It was a great fight,

but then we circumvent it and undercut it

- with a little "Hail Hydra". -MARKUS: And they're even happier.

JOE: Also, you know what I love about it is like an old athlete who realizes

- he can just run out of bounds. - McFEELY: That's right.

JOE: He doesn't have to take the hit.

McFEELY: But this whole section is doing that.

If you are a super fan, or have more than a passing knowledge of the MCU,

you are being drawn into scenes you think you know

and then you're getting different perspectives on them.

MARKUS: Yeah, because why go back

- if you're gonna show the same thing? -McFEELY: Why bother?

- That's exactly right. - MARKUS: You gotta present a new angle.

One of which we're about to run into here, which is that

at this point,

the person who would've been wanting to get a hold of that cube

would be this man.

JOE: The man above the man. ANTHONY: Alexander Pierce.

MARKUS: And this is,

as declared by himself on set,

Robert Redford's last

movie role.

JOE: That was his last day of acting.

Ever.

And I'm gonna need that case.

MARKUS: Which is pretty insane, to say. ANTHONY: Pretty insane.

JOE: Yeah. MARKUS: Got to make that.

ANTHONY: His last performance, Stan Lee's last performance.

JOE: Yeah, seven years of really incredible moments on these movies,

this is certainly up there.

Directing Robert Redford's last day.

ANTHONY: Mr. Redford may change his mind, appear in another movie.

MARKUS: And I wouldn't complain. ANTHONY: Yeah.

JOE: Again, making this character canon, 'cause, of course, he existed

during this movie, even though he was not seen

on screen in Avengers.

MARKUS: And now, coming up on a moment that I remember

when it came to being in the writing room,

when we realized that Hulk was in the stairs

- and then would do that... - (JOE CHUCKLES)

And that...

- And that. - ANTHONY: Amazing.

MARKUS: It's the kind of idea, it's too stupid not to do it.

(ALL LAUGH)

JOE: And Loki disappears.

ANTHONY: This is a great performance beat here.

JOE: Where did Loki go?

Will we ever find out?

ANTHONY: "I had no idea if that was gonna work."

Oh, that worked a treat.

Dude, that was so crazy.

I had no idea if that was gonna work.

- The case. - The case is, uh...

MARKUS: Yeah, it's a nice piece of work from Hemsworth there

because he's giving a little taste...

JOE: Of where he goes. MARKUS: ...of the new kind of Thor.

JOE: Yeah, exactly.

MARKUS: But goes back into old Thor there.

ANTHONY: Pretty amazing.

JOE: You notice, this 2023 Cap swears a lot more than the old Cap.

McFEELY: Yeah, I noticed this.

I didn't remember it on set.

JOE: I mean, this guy's been through a lot.

McFEELY: That's true, yeah.

MARKUS: Well, this is another beat

that influences the decision he makes later

because I think he sees his past self here

and what a hard nut he is.

McFEELY: Yeah, he's a little exhausted, all right.

JOE: Well, that was the intention of all of this,

is how distinctly different these two characters are, right?

That what 11 years does to him

and everything he's been through.

And the sort of square version of Cap

from Avengers 1 running into the wizened.

MARKUS: But you gotta remember...

That Cap with the helmet on is, what, maybe about a month...

JOE: Out of deep freeze, yeah. MARKUS: ...after coming out of the ice?

He's essentially 1940s Cap.

(PANTING)

Where did you get this?

JOE: And here we can have some fun

with the knowledge that future Cap would hold.

MARKUS: And once again, different Marvel movies intertwining.

What?

JOE: This was the controversial...

"America's ass."

MARKUS: How often does a man have the opportunity

to admire his own ass from that perspective?

You have to take it.

McFEELY: You can't not do it. ANTHONY: Exactly.

Coincidence smiled upon him.

BANNER: Please, please.

I'm sorry, I can't help you...

MARKUS: Another scene that took a lot of rejiggering and jiggering

to make complicated things clear

and clear enough so that people could track

why certain decisions are made later.

The Infinity Stones create what you experience as the flow of time.

Remove one of the stones...

and that flow splits.

Now, this may benefit your reality...

but my new one, not so much.

In this new branch reality...

without our chief weapon against the forces of darkness...

our world would be overrun.

Millions will suffer.

So, tell me, Doctor.

MARKUS: And once again, part of the fun of getting to do the 22nd movie

is you get to combine

this genius character of science

from one strand of the MCU

with this mystical character from a completely different strand

who, hitherto this point, had never gotten anywhere near each other

and have them have a meeting of the minds.

JOE: Now, this is the interesting piece of information.

- The turning point of the scene. - McFEELY: Right.

It sends you back to the previous movie reminding you about where we're headed,

the 14 million futures that Doctor Strange looked at.

What did you say?

JOE: And that if this is how,

why she is,

that if Strange were to give that stone away willingly,

that there would be purpose behind that action

and perhaps the purpose of that action

- was for her in this moment... - McFEELY: Right.

To do something other than what she thinks she should do.

She, if you remember, in Doctor Strange,

could never see past her own death,

so she has to take his word for it.

Again, each of the stone collection scenes are doing different things.

This gives you the rules of time travel.

It's not an emotional scene.

These are two characters who don't know each other.

It's not a reunion of any kind.

But you're getting different flavors from the different missions.

JOE: And it paints the stakes

for motivating Cap to return at the end of the movie.

McFEELY: Yes.

ANTHONY: There's a whole cascade of complications that are happening

now at this point in the mission, though, right?

McFEELY: Right.

ANTHONY: He gets new rules about what they can do with the stones.

Loki escapes...

McFEELY: That's right. They lost a stone.

JOE: And I think to see how good of an actor Mark Ruffalo is,

watch that scene where he plays Banner.

He's very different than who Smart Hulk is.

It reverts back to that

up-on-the-back-of-his-heels, you know, character,

and the confidence dissipates.

It was a memory, but not hers.

There's another consciousness...

sharing her network.

MARKUS: And speaking of complications,

here comes the primary one in the movie, which is...

McFEELY: Yeah, right.

JOE: Thanos gets on the A-story.

Maw makes a return,

- one of our favorite characters. - McFEELY: Crowd favorite.

Again, these are scenes that need to be really clean and clear

so that audiences don't get lost

in the timey-wimey...

JOE: Yeah, we did some retooling, I think, in reshoots,

on the dialogue in this scene to clarify...

McFEELY: "Did audiences have too much? Did they have too little?"

I think we had versions that were... We said the same thing too many times.

JOE: And I think we always... We try to keep in mind

that there is a wide range of ages

that will be watching this movie and that needs to be clear.

GAMORA: Terrans.

Avengers.

Unruly wretches.

JOE: Thanos as detective.

He is a brilliant mind, Thanos,

and this is him piecing together

with a couple of clues

what happens to him and his future.

He's on to it here.

Set course for Morag.

And scan the duplicate's memories.

I wanna see everything.

ANTHONY: Back in Durham Cathedral.

McFEELY: I remember you specifically doing this little move here,

where she jumps the frame or something? What is this?

MARKUS: Well, she is a magical character.

McFEELY: Right, right. ANTHONY: It was to re-remind people

that she has powers.

McFEELY: I don't even know how you do it.

MARKUS: Well, yeah, she gets there faster than a human would.

McFEELY: (CHUCKLES) Right.

ANTHONY: We did a little reset

and married two shots together

to do that, to get her there.

MARKUS: And Rene Russo is really great in this.

JOE: Ah, she's fantastic.

McFEELY: She may have more lines in this

than she has had in the previous two Thor movies.

Orit might be close.

(LAUGHTER)

ANTHONY: I mean, to see a mother recognize the pain in her son here.

JOE: And to see a broken son

get to spend time with his dead mother again.

I see with more than eyes, you know that.

MARKUS: You know, and we went through variations

with Thor come... I mean,

where we were very much on the stone mission

in certain drafts where,

well, the stone is in Jane.

Thor would go talk to Jane.

But we realized that the work, emotionally,

that needed to be done on Thor, it wasn't romantic work.

It wasn't scientific work.

It was a kind of absolution that only his mother could give.

His head was over there...

...and his body over there...

JOE: Of course, I think that was an outtake from The Dark World,

Jane getting out of bed,

and we added Rocket to the shot

and changed the context of the original intention of the shot.

A failure?

Absolutely.

That's a little bit harsh.

Do you know what that makes you?

Just like everyone else.

JOE: Thor's mother trying to make him whole again.

Everyone fails at who they're supposed to be, Thor.

The measure of a person, of a hero...

JOE: By providing him with some of, perhaps, the wisest words in the movie.

"Maybe eat a salad."

(MARKUS CHUCKLES)

MARKUS: Well, fiber can be quite helpful.

Thor! I got it!

ASGARDIAN GUARD: Get that rabbit!

MARKUS: But this really is the sort of...

These are the words Thor has needed to hear the entire...

Not just the entire movie, his entire arc across the MCU.

He has been striving to fulfill an idea of himself

that he, inherently, somehow just doesn't fit.

And it's only now that he gets to be who he is.

JOE: An inspiring moment here, where he...

You know, sort of self-confidence, where he puts his hand out.

McFEELY: I underestimated it in the script and in shooting.

It's a lovely beat here.

Because, undoubtedly, in the last five years,

he has thought himself unworthy.

MARKUS: Yeah. JOE: Yeah.

MARKUS: And again, it's his performance.

ANTHONY: Hemsworth sells it. He commits to it.

McFEELY: Yeah, he's delighted.

JOE: And then the music cue... McFEELY: And then you pre-lap, right?

JOE: Yeah, which smashes together... McFEELY: That's right.

And again, if you're a fan, you may even know what's coming,

if you remember this song.

ANTHONY: Yeah.

('70s FUNK ROCK SONG PLAYING)

McFEELY: And that's a movie star entrance.

JOE: And it's celebratory. McFEELY: That's right.

JOE: And, you know, I think this sequence is building

to a warm and fulfilling,

hopefully fulfilling climax.

- And then it will take a tragic turn. - McFEELY: Right.

JOE: But for now, the job is to

make you feel for the characters.

Have them have, as we said, emotional moments

and moments of repair.

See different perspectives

on previous events in the Marvel films.

Clearly, Quill is just a guy with a Walkman on,

who's singing out of tune.

- McFEELY: His jaw's broken there, right? -(JOE CHUCKLES)

MARKUS: At the very least...

ANTHONY: There's some brain damage, for sure.

RHODES: Whoa, whoa, whoa.

This is the part where spikes come out...

with skeletons on the end of them and everything.

What are you talking about?

When you break into a place called "The Temple of the Power Stone"...

there's gonna be a bunch of booby traps.

- Oh, my God. - Okay. All right. Go ahead.

JOE: A little bit of Cheadle improv there.

ANTHONY: Yeah. JOE: When, I can't remember.

McFEELY: At the end of it, maybe. JOE: He's playing with that, yeah.

McFEELY: But the Power Stone stuff at the temple was scripted.

And this beat always... Again, it's small,

but it's two characters who have suffered

- and move on with prosthetics. - JOE: Yeah.

And also allows you to tell the difference between the two.

McFEELY: Yes, it's doing that as well.

JOE: Later in the film, one of them has

a destroyed arm.

But we work with what we got, right?

Hmm.

McFEELY: If only she was faster on the draw here.

JOE: Yeah, it would change everything.

MARKUS: It's not so much the draw,

I think she's having a little aphasia there. She can't move.

(GROANING)

(SCREAMING)

BANNER: You murdered trillions!

THANOS: You should be grateful.

(BANNER GRUNTS)

MARKUS: And this moment is one of my favorite moments in the movie

where Thanos gets nothing but satisfaction

from seeing his head chopped off.

ANTHONY: Yeah, it's vindication. MARKUS: Just confirmation

- that he is on the right track. - (ANTHONY CHUCKLES)

JOE: Well, I think that's always at...

Thanos supporters online,

what is exciting to them about him as a character

is his monastic dedication to his mission.

And he is willing to die for the mission.

The stones.

I found them all.

JOE: So, what's great about having 21 years of backstory

is that you have rich lives for your characters.

And as this is just prior to Gamora

wanting to escape Thanos in Guardians...

You see that moment where he touches her hair,

and her eyes flit away from him in semi-disgust.

She drops to her knees, a way to just avoid his touch.

You get a sense that the two of them are having very different reactions

to this information that he is learning.

MARKUS: Well, she also knows, in the back of her head,

if he gets all the stones in the future,

that means he finds out where the Soul Stone is

and she is the only person who knows where the Soul Stone is.

JOE: She also placed her hand on her weapon there when Maw...

McFEELY: Yes, I noted that, yeah.

It's a lot of juggling by both Karen and Zoe in these scenes.

JOE: Yeah.

And fantastic performances. Just think about it, as an actor,

going backwards in the life of your character.

And resetting them

and having to remember where you were years before.

McFEELY: For sure, and in Zoe's case,

I think she's got new information about her character at that moment,

given that Infinity War was conceived after Guardians.

Come in, we have a...

Thanos knows.

Thanos...

JOE: Just remember, he set course for Morag...

McFEELY: Right.

JOE: ...a few scenes ago.

And this is why.

TONY: Cap.

MARKUS: And now, back to New York.

JOE: Which might be one of the trickier cuts in this sequence

because it's been a little while since...

McFEELY: We were always gonna be gone from somebody for a while.

JOE: Right, so you have to remember here... "Oh, yeah.

"Tony got knocked down by the Hulk

"and Loki made off with the Space Stone."

McFEELY: Funny reset.

MARKUS: It's not just the end of...

It's not just the continuation of that thread.

It's the beginning of a new sequence.

McFEELY: That's right. And remember, every stone mission

not only is doing emotional things and then getting stones,

but there are other unpredictable complications

in every one of them, some greater than others.

But you can go right down the line by, you know,

finding Frigga, going off course with Frigga,

the Ancient One being there when they weren't expecting it,

losing a stone here to Loki,

Thanos getting onto the mission.

These all are intertwined.

JOE: Now here's another performance where

an actor is committing to the stakes

and making the scene funnier because of it.

Paul Rudd

pushing against Robert Downey.

TONY: Suit up.

What's in New Jersey?

JOE: And Chris Evans in this scene.

- Excuse me. - 1 -9-7-0.

Are you sure?

McFEELY: And we're hiding the ball on where they're going.

America. Rogers.

Look, if you do this...

JOE: And I think one of the...

I mean, not one of the, perhaps the best pairing

of characters in the Infinity Saga, Cap and Tony.

McFEELY: Oh, sure. The whole thing is based on their crossing arcs.

We've talked about this before.

The idea that Tony goes

from selfish to selfless over the course of these movies...

MARKUS: I'm just gonna interrupt you for the...

JOE: "Nuff said."

MARKUS: "Nuff said," last appearance

during his lifetime of Stan Lee,

who had a grand old time dressing up as his former self.

McFEELY: And who'd been Lola'd, right? That was the idea.

JOE: Yeah, he was de-aged there

so it looks more like Stan in that time period.

MARKUS: And there is that famous picture of Stan in the '70s

wearing that outfit, with that hair

and now the best cameo in the movie.

(McFEELY LAUGHS)

MARKUS: "Oh, who's Mr. Chubby? There he goes."

Not that guy. The other guy.

McFEELY: It's delightful. You crushed it.

JOE: And talk about fortuitous moments in storytelling,

you actually have a location that would have contained...

McFEELY: Yes.

JOE: ...Howard Stark, Hank Pym and Peggy Carter.

McFEELY: That's right. JOE: All at the same time.

MARKUS: It's one of those moments where the various MCU strands

come together in a really satisfying way.

You have the flashback from the beginning of Ant-Man,

you have the first Captain America, you have Winter Soldier happening here.

And all of Tony's various relationships with his dad

throughout the whole series.

JOE: I think the tone of the end of the movie changes

without this chance encounter between he and his father.

MARKUS: Oh, yeah. JOE: It's not as hopeful.

It's not as much resolve for Tony as a character.

MARKUS: It's his final unresolved personal issue.

And probably his longest-standing one in the series.

McFEELY: Sure, and certainly one we've hit several times.

Hey!

The door is this way, pal.

Oh, yeah.

Looking for Doctor Zola, have you seen him?

McFEELY: And it is remarkable what visual effects will allow us to do now.

We certainly would not have tackled this story 15 years ago. (LAUGHS)

JOE: No, and trying to do it with makeup...

McFEELY: It would just be makeup.

Got a name?

JOE: This is a great performance between these two actors here.

Filled with so much... It's so pregnant with

their history.

Yeah.

MARKUS: This is one of those opportunities

that working in this genre allows you,

and it's not just men in capes smashing through things.

You have the opportunity to take a son...

Need your briefcase?

MARKUS: ...and put him in a scene with his own father,

where the son is older than the father.

The son has a child, so has more experience in parenting

than the father whose wife is pregnant with the son.

HANK PYM: Hello? STEVE: (ON PHONE) Doctor Pym?

MARKUS: We don't play it for laughs, but it's just pure emotion.

McFEELY: The best science fiction can do this kind of stuff.

JOE: Now, this clearly would have been impossible 15 years ago.

McFEELY: Right. Exactly. (CHUCKLES)

JOE: Look at that.

The Streets of San Francisco Michael Douglas.

(McFEELY LAUGHS)

JOE: Right there. Incredible.

MARKUS: And I just wanna retroactively, tip of the hat to Russell Bobbitt

for providing that vintage Ant-Man helmet

we just saw a moment ago.

JOE: "Captain Stevens, shipping."

Now, not only is it Howard Stark, Hank Pym and Peggy Carter,

it's Space Stone and Pym Particles.

McFEELY: So, it turns out, we needed more MacGuffins.

MARKUS: Yes. McFEELY: We just said, "Boy, six?

"Jeez, I think, let's challenge ourselves."

He's bringing sauerkraut because my mom craved sauerkraut

when she was pregnant with me.

That's the McFeely Easter egg.

JOE: Yeah, there's a lot of personal touches in the script.

Think about their story.

In Civil War, you see that these two have a dysfunctional relationship

and that Tony is...

A part of Tony's petulant personality

comes from his hard-ass father.

McFEELY: That's right.

JOE: Or his sort of uncaring father,

or what he believes was his uncaring father.

And then he sees him brutally murdered,

which creates an incredible...

We have a potential breach.

JOE: Creates incredible pain inside Tony that he cannot resolve.

And, I think, creates the rift between he and Steve.

Now he's able to go back into the past,

as is Steve here.

McFEELY: Our first draft did not have this,

and it would have been a shame. (CHUCKLES) It's really lovely.

Just the structure of the scene.

The production design, setting up this office

in such a way that he can be in shadow, and she can be in light.

JOE: And that performance from Evans,

the longing on his face without a single line of dialogue,

you understand how important she is to him

and how much he misses her.

McFEELY: This is now the fourth time...

So, even if you somehow didn't see any of the movies,

you know who this person is to him.

MARKUS: And by seeing his picture on her desk,

he gets a little bit of confirmation

that she wants the same thing he does.

McFEELY: Or hasn't let it go.

MARKUS: Yeah, so that if he were to go back...

McFEELY: Right.

MARKUS: ...you know, it might be reciprocal.

JOE: Now, here is the son giving the father advice.

McFEELY: Yeah.

JOE: It'll help the father, moving forward.

- Yeah. - Did you feel qualified?

MARKUS: There's one nice indication here that maybe the reason

Howard was a hard-ass to Tony

is that he didn't want Tony to turn out like him.

And if you go back in the MCU

and see Dominic Cooper, he was quite like Tony.

McFEELY: Right.

JOE: That's Tony gaining insight into who his father was.

McFEELY: Oh, yeah, he says here, "My old man..."

- You know? -JOE: Right.

McFEELY: "...only solved problems with a belt."

...that kid's not even here yet and there's nothing I wouldn't do for him.

JOE: This is one of the best jokes in the movie that...

McFEELY: Where he leans over him? JOE: Yeah, it gets swallowed

by laughter here,

where he actually says, "Thank you for your service..."

MARKUS: And of course, James D'Arcy as Jarvis.

McFEELY: Yes, currently the only character

that's gone from television to the films

- from Agent Carter. - JOE: That's right, and I wonder why.

(McFEELY LAUGHS)

MARKUS: 'Cause he's magnificent, that's why.

McFEELY: It was organic, and, you know...

MARKUS: There's a wonderful thread

between Jarvis and Tony naming his AI after him

and then that AI becoming Vision.

McFEELY: This is actually interesting to talk about.

This is a lesson we learned late.

We first tried to play this, what we say, call it "card down,"

where it was a mystery to the audience. We kept this from the audience,

the idea that Thanos was going to use

his version of Nebula to replace future Nebula.

It didn't work. It was complicated and it was confusing.

Our worry was that, if you did it this way,

the audience would be ahead of some pretty emotional moments

involving bringing all the people back.

This is much better. It's much stronger for Karen Gillan.

ANTHONY: Yeah.

McFEELY: You know, it's much cleaner and clearer

to the audience what's going on. (CHUCKLES)

ANTHONY: Yeah.

MARKUS: It also lets you sit with more of the time travel weirdness

as opposed to...

We were actually hiding a very strange encounter

that you wouldn't ordinarily have the opportunity to have in a movie.

Why not do it?

JOE: Kudos again to Karen, for this performance.

It's very difficult as an actor,

within an hour of each performance,

having to perform the other character.

They're so different.

One is hateful and the other is enlightened.

And here is Thanos

gaining Pym Particles.

Now, the obvious assumption being that

Thanos, who has a spaceship

that can carry his army throughout the galaxy and conquer planets,

can also figure out how...

McFEELY: Science up a little. JOE: Yes.

- Add some Pym Particles... - McFEELY: Best not to dwell on it.

JOE: ...with his magician who can move matter.

McFEELY: That's right.

MARKUS: Now, if you remember Infinity War,

and you probably do if you're seeing this movie,

when you get to Vormir, your dread starts to build

because you know what the price

for the Soul Stone is.

McFEELY: And so, act construction-wise, this was always going to be the last.

And I think that Jeff Ford and you guys, in editing,

sort of moved pieces around so that it pretty much all came together.

It wasn't intercut in any way, which is smart,

because it is the end of Act Two, it is the darkest thing that can happen.

JOE: Or we're losing emotional momentum

- when we're cutting it up. - McFEELY: That's the thing.

JOE: And I think, yes,

it's tonally very different than what's happening around it.

So, you're gaining repair with Tony and his father,

sense of longing from Cap, you're hoping for repair there.

And if you were to intercut that with what you know

is ultimately going to be someone's death scene...

McFEELY: Yeah, you would only cut it right around here.

It'd be an open question.

JOE: And your brain may be focused more on,

"I need to get back to Vormir and figure out..."

McFEELY: Who's gonna die? Right.

JOE: "...what's gonna happen there."

McFEELY: And again, just constructing the act and the scenes...

A pair of people who could arguably love each other

needed to go to Vormir for this to work.

JOE: That is correct.

McFEELY: And this was the obvious pairing in our minds.

And then the question becomes, who is going to be the one to go over

and how is that going to get done.

We actually reshot this.

This is much better than what we had. It was a little more complicated.

It was Thanos sending a small army to pretend to try to stop them.

It was sort of awkward.

JOE: It was overthinking. McFEELY: Sort of kabuki theater.

MARKUS: While it lit a fire under them to do the act,

it also took a little of the agency away...

JOE: And we lost the characters.

MARKUS: Yeah. McFEELY: That's right.

JOE: I think, in the edit room, we came up with...

McFEELY: That's right.

JOE: ...this tragic structure,

which is two people who love each other

fighting to see who's going to jump off a cliff and kill themselves.

And the tension in the scene,

the pain that the audience feels,

because any second, it could be either one of them.

And as you said, the sense of dread that you feel

only gets heightened as they go back and forth.

McFEELY: That's right. MARKUS: Yeah.

McFEELY: That's right.

I'm starting to think we mean different people here, Natasha.

For the last five years, I've been trying to do one thing.

Get to right here.

That's all it's been about. Bringing everybody back.

No, don't you get all decent on me now.

What, you think I wanna do it?

I'm trying to save your life, you idiot.

Yeah, well, I don't want you to.

MARKUS: But she does sum it up here. This is what she's been working toward.

This is the end point for her character

and the final resolution of her arc

from corrupted agent all the way to entirely selfless.

JOE: Heroic act is to bring back the community.

They have no chance to bring back half the universe

unless one of them goes over this cliff, and the other gets the stone.

McFEELY: Yeah, we wanted these folks to be fighting to be the hero.

Right? They are both heroic.

She's fighting to save her family, even though it'll cost her her life.

Again, we should probably talk about how

this is the first major female character of the Marvel Universe.

We did not make this decision lightly.

She's not fighting to save Clint's family.

I've seen some people say that he has a family, and therefore...

That's not it at all.

She's fighting to save her family.

JOE: Completely incorrect assumption, yes.

- And the billions who have died. - McFEELY: Yeah.

I think it's incredibly heroic.

JOE: Well, that's the thing. Death is not always a bad thing.

It can be a noble end.

And it can be spiritual,

and it can be, as you said, heroic.

If you sacrifice yourself for billions,

it would seem to be a powerful ending to your story.

MARKUS: And for a character who has been trying

to "erase the red in her ledger," to use Joss' phrase,

this is the final erasure.

McFEELY: That's what the arc for all these folks is, right?

That she went from guilty to erasing all this...

I can't think of a better end point.

JOE: No. McFEELY: Right?

No.

No. Please, no.

JOE: And I understand it is sad for fans to lose characters they love,

but you also have to look for the deeper meaning behind the loss.

And again, as I say,

you can find inspiration in choices that they make.

Again, these are heroes making heroic choices.

McFEELY: Now, it means that she's not in the movie for the last hour,

which is, of course, regretful.

This is kind of how it had to go.

The end of Act Two is,

"What's the worst thing that can happen?"

And this is pretty much the worst thing that can happen.

I guess it's tied with Tony towards the end. (CHUCKLES)

MARKUS: And one of the things that separates,

tonally, the deaths in this movie,

from the non-snap deaths in Infinity War

is that they are almost all the hero's choice in this movie.

In fact, I think they are entirely the hero's choice in this movie.

Whereas Loki's death, Heimdall's death,

Gamora's death, Vision's death in Infinity War

- were all done to them by Thanos... - McFEELY: Murders.

MARKUS: ...which is a much greater tragedy.

Here you have that heroic, victorious sadness.

JOE: Another great performance by Renner.

(SOBBING)

And they all return seconds after they departed.

MARKUS: I love how happy Don Cheadle here is, right before...

Are you telling me this actually worked?

JOE: They're focused on the mission. The assumption isn't...

MARKUS: And they had this ridiculous plan, and it worked.

(GASPS SOFTLY)

JOE: Another one of my favorite shots is this overhead,

where it's all conveyed through Hulk's body language.

This grief.

Now, this is a unique circumstance for the Avengers.

They, for the first time, have lost one of their own.

Huh?

- What are you doing? - Just asked him a question.

MARKUS: And a necessary conversation,

given that they have just brought back magic stones to bring back people.

Why couldn't they bring back her?

McFEELY: Right, that is some of the fine line of the science fiction of it.

We don't want people to dwell on the technicalities of stuff.

We want to embrace the emotion of the scenes.

JOE: Red Skull very clearly says, "It is an everlasting exchange."

McFEELY: Right.

JOE: And "everlasting" would imply that it can't be undone.

MARKUS: Mmm-hmm.

Or that's at least what the red, floating guy had to say.

Maybe you wanna go talk to him, okay?

Go grab your hammer and you go fly and you talk to him.

It was supposed to be me.

JOE: Again, as a director,

being able to work with a cast this incredible

is such a gift.

Especially when characters are in their lowest moments.

MARKUS: And you've seen these faces go through so much over 22 movies.

It's all written right there.

There's a nice, after the tragedy, just a nice return to comedy here

- with Rocket's "Boom!" - McFEELY: But it's not immediate.

It takes a good 60 seconds,

it would have been weird if it was too fast.

JOE: It takes Eitri, you know...

A legendary forge to make the first glove

- and it takes... - MARKUS: Just a little Tony Stark.

JOE: ...Banner, Tony and Rocket to make the second one.

Three of the scientific geniuses of the Marvel Universe.

TONY: Stop, stop. Slow down.

JOE: Here's Thor again, searching for purpose.

"It should be me."

We should at least discuss it.

JOE: And we take a scene to lay out the stakes

of what can happen to you if you put that glove on.

If you're paying attention at the beginning of the movie,

when you see Thanos, his arm is almost gone at that point,

and he's used the stones twice and he's crippled.

He has very little strength left.

That's why he's so easily defeated in that scene in the cabin.

Cheez Whiz?

MARKUS: And I wanna, before we destroy it,

give another little credit to Charlie Wood and the lighting team.

This Avengers compound,

which appears to have natural sunlight filtering through everything,

is in the abandoned conference room

of a semi-abandoned Sheraton out by the Atlanta Airport,

and it's a magnificent-looking thing. You'd never know.

JOE: That's a really great performance from Ruffalo there.

I think that's ILM doing really excellent work

with the emotional expressions of Smart Hulk.

All right, so, if you're paying attention,

- that hand should be destroyed. - McFEELY: Mmm-hmm.

JOE: That would be your first clue.

Let's do it.

McFEELY: Just on an act-construction level,

we were faced with a strange problem

where we needed two snaps (CHUCKLES) of the Gauntlet.

And asked ourselves often,

"What does it mean to bring everybody back?

"What is the best way to do that?"

We certainly tried a version where everyone came back

and you knew it immediately, and there they were.

Maybe they all came back to wherever you wished them to come back.

And then Thanos attacked them all at once.

Doing that prevented us from a really heroic reveal,

which is coming in about 20 minutes, where the cavalry comes.

JOE: And also, I think, went counter to the logic

that everyone would just return to the moment from which they disappeared.

McFEELY: That's the thing.

MARKUS: It also made the fight feel like an afterthought

because they had accomplished their goal.

Even if those people are brought back when Hulk snaps his fingers,

you still have that lingering feeling that all is not resolved yet.

JOE: We know how powerful Thanos is

by his quick defeat of the Hulk in Infinity War.

So, this is an incredibly painful experience,

to put on the Gauntlet that controls the universe,

and it permanently damages

the most powerful beings and some of the most powerful creatures in these movies.

And very few people can actually put that on and survive.

McFEELY: Which means if a regular human puts it on, he's a goner.

That's all set up for the end of the movie.

JOE: Also which was set up, right before he put the Gauntlet on,

was Tony Stark saying that everyone comes back to now.

"Do not erase what happened. I do not want to lose my child."

So, you bring them back. They miss five years.

McFEELY: That's the thing.

I think some test audiences thought, "Oh, did we just go back five years?"

And no.

JOE: No, we did not. McFEELY: We own those five years.

JOE: And they did not age five years. The people who're gone.

They just were brought back

to the exact moment at which they went away,

but five years later.

So, Peter Parker is still a high-schooler.

Ned, his buddy, is still a high-schooler.

Because both of them had disappeared.

McFEELY: So, really, the clue that it worked is,

I suppose, a few extra birds outside,

but mostly because Clint's wife

- calls him on the phone. - JOE: Calls him. Yeah.

McFEELY: Her cell service still active.

JOE: It's almost a ghost story, in a way.

It's a very haunting moment.

Someone that you've lost for five years suddenly is calling you on the phone.

McFEELY: And again, it wouldn't work as well

if you hadn't seen her in this movie two hours ago.

Honey.

LAURA: Clint?

Honey.

Guys...

JOE: Now this was, you know...

This took, I think, the most thought of anything in the script, right?

Was the moment at which Hulk snapped his fingers,

you get back what you lost.

You could argue that that is the end of the movie.

You've repaired it.

It clearly can't be the end of the film because the villain is on to the story.

So, what could happen in that moment?

This took...

McFEELY: Right. We certainly had a lot of versions...

JOE: A month or two to figure out. McFEELY: Yeah.

How would his return... What form would it take?

JOE: How would it complicate?

And I think the other thing that we are always mindful of

is splitting characters up into smaller groups

so that real moments can happen between the characters.

McFEELY: I remember this. MARKUS: Yeah.

JOE: So, I think we're all sitting around talking about, well,

"All right, he snaps his fingers and then what?

"What if the compound exploded?

"What if they were put on their heels immediately?"

And the audience forgets that those characters are back.

McFEELY: Oh, I think they do. I think a lot of audience members...

Because we're gonna have dire consequences here

for a good 20 minutes

before Cap's all alone on that battlefield.

JOE: And that explosion allowed us to break up the characters again.

Some people fell through the floor, some didn't.

McFEELY: It means that the MacGuffins are now in play.

JOE: Mmm. Clint is alone with the Gauntlet.

MARKUS: Also, I will remind you that there was another version

where Thanos opened up a large portal on the battlefield

where it became evident that in his own time frame,

he had come to Earth.

McFEELY: (CHUCKLES) Right. MARKUS: And he walked up to them...

McFEELY: Yes.

MARKUS: ...and tossed 2012 Captain America's head

on the floor. (LAUGHS)

McFEELY: Well, we tried some things.

MARKUS: It seemed like it was never gonna make it, but it was...

JOE: It was a shocking moment.

MARKUS: For a movie that began with essentially Thanos' head on the floor,

it was a shocking reversal.

But perhaps a bridge too far.

JOE: We remember these guys.

MARKUS: (WHISPERS) Outriders.

(CREATURES SNARLING)

McFEELY: So, again, the construction of the scenes are,

you've established where the MacGuffin is.

What would happen if Thanos found them? Oh, Thanos has just come to Earth.

Well, he's heading towards those things. That's gonna be a problem.

Daughter.

Yes, Father.

MARKUS: And here you have the final confirmation

of what has been going on with your various Nebulas.

They suspected nothing.

JOE: And his decision to wait is to pull the Avengers to him,

allowing Nebula to go find the glove.

MARKUS: It's sort of the beginning of a philosophical Thanos

that you know from the other movie.

JOE: Where he lays out a new plan which is to wipe it all out,

- instead of half. -McFEELY: Right.

JOE: Now he's gonna go for the full megillah

because memory,

- emotional memory is the enemy of... -MARKUS: Progress.

McFEELY: It turns out...

JOE: Yeah, his philosophical mission.

McFEELY: Humans and actually, I guess,

the rest of the universe won't accept his gift.

GAMORA: In the future...

MARKUS: How rude. McFEELY: Yeah.

...what happens to you and me?

JOE: Now, remember this was a Gamora who was ready to flee from Thanos.

McFEELY: Yes, I don't have much problem with her change of heart here.

JOE: She's having a premonition

about which side of the line she should fall on here.

This is all accelerating in a way that it did not in the original timeline.

She's now becoming the Gamora she was always meant to be much faster.

McFEELY: That's just a small nod to...

She knocked her hand away about an hour ago.

Now she grabs it.

TONY: Come on, buddy, wake up!

- (GASPING) - That's my man.

JOE: Coming up is another one of my favorite moments

with these three characters

lined up on a cliff, overlooking Thanos.

You'll see.

JOE: It's the promise of what was never fulfilled in Infinity War

because of Civil War.

MARKUS: Yes. McFEELY: Right. Right.

JOE: Now, here these two are standing shoulder to shoulder,

ready to face him together.

MARKUS: Philosophical Thanos.

JOE: And Thor's got two (BLEEP) weapons.

(MARKUS LAUGHS)

Absolutely nothing.

JOE: And a braided beard. MARKUS: And a braided beard.

And no weight loss, 'cause I will point out, he's fixed.

All I know is he doesn't have 'em.

So, we keep it that way.

You know it's a trap, right?

Yeah.

I don't much care.

Good.

JOE: Favorite moment right here.

MARKUS: His eyes start to glow.

JOE: He's back, but he hasn't changed.

MARKUS: Exactly.

He's just a confident version of who he became.

McFEELY: He's worthy.

MARKUS: And now the Old West showdown. McFEELY: That's right.

Joe finally gets to do his Sergio Leone stuff.

JOE: Yeah, exactly. This is our homage to Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

We looked at a sequence from Once Upon a Time in the West,

- remember, at the end? -McFEELY: Yeah, Bronson and Fonda.

JOE: Fonda, you know?

And it's right before the final showdown

and the two of them sort of talk about the whole movie

and what it means,

what the thematics of the movie mean before they go out and face each other.

MARKUS: Very wide, those shots.

JOE: Yeah, the railroad is coming. Progress is coming to the Old West.

They're both a dying breed.

Different sides of the coin, you know?

One is evil and one isn't.

And they're gonna go behind the house

and fight it out. Metaphorically, always...

Just the metaphor of that movie makes me tear up,

the moment when the score kicks in.

And growing up film nerds,

these are the moments that we try to capture

and give to other people.

Born out of blood.

They'll never know it.

Because you won't be alive to tell them.

(YELLING)

MARKUS: I remember when this might seem like a big battle in a movie.

Three superheroes beating up one big super guy.

Sounds like the climax.

JOE: And there's a moment inspired by comics, Hulk.

McFEELY: Yeah, he holds up a mountain at some point.

JOE: Yeah.

And this is gonna be a twist that plays out later,

is that Ant-Man

will convert himself into Giant-Man

in order to save those characters who are drowning.

(GRUNTS)

(GROWLING)

MARKUS: Coming up on another conclusion of an arc, in a way,

where Nebula gets to face her old self.

And sadly,

can't convince herself to come around.

JOE: And what's interesting, too, and we haven't talked about this before,

is that Clint obviously assumes the identity of Ronin

as a way to distance himself from what he is doing.

When he is going around the world punishing...

McFEELY: Meaning he could not do that as Hawkeye?

JOE: Yes. McFEELY: Yeah.

JOE: Right. He assumes a new identity.

And I would argue that as the movie progresses,

that those two identities start to merge and he's Ronin and Hawkeye.

- He's got the bow... - McFEELY: I suppose.

He's Ronin, in that he just slashed those Outriders in half there.

JOE: Yeah, and he's got the bow and the sword now.

McFEELY: Yeah, fair enough.

JOE: So, each of these characters have grown and they've gone...

Whatever journey they went on over the course of those four years

has remained with them.

McFEELY: Right, I am interested in Clint Barton going forward,

given what he has done in the last five years.

JOE: It's overly complicated, yes. McFEELY: Right.

That said, what we probably ought to be addressing here is

one woman not seeing her future

or not accepting what she could be.

JOE: Which is something really fun

that you can play with, with time travel is that

the two versions of herself, when you make different choices,

you can go back in your life and say,

"So many moments, had I made a different choice,

"I would have been a completely different person."

MARKUS: You can only make those due to experience

and if you haven't had the experience...

McFEELY: Those are just daughters that had been abused by Thanos.

- She can't see... - JOE: Past him, yes.

- It's Stockholm syndrome. - McFEELY: That's right.

JOE: And here we are, setting up...

McFEELY: The world's greatest moment in cinema?

(JOE CHUCKLES)

JOE: Another favorite moment. This was fantastic.

When we were in the Village Theatre

on that Thursday night, on opening night, this was...

People were jumping out of their seats.

And that, as a filmmaker, there's no prouder moment

where you're seeing an audience react so viscerally

to a story.

MARKUS: And there's just so much in this movie

of what you've always wanted,

and people can call that fan service,

but there are so many fans of these movies

that it's impossible to say that that's a minority.

JOE: Well, it's storytelling.

These are moments that have been set up throughout 20, 21 films.

They're being paid off.

MARKUS: And it's just a primal satisfaction.

JOE: I would argue that fan service does not have setup.

- All of this stuff has been set up. - McFEELY: I get you.

No, if it's on the arc of a character...

MARKUS: You're honoring what has come before.

McFEELY: That's right.

And maybe you call it fan service if you don't understand that point.

JOE: If you haven't been paying attention,

didn't have a sensitivity...

McFEELY: This is just the natural conclusion.

JOE: ...to the storytelling in all of the films, sure.

McFEELY: That's right.

Now, he really knows how to use this thing. (LAUGHS)

MARKUS: Well, it's a hammer. How hard could it be?

McFEELY: Oh, he's banging the shield off of it.

MARKUS: He's driven the odd nail before.

JOE: We learn in Civil War that Cap is one of the most expert fighters.

McFEELY: That's true. JOE: Right?

When Friday tells Tony that he can't beat Cap hand-to-hand.

Now we get to see what a powered-up Cap looks like against Thanos.

And he almost takes him.

MARKUS: But you can also see that while Vibranium

is the strongest substance on Earth,

whatever Thanos' straight razor there is made out of is stronger.

JOE: Well, Thanos clearly knew of Eitri.

McFEELY: That's true. MARKUS: Mmm, that's true enough.

McFEELY: That's true, he'd have him make him a helicopter blade.

MARKUS: And now,

we approach,

possibly the biggest moment of satisfaction in the entire movie,

which brings back a line

originally from the very first scene of Winter Soldier.

JOE: And paying off.

What I love about this scene is it is so reflective of what you can do

with serialized storytelling in the way that Marvel is using it.

The grand experiment. This here life story, timeless mosaic.

And these movies coming out over certain periods of time

that are not so far apart

that you've lost an emotional connection to what happened previously.

And people, fans of the movie, being in anguish for a year

is what allows this moment to have such an impact when it happens.

MARKUS: There are no plot turns without emotion.

JOE: Two years might have dissipated it. Six months might have not been enough.

And I think that it just, temporally, the spacing of these films

are a huge part of how the narrative affects you.

And that's why, I think, why this as an experiment,

why it's so interesting.

- On a storytelling level. - McFEELY: That should be my screensaver.

SAM: (ON SPEAKERS) Hey, Cap, you read me?

MARKUS: There's also just something wonderful

that Cap has always been willing to go it alone,

and to find out he doesn't have to is kind of wonderful.

SAM: On your left.

JOE: A moment of tension. Who's gonna be the first to walk through that portal?

McFEELY: Also that, you know,

if you don't know the visual language of the MCU,

maybe you don't know or understand that that's a Doctor Strange portal.

JOE: But who else would you want to have your back in this moment,

other than T'Challa and Wakanda?

MARKUS: And then Sam.

JOE: And just that nod, "I got you."

McFEELY: I think this, always meant to be a super powerful scene,

didn't really come together until Alan Silvestri's...

JOE: Oh, yeah, this piece of music is incredible, and I think it could be

one of the greatest pieces of music that Alan's ever composed.

I think his score in this film is beyond exceptional.

McFEELY: I would argue it should be considered for things.

JOE: I would argue the same,

as I don't believe that Alan has ever won an Oscar,

- which would be criminal. - MARKUS: Is somewhat ridiculous.

JOE: When score can achieve a level of storytelling,

it is transcendent.

He is helping us tell the story here.

MARKUS: Mmm-hmm. McFEELY: Yes.

JOE: And he's connecting so many different things all at once,

it's staggering what he's doing.

Only someone of Alan's skill could have pulled this off,

and there are, I would argue,

maybe one other film composer on the planet at Alan's skill level.

(ALL SHOUTING IN UNISON)

JOE: So, this was always intended to be what it is,

which was an incredibly rousing moment where the reinforcements arrive

to go toe-to-toe.

MARKUS: And you finally get to hear it. McFEELY: That's right.

JOE: Twenty-two films.

McFEELY: Was it your idea to go under with that or Evans'?

JOE: Eh, it was ours. It felt like it would be more interesting.

McFEELY: It is more interesting.

JOE: Unfortunately, him catching the hammer for the second time

created a lot of energy in the theater,

and I don't know that people that first weekend actually heard it.

McFEELY: That's fair enough.

JOE: But this is why you can go back and see it again.

McFEELY: Yeah. MARKUS: Exactly.

JOE: A lot of information in the movie, and you can discover it...

McFEELY: Yeah, it's overwhelming when you first watch it.

That's part of the reason it's getting a lot of repeat business.

MARKUS: But, again, it's one of the joys of...

You know, this is the kind of thing we've referred to in the past

as a splash panel from the comics.

And those things you can't take in all at once.

You have to sit with it for a little while and find your characters.

JOE: Another reason it's getting a lot of repeat business is...

Tony and Pepper.

Scott Lang punching a Leviathan in the face.

...give me that. You have the little one.

JOE: A callback to Infinity War between Cap and Thor on the battlefield.

That relationship the two of them have.

And another signal that Thor is on the road to repair

is that he is not threatened by Cap's worthiness.

MARKUS: And the look on Tony's face here as he...

McFEELY: Yeah, this gets a big moment of cheer.

Well, there's so much going on here.

He gets back the kid that he lost. He never hugged that kid before.

There's actually a great joke in the beginning of Spider-Man. (LAUGHS)

JOE: Only Robert Downey. McFEELY: Yeah.

Again, this was a section called "team-ups and reunions,"

and we certainly could do this all day.

All sorts of people deserve the chance to hug and rediscover each other.

Or just new team-ups of characters from different franchises,

but not a lot of time for it all.

So, we concentrated on the ones that were most important to story.

MARKUS: Or just so purely delightful

that you couldn't possibly not have them,

such as...

JOE: A Gamora with no interest in Peter Quill,

no memory of any interest in Peter Quill.

You missed the first time.

Then you got 'em both the second time.

GAMORA: This is the one?

Seriously?

Your choices were him or a tree.

McFEELY: Now we're back on A-plot, the stones reappear on the field.

What are we going to do with them?

MARKUS: Thanos wants them. Where do they go?

JOE: By the way, not to digress...

But I was just thinking it would be interesting if she chose the tree

in Guardians 3.

McFEELY: Well, sure. We've given James a lot to work with.

JOE: So, Hulk reminds us there

that these stones have gotta go back to the past.

Right? How are we gonna get them back to the past?

Oh, yeah, we've got a van with a time machine in it.

Anyone see an ugly brown van out there?

Yes! But you're not gonna like where it's parked!

Scott, how long you need to get that thing working?

JOE: And this is just the gentlest reunion for these two characters.

McFEELY: Yeah, that's the thing, they don't get much

even though he's a driving force in the story.

JOE: Now and again.

If there's another Ant-Man movie, there's some stuff to play there.

Now, we have to remind you

that this seemed to be something that was completely premeditated,

and that there's a plan here in play from Doctor Strange

that started in Infinity War.

And it was a very risky plan that involved the death of half the universe.

MARKUS: Temporary.

I have to hot-wire it.

Where's Nebula?

JOE: If you remember in Civil War,

Clint introduces himself.

McFEELY: Right. This is very subtle, but yes. (LAUGHS)

JOE: T'Challa says, "I don't care."

And now he says, "Clint, give it to me."

McFEELY: So, this is a section we refer to as the "flea flicker,"

which is a chance for several characters to carry the load of the Gauntlet,

trying to get it towards the van,

and to be assisted along the way by other characters,

sort of a unifying idea to get a lot of teamwork.

And in early drafts and concept art...

MARKUS: Everybody and your mother carried the Infinity Gauntlet.

McFEELY: And now it sort of got down to a meaningful four

with various side events like this,

- where Scarlet Witch gets to... - JOE: Gets her revenge.

McFEELY: Get her revenge, yeah.

She's really the biggest threat to Thanos on this field.

JOE: She is, she's a very powerful character.

And he has to, in a way, cheat and sacrifice his own armies

just to escape her.

Instant Kill.

(GRUNTS)

Wanda's powers have a lot to do with her internal life.

And there's a growth to the powers

based on the growth of her internal life

and her ability to harness them,

and the emotion and the pain caused by Vision's death

has accelerated that growth of power.

And now here Thanos is destroying everyone on the battlefield,

including his own armies, just to escape.

McFEELY: These action set pieces are all about sort of action and reaction,

logical choices by characters.

Takes a long time to make sure that they seem seamless,

but it's a lot of work by a lot of people.

MARKUS: Gradually making order out of chaos.

JOE: The intention of this sequence

is to put them against the ropes

and make you believe that they're done for

unless something dramatic were to happen.

And it's a technique that we have used before,

the dramatic entrance or return of a hero

who can change the course of the battle.

In Infinity War, it was Thor in Wakanda.

And here it is none other than Captain Marvel.

(YELPS)

(GRUNTS)

(GROOT GRUNTS)

(ROCKET YELLING)

JOE: We did this through Rocket's POV

'cause the two of them have a little bit of a history that involves

a haircut insult.

McFEELY: He knows a little ahead of time

- who this is gonna be. - JOE: Mmm-hmm.

Friday, what are they firing at?

FRIDAY: Something just entered the upper atmosphere.

JOE: And we know that she has the ability

to fly through ships and destroy them.

We saw it in the climax of her own movie.

Oh, yeah!

MARKUS: This is, of course, very sad for Thanos,

'cause that's not just his ship,

- that's his home. Poor guy. - McFEELY: "You sank my battleship."

MARKUS: All his stuff was on there.

JOE: And again, we have to...

I have to really give kudos to our VFX team.

McFEELY: Yeah, there's a lot going on here.

JOE: Six thousand shots between Infinity War and Endgame

with groundbreaking VFX. I mean, just stunning work.

MARKUS: And at no point do you go like...

You're never taken out. You never go, "This isn't real."

This entire thing is real.

And this was just a chance to, you know,

show off another amazing aspect of the Marvel roster.

And there are just so many great female characters

that we just wanted to have the fun of putting them all together for once.

And it's much like Cap catching the hammer,

it's one of those moments that just sort of gets you viscerally.

JOE: Now, we're teasing the showdown that many people are anticipating,

Marvel versus Thanos.

He makes a desperate move, destroys the time machine.

Now, what recourse do the heroes have?

McFEELY: This was always the idea,

that there was going to be a scrum for the Gauntlet at the end.

MARKUS: Because we knew where we wanted to get with Tony,

and we knew there could not be another option left on the field

in order to get there.

JOE: And if he gets this, remember,

it's the end of the universe as we know it.

McFEELY: Right.

He's gonna start over.

JOE: I love this moment where Cap and Thor are teaming up

to try to put that axe into Thanos' throat.

McFEELY: Oh, savage.

JOE: And then here she comes.

I mean, that's part of who Thanos is.

He is this sort of gladiator fighter, he's a savage.

He's gone through the universe

murdering the best heroes of every planet for a thousand years.

And then he runs into Captain Marvel.

(YELLS, GRUNTS)

You get to see a little bit of his true colors in this act.

- He cheats twice. - McFEELY: Right.

JOE: Turns the guns on his own troops.

- And in a moment... - McFEELY: Sort of grows more noble...

- He's more noble in Infinity War. - JOE: As a philosopher, yes.

MARKUS: But here we have Tony realizing what needs to happen.

JOE: So, the setup from the end of Infinity War,

where he couldn't understand what the hell Strange was doing...

McFEELY: "Tony, it was the only way."

JOE: And blames Strange forgiving away the universe,

he now understands it all, that it was always meant to be him.

And nanotech.

McFEELY: That's right. If it's unclear how he got them,

it's two similar gloves talking to each other in this nanotech-y way.

(WHIRRING)

JOE: And his suit is keeping him alive here.

McFEELY: Well, as the power's coursing through him,

he doesn't have a lot of time.

JOE: But when he snaps those fingers, it's too much.

That was a late addition and the last shot of the entire film.

In reshoots, "I am Iron Man,"

it's the very last shot that we did in January of '19,

on a sound stage at Raleigh Studios,

adjacent to the sound stage where Robert Downey originally tested...

McFEELY: That's right, it was Raleigh Studios where he tested...

JOE: For Iron Man, 12 years before. McFEELY: That's right.

JOE: So, talk about symmetry

and things coming full circle.

So, it was a very emotional moment for Robert, for all of us.

Now, what we wanted to do here was draw out your expectation

about whether or not Thanos was actually going to go.

And this is a replication of his moment from the end of the last film.

MARKUS: Mmm-hmm. McFEELY: You mean, sitting on his porch?

JOE: Exactly.

He walks over to a stone and sits, and has a very different reaction.

To defeat.

MARKUS: "Mr. Stark, I don't feel so good."

JOE: Again, we draw it out considerably.

Now, you've forgotten Tony until this moment.

This probably took the most conversation and thought,

was what he would look like in this moment.

McFEELY: It's got to be a by-degrees, though, right?

You knew that he was gonna look pretty messed up

- towards the end of the story. - JOE: For sure.

But look, his face is half destroyed.

It makes it an exceedingly tragic death.

McFEELY: If it's too far, you can't look at it.

JOE: Yes, too far, you can't look at it.

If it's not enough, then you don't feel it.

McFEELY: You don't know why he's dying, right.

JOE: You should feel it before Peter Parker feels it,

so that you're having the same reaction he's having when you're looking at Tony.

You go, "I don't think he's coming back from this."

McFEELY: And certainly we scripted a lot of emotion and emoting and dialogue

for him saying goodbye, and people saying goodbye to him,

but Robert was pretty adamant about...

The guy who had an answer for everything, you know, is done.

JOE: Well, he's incapacitated. It's just truthful.

Again, here's Gwyneth.

A phenomenal performance, restraint.

Opposite her husband who's dying,

and trying to give him peace in his dying moment

by showing strength.

And telling him that they're gonna be okay.

And giving him permission to rest,

which is the thing that he could never do.

And she doesn't display any emotion until he's gone and he can't see it.

It's a fantastic performance.

I think the first time that we cut this together,

- everybody in the edit room cried. - (McFEELY CHUCKLES)

MARKUS: I can't think of another moment like it,

where a character that beloved

- has such a... - JOE: Complicated ending.

MARKUS: But also just an honest onscreen death that's a real human death.

JOE: It plays out like a war film.

There's no punches pulled in it.

And again, that's the line we were walking,

with the damage done to him was...

How do you feel watching that? It should be painful.

MARKUS: This kid's got a future in pictures, I'm telling you.

Once again, the kids you saw dusted at the very beginning of the movie

now returned.

JOE: And as you'll discover in Far from Home,

Ned has just come back, Peter's just come back.

They're back at school where they're going to find that

quite a few of their classmates have moved on.

MARKUS: Back at school where everyone's a stranger.

And here you begin to hear Tony Stark deliver his own eulogy,

which is something we always wanted from the first draft,

of how do we bring back the spirit

and the lightheartedness

that Tony always brought to these movies

while not betraying the fact that he is, in fact, gone?

And Tony Stark, a man of that substantial ego,

despite the fact that he just sacrificed himself to save the universe,

he'd find a way to deliver his own eulogy.

JOE: Clearly, the technologist and the futurist

knows enough that before he goes on a time travel mission,

he ought to leave a message to his wife and daughter,

in case the slim odds did not lean in their favor.

TONY: Not that death at any time isn't untimely.

This time travel thing that we're gonna try and pull off tomorrow...

it's got me scratching my head about the survivability of it all.

JOE: I think, also, this is another late addition.

We only came up with the idea for the "I love you 3,000"

at the end of the movie in post.

McFEELY: Well, you can see... JOE: This is an ADR. line,

which is why it's delivered off-camera,

'cause we never would have made that choice had we shot it.

(GASPS SOFTLY)

MARKUS: And now possibly the most complicated scheduling shot

in the history of cinema.

McFEELY: You could be forgiven for thinking that

this big funeral shot is stitched together.

But this is all one take. How many did you shoot? Five, six takes?

JOE: I think we rehearsed it for the entire day

before it was shot with stand-ins,

so we were really prepared when we got all of them out there,

because we wanted to do this in the correct light.

And, yeah, we got five or six takes in, I think.

If you look at everyone's reaction,

it really signals who they are as a character

- and how they felt about Tony. - McFEELY: Mmm-hmm.

MARKUS: Mmm-hmm.

JOE: I love how stoic Benedict is.

He knew that Stark had to be sacrificed.

What other reaction could he possibly have here?

McFEELY: I think you go back to Infinity War,

when Tony asks, "How many do we win?" and he says, "One,"

that's a pregnant beat. He knows exactly what's happening in that moment.

JOE: In my memory of comic books, all funerals,

you always saw, when a major character died,

all the other heroes collected at their graveside.

And this is really an homage to that concept.

Why we wanted to do it in a oner was for that reason, you're sort of...

The camera is winding you through the history of the Marvel Universe

through each franchise.

- All the way back to the man who... - McFEELY: It's a bit of a flex.

- (McFEELY CHUCKLES) - JOE: Started the Avengers.

Nick Fury.

And two characters who have lost people very close to them.

Now, people have asked

why Natasha didn't get the same amount of screen time post-death as Tony did.

- Well, Tony does not have another movie. - McFEELY: True.

JOE: Tony is done.

And Natasha has another film.

And Marvel Universe obviously does not have to move forward linearly anymore.

But that character still has more screen time coming.

HAPPY: How you doing, squirt?

Good.

MARKUS: Given the number of movies he's directed,

you forget Jon Favreau's a pretty great actor.

JOE: And the man who started it all,

you know, standing on the shoulders of giants.

So, another unique aspect of the narrative experiment,

Marvel Universe's.

A bunch of artists working together in concert

and handing the baton off from one to the next,

and everyone bringing their own spin to it

and their own thoughts and emotions to it.

The poetry of having Jon sitting there with Tony's daughter is really special.

Just as a filmmaker, you know.

It feels like a thank you from us, a love letter from us to Jon.

MARKUS: And here we have Thor resolving his last issue.

McFEELY: It's an epic movie. There's a lot going on,

so you're gonna have a few different endings.

JOE: And the way that the tone shifts,

40 minutes into the movie

from sadness to humor,

we're once again shifting you out of the sadness around Tony's death

and back into these characters.

And the fun of their relationships.

MARKUS: Mmm-hmm.

I love how clear-eyed Thor here is.

He's still a little sloppy, but he's got the eyes of a hero again.

I do have a ride though.

MARKUS: And then this, which is just pure joy.

McFEELY: It's hard to predict chemistry, really.

JOE: Now, notice he was searching for Gamora.

He does not know where she is.

McFEELY: She's certainly a thread that's still out there.

JOE: And the audience does not know where she is.

Where to first?

JOE: It's an intentionally vague ending for the character.

I could certainly watch an entire movie or two with all of these guys.

...you say, "Of course," but then you touch the map.

It makes you think that maybe you didn't realize I was in charge.

Quail, that's your own insecurities in there.

Quail?

Okay? I am merely trying to be of service and assisting.

Quill.

That's what I said.

JOE: I think back to Thor, the original film.

McFEELY: Yeah, he's come a long way. JOE: The character's come a long way.

And Hemsworth has come a long way.

He's made very brave choices along the way,

like some of the bravest choices of anyone.

McFEELY: Well, I think the trilogy of Ragnarok, Infinity War, and Endgame

(CHUCKLES) marked a real turning point for him as an actor,

and for Thor as a character.

JOE: And Hemsworth, that son of a bitch, won the genetic lottery.

And top of that, he is also hilarious.

And a really sublime comedian.

SMART HULK: Remember...

you have to return the stones to the exact moment you got 'em...

or you're gonna open up a bunch of nasty alternative realities.

Don't worry, Bruce.

Clip all the branches.

JOE: Stones have to be returned.

MARKUS: And Steve's the man to do it, the responsible one.

Couldn't possibly have an ulterior motive.

JOE: And we once again reinforce that it was an everlasting exchange,

- the rules cannot be broken. - MARKUS: Mmm-hmm.

JOE: Even the stones cannot return someone

who has sacrificed themselves for the Soul Stone.

Now, clearly Bucky knows something here, right?

McFEELY: Yeah, I think it's clear from Sebastian's performance here

that he's been clued in,

that Bucky's been clued in to Steve's decision.

Why would he say, "I'm gonna miss you" if it's gonna be five seconds?

JOE: Mmm-hmm. He knows.

Now, we don't know the extent to which what Steve told him,

but clearly he told him something.

McFEELY: Yeah, and I don't think he said...

- "I'll go sit on the bench over there." -JOE: "I'll be back."

McFEELY: I think he's certainly surprised to see that.

How long is this gonna take?

JOE: One of the joys of the last 11 years is just seeing Cap

so effortlessly pick up that hammer again and again.

You bet.

SMART HULK: Going quantum. Three...

two...

one.

And returning in five...

four...

MARKUS: And I have to say,

when this got figured out, it never changed.

JOE: And this was pretty early. This was one of the first things that...

And you are right. It never changed.

But both Tony and Cap's endings were very clear

throughout the entire process.

You cannot tell a story between two films

unless you understand the ending of the second film.

McFEELY: We put stakes in the ground and drove at them.

JOE: Yeah, and you can't write the last chapter of a book

with 21 preceding chapters without knowing

what the final 30 pages are gonna be.

MARKUS: And I find it hard to believe...

And that's what makes Marvel so special,

is that we were given the opportunity to take this character all the way

from start to finish over the course

of however many movies to bring him all the way back around

back to Peggy again, back to the '40s again.

JOE: The other thing is,

what has to be applauded

is taking a commercial property,

a lucrative commercial property

and committing to finality and an ending.

McFEELY: Right.

JOE: Because nothing has value unless it has an ending.

...maybe...

I'll try some of that life Tony was telling me to get.

SAM: How'd that work out for ya?

It was beautiful.

Good. I'm happy for you.

Truly.

Thank you.

Only thing bumming me out...

is the fact I have to live in a world without Captain America.

MARKUS: And now, a choice that

for some in the outside world, was up for debate...

I don't think it ever really was.

JOE: No.

MARKUS: Sam represents

everything Captain America is supposed to represent,

which is the idea of what this country could be.

And Bucky, I've said before,

in a way, he represents what this country actually is,

which is a murky, political situation, as evidenced in Winter Soldier.

But Captain America has always represented

the idea behind the country,

and Sam's much closer to that.

McFEELY: Well, it's a rich story going forward,

if Marvel chooses to explore it.

What does it mean for this man

with his own identity as Falcon,

his own hero identity, to take on another one?

What does it mean for an African-American man

to take on the mantle of Captain America?

How does he feel about that?

Is he honored?

Does he chafe against it?

There's a lot of rich stuff to explore there.

JOE: And it's the first time

that an identity is being passed from one character to another.

McFEELY: Yeah.

JOE: And you're right...

What is the new identity that he creates with this?

McFEELY: How do others see it? JOE: Yeah.

MARKUS: And now,

just the loveliest shot in cinema.

McFEELY: Yeah.

I think it should be noted,

it's kind of sometimes hard to notice, the door is open here.

JOE: This is very shortly after their reunion.

McFEELY: I imagine that, about 10 minutes ago,

he knocked on the door,

she dropped whatever she was holding. (LAUGHS)

JOE: And it led to this.

Again, it's interesting to talk about Cap's arc, too,

just going from service to self-actualization.

McFEELY: Yeah. JOE: Right?

And Tony going from selfish to selfless.

McFEELY: Yes.

JOE: They're traveling incredible distances,

these characters, over these movies,

and in a way, inverted arcs.

- They're passing one another. - McFEELY: They pass in the night there.

JOE: But it's Tony who gives him this gift.

It is Tony who tells him that he needs to get a life.

McFEELY: And Tony dying gives him this gift as well.

JOE: Gives him the gift as well.

Tony repairing the universe and sealing the fate of Thanos

is what allows Steve to make that choice

and pass the mantle on to someone else

who has that hope and belief

as you were saying about Sam is that...

Cap went on that journey, and that journey had disillusionment

and it led to him becoming an insurgent,

and then finding his way back again

to help complete the original mission of the Infinity Saga.

McFEELY: To complete it, it's gotta be okay for the soldier

to put down his shield.

JOE: And move on from the war. McFEELY: Yeah.

That's why you fight, so that you can end the fight.

MARKUS: He is a World War II soldier who has finally come home.

McFEELY: That's right.

MARKUS: It took a long time, but he got there.

McFEELY: I think it can be seen as poignant.

JOE: And these credits are an incredible celebration

of all of the amazing people

behind movies of this scale.

They're truly a collaboration

between hundreds of people

all doing very, very difficult work behind the scenes,

and these films are not possible

without them.

And what's amazing is when you get to the crew credits,

how long it goes on for, and it's thousands of names.

Thousands of people

- spending hours and hours. - MARKUS: Years.

There were people there in Atlanta

just living these two movies for, at least, two years.

JOE: Now, coming up, this is an idea from Kevin,

which is a curtain call for the original Avengers

and something that was very important to him,

and, I think, very emotional for him.

McFEELY: Yeah, inspired by...

I forget which Star Trek it is.

JOE: Yeah, I think it's Star Trek... Is it Three?

McFEELY: Whatever the last one is with the original cast.

JOE: If you're in a Broadway theater...

McFEELY: Yes, it's a curtain call.

JOE: It's the cast coming out to take their bows.

Now, what's also

unique about this film is that it's the endgame for the four of us.

MARKUS: Mmm. McFEELY: Right.

JOE: We went on a seven-year journey together.

Culminating in

two very, very difficult movies back to back.

This again, being in that theater on a Thursday night, on opening night,

it got applause, and when it got to Robert,

- it got a standing ovation. - (McFEELY CHUCKLES)

McFEELY: I guess it did. That's right.

JOE: As if they were really in the room.

McFEELY: That's right.

JOE: What I remember as a kid going to Star Wars

and Empire and Return of the Jedi or Indiana Jones,

Close Encounters,

the feeling that they left me with when I walked out of that theater

and the impatience and the wait in between every Star Wars movie.

That's moviemaking, that's what cinema is.

That's what this modern version of cave paintings is,

and we're passing stories and emotions to each other.

And I think we're all exceedingly proud to have been part of this story.

(METAL CLANGING)