Listen, I tried. Knowing the screenwriters of “Avengers: Endgame,” Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, were under strict orders to not give anything away I did my best to prepare some questions that might reveal a glimmer of what we can expect. I mean, these aren’t the easiest interviews when you’ve only been shown 10 minutes or less of the movie.
READ MORE: “Avengers: Endgame” clocks in at just over 3 hours
In case you’ve been living under a rock, “Endgame” is the highly anticipated sequel to last year’s blockbuster, “Avengers: Infinity War.” And, unless you have been living on a deserted island, that film ended with some of Marvel Studios’ most famous heroes fading to dust after Thanos (James Brolin) wipes away half of the universe’s population. Marvel and Walt Disney Studios have famously kept details close to the vest, but it’s now public knowledge that Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) has arrived to deal with the aftermath and that Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) has survived the snap thanks to a timely voyage to the Quantum Realm (see “Ant-Man and the Wasp”). How the original Avengers, Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), will “avenge” their fallen comrades remains to be seen.
Now, enter Markus and Freely. The duo has a long history with Marvel Studios and the Russo Brothers having written all three “Captain America” films, “Thor: The Dark World” (we’ll ignore that one) and creating the fantastic “Agent Carter” TV series (a show that deserved a much longer shelf life). Granted, the duo doesn’t say anything in this interview that will make Disney execs sweat, but a few of their answer are certainly..interesting.
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The Playlist: The first question is an easy one. Did you always know that Captain Marvel would be part of the second film?
Christopher Markus: Yes.
Stephen McFeely: Yes.
The Playlist: From the beginning?
Stephen McFeely: Yes, on a very basic level, because of the release schedule. And we knew that “Captain Marvel,” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp” were released, when they occur is a different matter, but between the two movies. And that we would have her in the MCU in the second one.
Christopher Markus: Yeah, we didn’t take a job writing movie one and two, we took a job writing movie one and movie four.
The Playlist: Knowing that you’re writing movie one and movie four with have so many storylines and so many characters, how did you track it all?
Stephen McFeely: There was a conference room on the lot and whenever people walked in they kind of went, “Oh, this is like serial killer sort of thing.”
Christopher Markus: And we did. We killed half of every living thing in the universe.
Stephen McFeely: That’s true. [Starts pointing around the room] That wall is movie one on 3×5 cards. And that wall is movie two. And then this wall with these little baseball cards with a magnet on the back of all the faces of the Marvel Universe. And we could move them around and create little pockets and groups. And we were like oh, “Wouldn’t it be cool if Rocket, Groot, and Thor went on this journey over here” and that kind of stuff. And then there were sometimes strings in different colors. And it was nuts.
The Playlist: Films and TV shows always try to keep secrets actual secrets. An NDA is powerful to some and not so much to others. [Laughs.] Are you guys surprised how many plot points have been kept quiet about “Endgame?”
Stephen McFeely: Well, the thing I’m most satisfied by are the trailers and the advertising, which have not given anything away. Trailers are always accused of dumping a whole movie on the market, and boy, it’s practically a clip show of old movies. They’re not giving you anything, and it works.
Christopher Markus: Yeah, that’s a lot of confidence.
Stephen McFeely: And that makes me happy because it means they’re treating the movie like it should be treated.
The Playlist: When you were writing both scripts, but specifically “Endgame,” was there anyone’s unavailability that complicated things? That you either had to write them out of the script or you had to change something that you weren’t expecting?
Stephen McFeely: No.
Christopher Markus: Pass.
The Playlist: Is that the answer?
Stephen McFeely: Nothing that changed the story.
The Playlist: O.K.
Stephen McFeely: There were things that changed the shooting schedule, certainly, where it’s like, “Really, they can’t come?”
The Playlist: Were there any things that were added to the final “Endgame” script after you guys had completed “Infinity War” that made you have to juggle things you weren’t expecting in that script?
Christopher Markus: Are you asking if something in “Infinity War” then caused new writing to happen?
The Playlist: Yes, were things discovered shooting that movie that forced changes to the “Endgame” script?
Stephen McFeely: No.
Christopher Markus: Not really, no. It’s not like characters popped and we’ve got to have more of those characters.
Stephen McFeely: We’d ended ‘Infinity War’ fairly definitively. It’s not like we could unsnap that popular-
The Playlist: But wait, here’s an example of what I’m referring to. When you were plotting out the films you did not know how audiences would react to “Black Panther.” You didn’t know, necessarily, that Shuri would be as popular as she became.
Christopher Markus: That’s a good example because she did not disappear on screen. This is almost a marketing question and I haven’t talked to marketing, but maybe I could. When we do a scene where we’re showing the faces of the people who have departed you can put anybody’s face there. And so in one of the first trailers they put Shuri’s face kind of announcing to everybody, “Don’t think Shuri is going to solve this because she didn’t make it.” But it’s not like we went back into the lab and disappeared her or anything. Do you know what I mean? She didn’t disappear on screen, so I guess it was a question but it wasn’t a question for us.
The Playlist: But because she became so popular, you obviously couldn’t then go back and add her to the film in some way.
Christopher Markus: No, it would just be unwieldy. And again, these people were chosen because we have what we think is a meaty story for them
Stephen McFeely: Right.
Christopher Markus: You’re going to have a hard enough time getting a complete arch of these folks, even in three hours.
The Playlist: Some of the actors in this movie have played these roles for almost a decade. Did any of them that come to both of you and say, “Hey listen, this is really important to me that [blank] happens,” or “Could he/she say this at some point?” Was there any input from any of the actors in that regard?
Stephen McFeely: Well, there’s constant input, and it’s a very interactive relationship. I don’t think anybody made any specific demands about where they want to go.
The Playlist: Not demands, like suggest…
Stephen McFeely: They’re constantly like “Could you just kill me off?”
Christopher Markus: “Kill me now,” yeah. So, we did.
The Playlist: There are these rumors that the actors were given fake scenes. Is that true and were they actually filmed?
Stephen McFeely: Not shot.
Christopher Markus: Not shot, no, but our assistant, Joey, was required sometimes to write scenes like “Gamora pops up and gets on the ship or something [someone] and pushes her off a cliff.” So, it just reads terribly, but it just means that there’s not a piece of paper out there that says Gamora fell off a cliff and died.
The Playlist: I believe that the Fox/Disney merger was announced during the production of “Infinity War” and not “Endgame.” It was a year ago last November.
Christopher Markus: That they announced it?
The Playlist: Yes. A year ago last November.
Christopher Markus: Then we were generally in “Endgame.” Yeah, with some pretty clear exceptions, the first half of the year was “Infinity War,” the second half of the year, “Endgame. This was 2017.
The Playlist: Yes. Was there any conversation, just for a minute, where people said, “Hey, do we have the rights? Could we do something-“
Stephen McFeely: “Can we put Wolverine in this?”
The Playlist: Well, not Wolverine necessarily, but do we have access to something that we didn’t have before? Do we want to even revisit?
Christopher Markus: That did not come up.
Stephen McFeely: I mean, somebody may have asked the question, but one, we are drowning under the weight of characters.
Christopher Markus: And again, we weren’t allowed, technically I think, to even consider it until [the acquisition] was done, done.
The Playlist: Until it was signed.
Christopher Markus: Yeah, and God knows how long that would take, and the FCC…and it’s not like we don’t have enough material.
The Playlist: Speaking about that, were there any specific ideas that you had for “Endgame” that you were surprised Marvel signed off on?
Stephen McFeely: Oh, yeah, we took big swings.
Christopher Markus: I can’t tell you what they are, but a couple of them are very satisfying.
The Playlist: Alright, for a comparative analysis, could you give one from “Infinity War” that you were surprised-
Christopher Markus: That surprised me it made it all the way through?
Stephen McFeely: I was surprised that the end of act II remained the end of act II. I thought it would be really controversial and have more conversations, and maybe even change, for Thanos to sacrifice his daughter in such a way. And everyone went you know what, it’s what’s best for the story and it’s weird and strangely emotional. But, of course, you hate him, and it’s just really fraught and weird and complicated.
The Playlist: One last question for you. You’ve already touched on pretty much every single MCU character to date, but is there a Marvel character we haven’t seen on screen that you would love to tackle?
Christopher Markus: Do you mean like an existing comic book character?
The Playlist: Yeah, an existing character.
Stephen McFeely: We’ve got them all now.
Christopher Markus: Yeah, I don’t even know. I mean, there are characters that I find very interesting that I actually don’t know if they’d work that well. I like Moon Knight. But Moon Knight is a weird sort of riff on Batman and unless you handle it right it will be accused of being that. But I’m sure there are ways. I think that’s it. It’s limitless.
The Playlist: How about you Stephen, anything?
Stephen McFeely: Oh, I haven’t given that much thought. I wasn’t a comic book guy growing up, so it’s not like I’ve been waiting to get my hands on this person or that person. I feel like I’ve helped shepherd this new thing from the ground up, and I’m pretty satisfied with that. But Dr. Doom would be awesome.
Christopher Markus: Dr. Doom would be awesome. Or Machine Man.
“Avengers: Endgame” opens nationwide on April 26.
