It Only Gets Worse In 'Avengers 4' With "Deeper Stakes"

Fans better use the year-long wait for Avengers 4 as an opportunity to catch their breathe after [...]

Fans better use the year-long wait for Avengers 4 as an opportunity to catch their breathe after that Avengers: Infinity War ending because it's not going to get any easier.

Spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War follow. Major spoilers!

Avengers Infinity War Tony Stark
(Photo: Marvel Entertainment)

Given the ending of Avengers: Infinity War, many fans are expecting some time travel or universe manipulation to undo the evil deeds of Thanos. After all, half of the universe was just wiped from existence, and we only just got Black Panther. Certainly, Marvel Studios has a planned sequel for the wildly popular character and others, so they'll have to come back to life right? Well, they might, but it sounds like any revivals will only come with a cost.

"I will say this: There is a real commitment on our end to the stakes," co-director Anthony Russo told Variety. "Yes, this is a fantasy world, and yes, remarkable things can happen in a fantasy world, but-"

"They come at an incredibly high cost," Anthony's brother and co-director Joe Russo chimed in. "For us, there will always be stakes and the stakes have been progressing from film to film. And I think you can extrapolate that they will continue to deepen in Avengers 4."

As Joe Russo is more than willing to tease that things are only just beginning, he ends the comments with an ominous, "Just you wait."

Speaking to ComicBook.com, the sibling directors Anthony and Joe Russo (who helmed both Infinity War an its sequel set for May of 2019), they explained their intimate approach to what will certainly be an epic conclusion to this Thanos saga.

You can't chase bigger because you get yourself into trouble," Joe Russo told ComicBook.com. "What you can chase is story telling. So, everything for us is based on the story. Obviously, this is larger in scale than Civil War because we have more than double the amount of characters in it, and it's Thanos, and it's cosmic. The stakes are the universe. You can't get much bigger than that."

In a later interview (not seen in the video above), the directors went into further detail about what they expect the year between Avengers: Infinity War and its sequel to feel like for fans.

"I think the reaction is that in Winter Soldier and Civil War, we like complicated stories," Joe Russo said. "We like stories that are in bounds. And Thanos is the toughest villain they've ever faced, and it's going to cost these heroes a lot if they're going to beat him. We like robust concepts, and so I think that when people are done with the movie, that hopefully it's a cathartic experience for them and they feel it was a worthy finale to 10 years of film-making."

As far as storytelling goes, they wanted to be sure the sprawling epic concluded a journey with Infinity War, while also planting seeds for what's to come later. "It was important for us, because we wanted, the experience we wanted to have at the end of this story was the sense of emotional completion. In terms of what the narrative was in the film," Anthony Russo said. "And hopefully they'll have that similar feeling...It's serialized story-telling. The mission was to not make one long movie and get out the scissors and cut it in half. Because that's never been the most fulfilling cinematic expression. So for us, the commitment was to try and put a beginning, middle, and end to this, and a beginning, middle, and end to that."

Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War are now playing in theaters. Ant-Man and The Wasp is set for release on July 6, 2018. Captain Marvel will follow it on March 6, 2019, with the untitled Avengers 4 set to tie everything about the Marvel Cinematic Universe into a bow on May 3, 2019. Leave your Marvel questions and thoughts in the comment section below or send them to @BrandonDavisBD on Twitter!

1comments