Avengers: Endgame Editor Explains Why They Could Include a Decapitation in a Disney Movie

Fans can’t stop discussing everything that went down in Avengers: Endgame. One detail that [...]

Fans can't stop discussing everything that went down in Avengers: Endgame. One detail that didn't make it into the final cut keeps coming up in conversations about the film though. Namely, the moment where poor Captain America was supposed to be decapitated by Thanos. Directors Anthony and Joe Russo have had to address this plot point numerous times over the course of the year after the public was made aware of it. Endgame is pretty intense already, but adding that dark moment probably would have ramped things up a couple of notches. 2014 Thanos was pulling no punches in that version of the story, and with good reason after seeing his own head lopped off in the future. Seeing the moment of his demise would have cemented just how driven he was to get rid of the Avengers once and for all. Jeff Ford is one of the co-editors on Endgame and he talked to Collider about the weight of making decisions like that.

The editor began, "Most of us on the crew are parents and have young kids, and I think that's part of who we are. We think about that, but more importantly, it's about the scale of the story. So for instance, is it necessary? And is it narratively significant? And is it warranted? If you can answer those questions and you feel you need something that could be shocking or violent, then what's the most artful way to handle that so that you don't alienate the audience?"

Shock doesn't exist for shock's sake in these movies though. That downer ending from Avengers: Infinity War served the purpose of showing that these characters can indeed lose. Things can go sideways and there can be dramatic repercussions for people all over the world if these heroes slip up.

"That said, never want to be ghoulish," Ford mentioned. "We're not trying to celebrate it, and we're also trying to make sure that there are consequences to it, and I think that's one of the things I like a lot about it Endgame is that if you watch these superhero movies, the ones that have real consequence, we lose people in this movie, people that we care about and followed for years as a storyboard. But the feeling of loss, it's real. They're gone, they're not coming back. They're not going to come back by some magic spell in another feature film."

He continued, "It's very much like, you have to say goodbye, and that shows the consequence of those actions. I think that's actually something that drama does for all of us. We get to experience consequence and emotion that we would experience in real life, but experiencing drama, it's a way to sort of see what that feels like in a safe place."

Things are going to be different in Phase 4 and beyond. Hopefully, things won't be so dire off the bat this time around.

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