Breaking Down the Iconic Captain America Fight with the Avengers: Endgame VFX Team

Avengers: Endgame was chock full of memorable moments, including a spectacular fight sequence in 2012 New York between Captain America(Chris Evans) and Captain America (also Chris Evans). Not only were fans treated with the classic “I can do this all day” line, but moviegoers got a classic face-off between two versions of the star-spangled character.

The effects house responsible for putting that fight together was the team at Lola VFX, led by supervisor Trent Claus. ComicBook.com spoke with Claus earlier this week and part of our chat focused on breaking down the momentous fight between the two Caps. As it turns out, it was a little more complicated than Evans facing off against a stunt double.

“Depending on the shot, and it really varied by shot, sometimes Chris would play the Cap that’s most visible to the camera, and the opposite would be played by a stunt double, sometimes Chris would play both Caps,” Claus recounts. “We would shoot it twice, once with him in one role and once in the other role, so obviously, in each case then, he’s playing opposite a stunt double, and then when it comes to the final comps, what you see on screen, it’s always Chris’s face.”

“Sometimes it’s on the body of a stunt double, and sometimes it’s a split comp where we’ve merged two different performances of Chris, so it really varies shot to shot, whichever worked best for that moment.”

On top of that, Claus made sure to point out that there were two practical versions of the classic 2012 suit involved in the sequence. While the suits were remakes of what Evans wore in The Avengers, the classic blue cowl was added digitally after the filmmakers had a change of heart.

“Both Caps, whether it be Chris Evans at the time or a stunt double, are wearing Captain America suits,” Claus said. “Then neither one of them were wearing a helmet or a cowl at the time. After the fact, in the edit, the filmmakers decided in order to make it easier to tell which one is which, we would add a CG helmet onto the 2012 version, so in the final film you see the 2012 version wearing a helmet, and that was completely added digitally after the fact.”

Was the Cap vs. Cap fight one of your favorite parts of Endgame? If not, what was? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Avengers: Endgame is now in theaters.