Cover art for Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame – The Art of the Movie hardcover book has surfaced online, highlighting concept art that ultimately inspired the blockbuster’s final battle. In it, Chris Evans’ Captain America and Chris Hemsworth’s still mighty Thor — dual wielding both Mjolnir and Stormbreaker — battle Josh Brolin’s time-traveling Mad Titan Thanos for the fate of the universe. With art by Marvel Studios’ Head of Visual Development Ryan Meinerding, the 376-page book offers concept art and exclusive interviews with a behind-the-scenes look at Avengers: Endgame, the culmination of 22 interconnected films that signaled the end of the Infinity Saga and the first 11-year chapter of the shared Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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Meinerding previously identified Captain America’s battle with Thanos as one of his favorite pieces to create when visualizing Endgame, alongside sequences showing Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and Okoye (Danai Gurira) joining a lone Captain America in battle with Falcon (Anthony Mackie).
“There’s so many! Whether I worked on them or not, I think the evolution of Cap vs. Thanos one on one with the hammer and the shield, the breaking of the shield, and Cap standing off against the entire army by himself and then the Portals opening and Panther and Okoye coming through and Falcon flying in…all of those are amazing,” Meinerding told CBM. “Tony’s fight… I never knew how they were going to pull that off with Tony and Thanos at the very end and having the nanotech suit to do a bit of the work to get the Infinity Stones was a stroke of genius. All of it is the answer!”
The 13-year studio veteran also praised Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige for highlighting the work of conceptual artists in its collection of Art of the Movie books.
“You know, it’s one of the best parts about working here. Kevin has always loved concept art,” Meinerding said. “He grew up loving Star Wars and Ralph McQuarrie’s work and he had the idea of just having a visual development team, which is essentially a concept art team.”
At Marvel, artists are “allowed to create as many high quality and most useful pieces that we can that sometimes turn out to be relevant for marketing materials and beyond.”
“I’m very fortunate that the ‘Art of’ books are things that are made and that are out there and highlight the work we’re doing and what we’re trying to accomplish,” Meinerding continued. “It’s an amazing place to work and to be able to say that I’ve worked here for just over thirteen years and led around fifteen movies that have all of that come together in a cinematic event as big as Endgame was… I don’t know if I could have written a script for my career that was more gratifying and satisfying or amazing. If I’d told my thirteen year old self what I’d be doing on one movie let alone upwards of fifteen, sixteen, seventeen movies, I would never have believed it.”
Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame – The Art of the Movie releases November 19.
