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In a wide-ranging conversation with CBR about Avengers: Infinity War, star Robert Downey Jr. and co-director Joe Russo have discussed the successful formula behind their Marvel blockbuster and the challenges this year’s Avengers: Doomsday faces as a result.
Infinity War shocked fans when it debuted in 2018. It was a high-octane chase movie that ended with the heroes losing and Thanos completing his mission to erase half of all life in the universe. There would be no real happy ending for some of the MCU’s major characters in the follow-up film either, with Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark and Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff sacrificing their lives for the cause.
Russo acknowledged that Infinity War was tough to pull off, and said he recently confessed to filmmaker Steven Soderbergh that making films like it is “really fucking hard” because they were “grinding it over and over and over obsessively for the two and a half years that we’re working on that project to make sure that [Downey Jr.] is happy and [Chris] Hemsworth’s happy and [Tom] Holland’s happy and [Chris] Evans is happy and Scarlett’s happy and everyone feels fulfilled.”
Despite the grind, Downey Jr. cited Infinity War as “the most important” one they’ve done so far, later adding that “I think people who see the films, they remember where they were at, where they were in school, where they were working, where they were bringing their kid the first time to see one of these films.”
Looking back at the impact of Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, Downey Jr. also seemed to understand that Doomsday’s potential success wouldn’t depend entirely on his performance as the villainous Doctor Doom and that one of the biggest problems facing the film is being compared to the last two Avengers outings. He suggests they’ve found a solution.
“It’s not even about how I executed it,” he said. “It’s about the way it’s been structured and the other characters. There’s something going on in Doomsday and forward that is literally the only antidote to ‘How do you not have these films be a letdown after an Infinity War and Endgame?’ And boy, have we laboured long and hard to bring that.”
Russo added, “The stakes keep going up. But emotional complexity is always the answer. You bring emotional complexity to anything, and it enriches it and makes it a fuller experience for the audience. It surprises you. There are a lot of surprises in this, and I think it’s the most emotionally complex of all of them. In a lot of ways, the most mature of all of them.”
Marvel Studios has struggled to recapture the highs of Infinity War and Endgame since 2019, spreading itself thin across theatrical releases and Disney+ TV projects. While some projects have been well received, including WandaVision, which Downey Jr. said kept him “connected” to the MCU during the pandemic, others have fallen flat or failed to create the same excitement in the fan base.
However, the studio is now well positioned to launch Avengers: Doomsday. With a scaled-back rollout plan and momentum from the box-office success of Deadpool & Wolverine and Spider-Man: Brand New Day, audiences are more than ready to see the Avengers in action again this December.
Hopefully, Doomsday will also avoid being unfavorably compared to Infinity War and Endgame, but the proof will be in the pudding.
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