Avengers: Endgame director says the MCU lacks a plan, but in a good way

Over the last 14 years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has dominated the box office, churning out hit after hit. Fans have hailed Marvel president Kevin Feige for the masterful way he’s constantly kept the movies feeling fresh, with many assuming he has a complicated master plan responsible for all the success.

And obviously, Marvel does put a lot of thought into how it makes its movies. However, according to Avengers: Endgame director Joe Russo, it’s not as definitive as you think. “The way it works at Marvel is… I’m sure at some point somebody will talk in detail about this, but part of Kevin [Feige]’s brilliance is that there isn’t really a plan,” he said during the Sands International Film Festival, per Deadline). “There’s an idea, but you can’t have a plan if the movie you’re making tanks. There’s no plan after that, right?”

Of course, Joe and Anthony Russo worked on Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame; two of the most ambitious crossover events in movie history. In fact, their four Marvel movies have grossed over $7 billion worldwide. While it might seem like Infinity War and Endgame were inevitable, Russo explains that it wasn’t so. “So it’s really about, as the movie succeeded, then there was sort of enthusiasm about, ‘Well, what else could we do?’ And then that’s when new ideas would come out, right? And there were hopes, we hope one day we can get to the story if you keep doing this, right? Maybe we can all get there, you know, like Infinity War and Endgame, but a lot of the stuff was made up in between the movies, right?”

"So we’re retrofitting these ideas and that’s all part of the fun of it. But I think that was in a lot of ways the secret sauce of Marvel was riding a bucking bronco."

That’s one of the more left-field comparisons I’ve heard. But obviously it works for them, so ride it.

Marvel plans movies like it’s riding a bucking bronco

Given that the MCU has now ended its “Infinity saga” and entered its “Multiverse saga,” it definitely feels like a plan is starting to form. And we know that they have a lot on the horizon. The X-Men are poised to be introduced at some point, for example, and then there’s Blade and the Fantastic Four. Clearly, the pieces are in place.

But at the same time, Marvel is never shy about changing release dates, even if it means the stories need to be amended.  Most notably, Spider-Man: No Way Home was supposed to premiere after Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. And then what about something like Eternals, which didn’t hit as hard as usual at the box office? Might there have been things planned to follow that up which are now being quietly scrapped as Marvel pivots once again?

The biggest takeaway from this is easy. Kevin Feige knows exactly what he’s doing.

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