by Abe Fried-Tanzer
Back in July, Avengers: Endgame surpassed Avatar for the title of the highest-grossing film of all time worldwide. You’d think that would mean that nearly everyone who goes to the movies has seen it. At a guild screening in Los Angeles earlier this week, however, nearly half the audience put their hands up when asked if they were seeing this three-hour blockbuster for the first time. Writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who were on hand for a Q & A, were surprised and almost delighted by this showing...
It’s reasonable to expect that Avengers: Endgame would end up at the top of a few Oscar voters’ ballots, but is it really likely that it will make the cut? Black Panther was nominated for Best Picture just last year, but it managed appeal outside of the superhero spectrum. Perhaps crucially, it could also function on its own without the entire mythology of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Aside from visual effects citations, Logan is the only other comic book movie in recent memory to manage a major breakthrough with a bid for its screenplay. Before that, The Dark Knight did well across the board, but not well enough to score a top nod. If the highly-anticipated and well-received Star Wars: The Force Awakens couldn’t crack the Best Picture field, can this twenty-second entry in a series pull it off?
Markus and McFeely shared a number of entertaining stories about the writing process. They were hired for Infinity War and Endgame back in April 2015, between Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War, both of which they also wrote. To plot out the story for both epic films simultaneously, they had three walls: one for the first movie, one for the second, and one to manage the “baseball cards” of every Marvel character, which they humorously annotated with dollar signs based on how much they guessed that each actor would get paid. Decisions about Disney+ streaming series featuring characters from the films were apparently made after the stories were created for Endgame rather than the other way around, allowing Markus and McFeely a good amount of artistic leeway with occasional input from heavy hitters like Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige.
Markus and McFeely conveyed their excitement at being able to embed emotional content in a time travel plot, determined to revisit key scenes from the franchise in a way that was more than just a clip show and instead properly wrapped arcs of characters introduced multiple films ago. hearing that people continue to deliberate over how the timeline actually works and whether it makes sense shows them that audiences are still thinking about this film and its universe in a positive and intrigued way.
Whether the historic production and complex writing feat of Endgame will be enough to compel Oscar voters to consider the ultimate superhero movie remains a mystery. But, as seen through this lens, this big moneymaker might just be able to pull it off, even if its odds are similar to those faced by its characters at the start of the film.