By all rights, the Russo brothers ought to be up there with the likes of Christopher Nolan and James Cameron in that rare pantheon of film-makers who can score incendiary box office results while keeping the critics happy. They are only the third set of directors to achieve a $2bn global gross (with 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War) after James Cameron and JJ Abrams. They managed to repeat the achievement with the following year’s Avengers: Endgame. And since they stopped making films for Marvel five years ago, the studio has entered a period of relative decline.
Hardly surprising, then, that reports suggest the Russos might be back for another crack at the Avengers. The Hollywood Reporter suggests the duo are in early talks to helm the two films that were once monikered Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars, and are theoretically due in cinemas for 2026 and 2027.
It’s highly unlikely we’ll see the first of those episodes hit multiplexes in its original form given Marvel has cut all ties with actor Jonathan Majors (AKA Kang) after his conviction for assaulting his ex-girlfriend in a high-profile case that has derailed the once-promising star’s career. The time-travelling supervillain will no longer be the big bad of these movies – the middling, Kang-heavy Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania didn’t help much here either – and the first of these new Avengers movies is likely to be retitled and reconfigured. Yet Marvel still needs somebody to take on this Multiverse Saga-ending double header, and the Russos are the obvious choice.
Or are they? Because in many ways it seems preposterous to place the brothers in the same category as Nolan and Cameron. The latter are film-makers with a unique vision and artistic vitality based on stylistic integrity and a refusal to compromise. It is possible to tell a Nolan movie without seeing the credit by their tightly woven non-linear storytelling and head-spinning inner visions. The same cannot be said for the Russos, but that may just be in their favour.
Since departing Marvel they have hardly set the world on fire. The Tom Holland-led drug drama Cherry was named one critic’s worst film of 2021; The Gray Man (2022), starring Ryan Gosling, cost a reported $200m but ended up as little more than a lukewarm Netflix action thriller. Neither hints at a particularly distinctive film-making style.
And yet the Russos have just what Marvel need: an ability to pluck heartstrings with an individual character despite using huge ensemble casts, and the nous to choreograph dynamic, grounded fight sequences and superb action set pieces. Then again, what director who has worked regularly with the studio hasn’t got these skills? Perhaps Marvel just feels the need to reach for the tried and tested after a period of turbulence: it has long been a producer-led studio that favours team players over mavericks.
Only the most idiosyncratic of film-makers (Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness; Taika Waititi’s Thor double-header; James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy) have really been able to put an individual stamp on these movies. And there are instances where Marvel has simply found individual directors too freewheeling for head honcho Kevin Feige to trust them with the sandbox – somewhere there is a universe in which Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man broke all box office records, but sadly it is not this one.
Perhaps then, a bit more of all that good stuff we had in the pre-Covid years is exactly what’s needed. More grand Marvel mega-epics that bring together dozens of superheroes in a manner that keeps fans who watch every millisecond of the MCU in raptures and confuse everyone else. More galaxy-spanning tales of cosmic wonder that also manage to delve into the inner psyche of giant green beasties with serious anger management issues. More explosive blockbusters that somehow make one care deeply about the emotional journey of a talking raccoon. It worked before, and it can work all over again.
Although most of the interesting Marvel characters these days seem highly unlikely to make it to 21st century Earth-616 in time for the big hurrah – the Fantastic Four are stuck in an alternate reality 1960s; Deadpool and Wolverine are way too snarky and bloodthirsty to survive long in a PG-13 – the Russos can almost certainly bring us this. Just don’t expect them to make a big song and dance about it, because that’s not their style. If Nolan and Cameron are the Iron Man and Captain America of 21st century blockbuster film-making, the Russos are probably closer to a double Hawkeye. Then again, perhaps a pair of team players who just happen to have perfect aim is exactly what Marvel needs to save the day.
