Avengers: Endgame is one of the most anticipated movies in the superhero genre. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has grown at a staggering pace and the fandom’s expectations and excitement have grown at an exponential rate. The way the general populace has embraced comic book movies with the advent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe seems rather stupendous and astounding but it is true nonetheless.
Recently the fans were graced by the second trailer for Avengers: Endgame. This trailer featured some never before seen footage from the film and the fandom is already hard at work trying to decode the available footage to determine the plot of Avengers: Endgame.
It will come as no surprise to the general fandom that Marvel likes to manipulate its trailers more than they’d ever like to admit. We have seen it happen with Thor: Ragnarok and we have seen it happen with Hulk in the Infinity War trailer. Marvel studios make it a point to misguide fans with extra footage in the trailers so as to keep us off the trails of the actual plot details. This makes the process fun for both the fans and for the directors.
As they give us details for a wild goose chase, we have to use our intellect to decode it giving rise to both significant and utterly preposterous theories. Recently the Russo brothers were interviewed by the Empire Magazine via Comingsoon.net and the directors had this to say:-
“We talked about all scales of marketing,” said Joe Russo. “The thing that’s most important to us is that we preserve the surprise of the narrative. When I was a kid and saw The Empire Strikes Back at 11am on the day it opened…It so profoundly moved me because I didn’t know a damn thing about the story I was going to watch. We’re trying to replicate that experience.”
Joe said “we (Him and Anthony) use all the material that we have at our disposal to create a trailer. We look at the trailer as a very different experience than the movie, and I think audiences are so predictive now that you have to be very smart about how you craft a trailer because an audience can watch a trailer and basically tell you what’s gonna happen in the film.”
“We consume too much content,” added Russo. “So at our disposal are lots of different shots that aren’t in the movie that we can manipulate through CG to tell a story that we want to tell specifically for the purpose of the trailer and not for the film.”
Clearly, the directors admit what the fandom already knew, that the trailers are not entirely true. It is completely possible that the footage we deliberate on so intensely will have not made it to the final cut. We will only find out what is in the movie once we see it but up until then, we are going to speculate the plot details to our wit’s end.
The brothers tell us that not all the footage makes it to the final cut and moreover the footage that we do see is customized in a way to tell a specific story for the trailer rather than for the movie. The directors implicate that the idea of a trailer is to generate hype as a tool for marketing and this aim is not mutually exclusive of trying to keep the actual plot under wraps.
The directors are trying to preserve the surprise and awe of not knowing the plot for the fans and to this end, they admit in the interview that they will go to any length necessary. Maybe this is the reason that Hulk was a major part of marketing for Infinity War but was nowhere to be seen after the initial skirmish with Thanos in the actual movie. The idea is a noble one but the means are sinister and a bit skittish. Let’s see how it pans out in the long run.
Avengers: Endgame comes out on April 26, 2019. Up until then, keep watching this space for everything Marvel. It stars some of the biggest names in the industry and the association of the Russo brothers with this project makes it so much more noteworthy. Are you excited for Avengers: Endgame? Let us know in the comments below.
