Director of “Avengers: Infinity War,” comes to Iowa, talks about future Marvel movies

Joe Russo is an alumnus from the University of Iowa who came for a visit the Monday after the release of Avengers: Infinity War. Many of the attendees were University of Iowa students, who had come to hear what Russo had to say. Russo has directed many notable shows and films, such as “Arrested Development”  and two other Captain America movies, “Captain America: Winter Soldier” and “Captain America: Civil War.” Now, with Joe’s and his brother’s most successful movie to date, Joe Russo came to talk about his career and aspirations for the film.

Russo originally came to study at the University of Iowa for the Writers Workshop. He felt he had already known everything there was to learn about film, and started getting involved with a variety of courses. Russo’s description of producing movies was, “You have to write scripts relentlessly.” After schooling, Russo ended up executive producing for almost a decade. His motto for this, “if you want to be a great carpenter, you got to build a lot of tables.” What Russo learned through all of this though was that film making is a progressive storytelling experience that is tailored to each individual person. A group of people can all have different opinions on any given story. Russo brought this into mentality into his Marvel films, stating, “…we were intentionally trying to mislead you.”

“Captain America was not my favorite character growing up,” Russo told the crowded room. Rather than stay with the patriotic stereotype, Russo’s goal was to change the character into something more complex, insurgent, and rebellious. When asked why Russo would take such actions, he responded, “You can go see a superhero film and just watch superheroes.” But what he really enjoyed was, “The emotional resonance of people sitting in stunned silence in the theater…inciting conversation and making people see characters in a different way or the world in a different way.”

Russo wants to progress and change the layout of Marvel films in the future. Russo believes that, “Marvel is succeeding because they are trying something new.” He wants to change movies to be more controversial and touching subjects. He feels that the theme of his films are, “What is the cost to be a hero in a world there are no easy answers.” He also looks to make these films more mixed, in terms of a cast of characters. “What’s interesting about the Marvel Universe moving forward is that you’re going to see it become more diverse,” Russo said. He hopes that the next movies will have a wider selection of heroes in order to speak to many different cultures.

STUDENT’S VOICE ON INFINITY WAR

Infinity War was released on April 2, 2018 and many West High students rushed to the theatres to watch it. Many had contradicting thoughts on the movies and here is one way to view the pros and cons of the movie.

“Infinity War” has already reached a record high debut amount of $640.9 million worldwide and 250 million nationwide, placing it as the highest debut amount ever reached. Many superhero and Marvel fans have watched and had their say about what was good and bad about the movie. One very dedicated Marvel fan, Hariram Saravanan ‘18, stated “I have watched all the movies and shows and read a good amount of the comics.” Saravanan gave his opinions on how good the movie was compared to passed Avenger movies, it’s cinematic qualities.

Saravanan’s overall reaction of the movie was a positive review with him stating, “Good action, good balance between comedy and tragedy, and music was on point and the costumes are better than the original movies.” As for Saravanan’s favorite characters he stated, “Thor first of all, his Stormbreaker is a better weapon, and how he was the only one who had significant damage to Thanos, and Doctor Strange was super meta and you can’t deny the bromance he had with Stark.” On the other hand, he disliked multiple characters for their insignificance in the movies, as he said, “I hated Hulk and Vision, they were completely useless to the plot, and appeared really weak, like Vision got defeated by Thanos’ minions.”

Before the movie even came out, many youtubers, bloggers, and fans predicted and created many theories about what the outcome of the first “Infinity War” movie would be. Just like them, Saravanan made his own predictions, and they ended up coming true, which made the outcome of the movie less satisfying to him. Probably too many other viewers who shared the same predictions. “It’s a capitalist market technique because all the characters are probably gonna come back and it was very predictable on who was gonna die and when they would die. The movie was designed to consume each person to watch the sequel because they have to see the characters comeback.” He not only had predictions for this Infinity War,  but he has predictions for the sequel where they will be resurrected with the stones and eventually defeat Thanos. Whether or not this theory comes true, the majority of the viewers do feel this movie to be incomplete, which will consume many fans and people to watch the sequel.

Marvel’s movie turned out to be one of the most successful movies in history of movies and this will only grow the large Marvel enterprise. The action and comedy of this movie was perfectly balanced in the eyes of Saravanan, but opinions are being placed all over the internet with many different perspectives and views of the movie.