Infinity Cirlce

Thanos’ genocidal snap reduced half the world – and the Avengers – to dust in Infinity War. Now, with secrecy at an all-time high, Total Film talks to the creative team on AVENGERS: ENDGAME to find out how to close the loop on an iconic MCU chapter.

- Matt Maytum

There was an idea,” Nick Fury once intoned. “To bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more.” The Avenger Initiative has been as much of an undertaking off screen as it has been on, and the ambition had only just begun when the Marvel Cinematic Universe wrapped up its ‘Phase One’ with the then-unprecedented team-up movie Avengers Assemble, incorporating superheroes that had been established in solo films, and throwing in a few new faces for good measure.

But, more than a decade after the MCU began in earnest, Avengers Assemble now almost looks quaint in comparison to the ever-swelling mega-ensembles joining forces in the likes of Age Of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War and, of course, 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War, which pitted its heroes against ultravillain Thanos, before he wiped out half of the line-up (and the universe) with one snap of his gauntleted fingers. A credits sting offered a glimmer of hope, as Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury sent a pager message to Captain Marvel before he dissolved to dust, but otherwise, no clues were offered as to how the surviving Avengers – Tony ‘Iron Man’ Stark, Steve ‘Captain America’ Rogers, Thor, Natasha ‘Black Widow’ Romanoff, Bruce ‘Hulk’ Banner, James ‘War Machine’ Rhodes, Nebula and Rocket Raccoon – might undo the mad Titan’s decimation. Even the intermediate films – Ant-Man And The Wasp and Captain Marvel, both of which predominantly pre-date the Snap – haven’t really hinted at possible get-out clauses.

It’s February 2019 when Total Film catches up with Joe and Anthony Russo, the brothers directing