The Avengers: Endgame Writers Know What People Are Saying About That 'Girl Gang' Scene
Warning: contains one not-quite-spoiler for Avengers: Endgame about a bit which is loads better if you've not been expecting it, plus one genuinely massive spoiler. So: be warned.
It's just been confirmed that Avengers: Endgame's opening weekend box office (which includes Thursday! Which is cheating! By the way!) hit $1.22 billion around the world. That's not bad, is it? After four days it's already made more than the annual GDP of Grenada and St Kitts & Nevis, and San Marino and Djibouti will surely be looking anxiously over their shoulders soon.
Still, that's not stopped some finding fault with it. One of the best bits in the final cataclysmic showdown was the bit where Captain Marvel has to run the Infinity Gauntlet away from Thanos, and is backed up by a pantheon of Marvel's greatest women: Scarlet Witch, Valkyrie, Shuri, Gamora, Nebula, Okoye and more are there, ready to deal out some righteous violence. It's class.
A vocal minority, however, have said that it was a bit patronising. Speaking to the New York Times, though, writers Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus said that they did think about that a bit but decided actually it was far more fun to run with it.
"There was much conversation," McFeely acknowledged. "Is that delightful or is it pandering? We went around and around on that. Ultimately we went, 'We like it too much'."
Markus concurred. "Part of the fun of the Avengers movies has always been team-ups," he said. "Marvel has been amassing this huge roster of characters. You’ve got crazy aliens. You’ve got that many badass women. You’ve got three or four people in Iron Man suits."
So basically, stop moaning. On a similar note, there was a lot of discussion around whether it should be Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow or Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye who sacrificed themselves to get the Soul stone, and even one draft of the script where Hawkeye got the gig.
"Jen Underdahl, our visual effects producer, read an outline or draft where Hawkeye goes over,” McFeely explained. "And she goes, ‘Don’t you take this away from her.’ I actually get emotional thinking about it."
Markus concurred again. "And it was true, it was him taking the hit for her. It was melodramatic to have him die and not get his family back. And it is only right and proper that she’s done."
This story originally appeared on Esquire.co.uk.
* Minor edits have been made by the Esquiremag.ph editors.
