Joe and Anthony Russo talk Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Avengers: Endgame.
This month marks ten years since Captain America: The Winter Soldier was released in theaters. The movie was a hit among critics and audiences alike, earning a 90% critics score and a 92% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Earlier this month, many fans took to social media to celebrate the movie’s anniversary, and they’re not the only ones. GamesRadar+ spoke with directors Joe and Anthony Russo at the Sands International Film Festival in St Andrews, Scotland, and they opened up about their first MCU movie turning 10.
“It makes me feel really old,” Anthony shared with a laugh. “It was honestly a thrill. I mean that whole period was so immersive and thrilling for us. We basically entered the MCU on that movie and exited it seven years later with Endgame. That whole ride was like a rollercoaster that more and more people kept joining. We started working with Marvel in 2012 and Endgame released in 2019. I mean, when you think about it only being seven years, that’s a lot to pack in – four movies in seven years.”
“Family is really important to us,” he added. “We grew up in a big Italian family and we have always seen our movies and our work as an extension of our family. If you’re gonna go spend time away from the ones you love, you want it to be with other people that you love. The thing that stands out to me most is how long our relationships have lasted coming out of those movies – our creative collaborators, our actor friends, everyone that we worked with, we still spend a great deal of time with them, are very close to them, and share a lot of memories with them.”
Joe added that the directing duo likes to be “in dialogue with the audience,” explaining “That’s how we’ve always approached it and you can see this in different ways through our work.” Anthony went on to talk more about audiences and Endgame.
“We like active audiences because we grew up as film fans and as pop culture fans in general,” he explained. “We love the way that fandoms can make storytelling their own and the creative process that you can bring to it as a fan. To be able to sit in those movie theaters, for Avengers: Endgame, and to feel the volume and the energy, and just that intensity of audience reaction within a movie theater, I don’t think Joe and I had ever experienced that level of intensity before in a theater. And that was special.”
Captain America: The Winter Soldier saw the return of Chris Evans as Steve Rogers/Captain America, Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes/The Winter Solider, Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill, and Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter. The sequel also introduced some big names to the franchise such as Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson/Falcon and Emily VanCamp as Sharon Carter/Agent 13.
Captain America: The Winter Solider is now streaming on Disney+.
