Jon Favreauthe director behind Tony Stark’s first standalone MCU movie Iron Manwasn’t so sure the hero should have died in Avengers: Endgamesaid the Russo brothers.
In a video interview with Vanity Fairthe duo opened up about some of their most memorable scenes on projects such as Community, Captain America: Civil War and their latest movie, Netflix’s the gray man. But the duo begins their slump over Tony Stark’s last minute in Avengers: Endgamewhere he reveals that he has acquired all the Infinity stones and placed them in his suit to bring back to life half of the universe that Thanos wiped out Avengers: Infinity War.
The brothers recount how they painstakingly worked through several lines to be Stark’s last before finally using something casually provided by the film’s editor, Jeffrey Ford. “It’s probably the most pressure we’ve ever had to try and line up with” [Christopher] Markus and [Stephen] McFeely in one of these movies,” Joe says. “You don’t want to mess up Tony Stark’s last line.”
But while discussing how she made that farewell for star Robert Downey Jr. orchestrated, they also reveal that some of the pressure surrounding Stark’s last minute capture was due to MCU regular and Iron Man director Jon Favreau.
“Some of the pressure came from Jon Favreau who called us after he read the script and said to us, ‘Are you really going to kill Iron Man?’” Anthony said.
Joe goes on to describe a phone conversation with Favreau in which he had to “talk him off a ledge” about their decision to tell the story of one of the MCU’s most popular heroes. “I remember pacing on the phone on the corner of a stage with Favreau trying to talk to him off a ledge because he said, ‘You can’t do this. It’s going to destroy people and you don’t want them to enter the theatre. walk out and get into traffic,” he recalled, before saying, “we did it anyway.”
They both acknowledge that they understood Favreau’s concerns, especially since “he didn’t go through the process the way we did,” Anthony says. “We would have had the same reaction if someone had brought it up.”
So why did they go through with it? According to Joe, the Infinite War and Endgame director duo felt they “deserved the arc that would feel redeeming and emotional and uplifting and hopeful even though he had sacrificed his life.”