The penultimate film in Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase Three was an emotional ride for fans. Avengers: Endgame pushed the three-hour runtime envelope, and the Russo brothers were adamant it wouldn’t feel long. Avengers: Endgame’s third act in which a final battle rages could have been much longer…
In a recent interview with the New York Times, Endgame screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely discussed Endgame in depth.
Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame together took 200 days to shoot and featured a huge number of characters.
As for the final battle itself, a much longer version exists somewhere out there.
Markus said: “We wrote and shot an even much longer battle, with its own three-act structure.”
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McFeely added: “It didn’t play well, but we had a scene in a trench where, for reasons, the battle got paused for about three minutes and now there’s 18 people all going ‘What are we going to do?’
“‘I’m going to do this.’ I’m going to do this.’ Just bouncing around this completely fake, fraudulent scene.
“When you have that many people, it invariably is, one line, one line, one line. And that’s not a natural conversation.”
Markus added: “It also required them to find enough shelter to have a conversation in the middle of the biggest battle.
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“It wasn’t a polite World War I battle where you have a moment.”
Whether this missing scene and the extended battle will be on a special edition DVD remains to be seen.
Releasing a directors’ cut of Endgame would not be unprecedented.
The final in the Lord of the Rings trilogy had a three hour and 18-minute runtime in cinemas.
However, the Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King extended edition is a whopping four hours and 22 minutes.
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Fans would likely enjoy nothing more than an extended time with their heroes.
Yet, given the screenwriters’ feelings about certain shots in the battle scene, the longer cut may never see the light of day.
And for the wealth of characters already in the scene, there were some missing from the final battle, like the Original Wasp and Hank Pym.
Markus said: “There were moments, as they brought everybody back, where we’re like, technically, Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer have [Ant-Man] suits.
“Do we bring them back? It became impossible to track the people we did bring back, but also, it’s just going to be an orgy.”
Avengers: Endgame is now playing in cinemas.
