In the lead-up to this year’s MCU releases, you may recall a rumor making the rounds – mostly from the same online corners predicting that Captain Marvel would be the franchise’s first bomb – that Carol Danvers’ role in Avengers: Endgame was heavily cut down due to her supposed unpopularity with the fans.
Nonetheless, if recent comments from Endgame editor Jeff Ford are anything to go by, then not only was this hearsay unfounded, but there were even some last-minute measures taken to include more of the heroine in the Infinity War sequel. Speaking to /Film, the regular Russo Brothers collaborator recalled how the fight between Captain Marvel and Thanos was added in the reshoots:
“When Captain Marvel arrives, that was in the script from day one, the way she comes through the ship. We knew she was going to do that, but what we did alter and add and expand later, mostly because of how much we loved what Brie was doing with the character, was her fight with Thanos before he power punches her back.”
Ford went on to explain how the moment where the Mad Titan uses an Infinity Stone on Carol was introduced by co-director Anthony Russo relatively late in the game:
“Anthony came up with the great idea – this was a reshoot, by the way, at the last minute – he had the great idea that Thanos pulls the power stone out of the gauntlet, and then he punches her with the raw power stone. That is a fantastic use of that prop and that story point, because that’s what you want. And we had to find a way that he could sideline Captain Marvel for a minute, because she’s so powerful, there’s no way to do it.”
All the same, it must be said that Captain Marvel didn’t get a huge amount of screen time in Avengers: Endgame, which finds a convenient excuse for Carol to remove herself from the action for the film’s entire middle third.
Like Ford suggests above, maybe Carol’s extraordinary powers made it necessary to sideline her in order to maintain the stakes of the story. Then again, as the climactic entry in the Infinity Saga, perhaps it just made sense for the movie to focus on longtime regulars like Iron Man and Captain America.
Either way, the box office success of Captain Marvel ensures that we’ll be seeing plenty more of the heroine in the coming years. In the meantime, however, Marvel still has a whole load of Phase 4 projects to bring to theaters, starting with the release of Black Widow on May 1st, 2020.
