Avengers: Infinity War co-director Joe Russo is very proud of the time he made a 10-year-old boy cry. Relax, it’s not as bad as it sounds.
The whole climactic genocide of the Marvel mega-hit left many a viewer feeling pretty shaken, but if you had to single out one moment that really hit the audience where it hurt, it’d likely be the death of Spider-Man. Peter Parker’s futile pleading to Mr. Stark as he feels his body turn to dust earned a lot of tears from the fans, including one little boy who presumably isn’t used to seeing his favorite heroes perish before his eyes.
At a recent Q&A, Russo cited this story as evidence that the team at Marvel Studios must be doing something right.
“The best reaction was probably that 10-year old kid crying and asking us why we killed Spider-Man. From the time we came to Marvel, our goal was to surprise the audience and not give them the same thing but rather to challenge them.”
The director then went on to explain that there’s precedent for this grim moment in the Russo Brothers’ previous contributions to the MCU.
“That was our view on Captain America: Winter Soldier, and Civil War was also very controversial internally with the powers that be in turning Iron Man into the antagonist and severing the relationship between Cap and Tony Stark. Every Marvel film we’ve created had this controversy, like are we pushing this rabid audience too far? Are we making movies that could perhaps be too emotionally complex for the genre? That the audience has shown up wanting more is a testament to the hard work everybody has put in over those last ten years of films.”
Sure enough, as upset as this kid sounds, you can bet that he has no intention of missing Avengers 4 when the film arrives in theaters on May 3rd, 2019. And with Spider-Man: Far From Home due for release on July 5th that same year, something tells us that the follow-up to Avengers: Infinity War will end on a slightly more optimistic note for Peter.
