‘Hawkeye’ directors reveal how Kevin Feige helped create the show’s best action scene
Kevin Feige has a lot on his plate. Not only is he coordinating the many MCU movies and TV shows, but he’s also got his own Star Wars project in development. With all that to worry about, he’d be forgiven for delegating things, but a new interview with Hawkeye directors Bert & Bertie indicates he’s still very much involved with the minutia of individual scenes.
While speaking with EW, they discussed Hawkeye‘s best action sequence so far: an awesome car chase through the streets of New York City that showcases Clint’s collection of trick arrows. It ends with a showdown on the Brooklyn Bridge, in which Clint reveals he has one last very special ‘Pym’ brand trick arrow, the effects of which are likely to cause a headache for The New York City Transit Authority.
But it was Feige’s intervention that helped make the scene work so well. As the directors explain:
“It was only after we’d started shooting the show that Kevin was like, ‘there’s too much at night. We need to put some sequences in the day. But we’d planned it all at night! And of course we had been like hey, you can hide things in the shadows. But then suddenly it was daylight. So we just reconvened with our amazing team and decided to embrace it. We’d already decided to do as much practically as possible, but it drove us to do even more practically. The result was amazing.”
The pair also went into their thinking on how to make this chase visually dynamic and realize it on a budget much lower than a Fast & Furious movie:
“We’ve all seen a million car chases, there are huge franchises that do them so well on epic scales. So we were like, well, it’s about the characters. So what we wanted to do was keep the camera in the car. Then we thought, how fun would it be that if as that camera is turning, all the action was happening around them? And then when Kate goes out the window, of course our camera goes with her because it’s led by character.”
Hawkeye’s penultimate episode airs tomorrow and will shed a lot of light on where we’ll end up in next week’s finale. Expect some resolution to Echo’s vengeance-driven quest against Clint, answers on what’s going on with Kate’s sinister would-be stepdad, more of Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova and – most excitingly – the potential return of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk/Kingpin.
Let’s hope they throw in a couple more killer action sequences for good measure.
Hawkeye airs Wednesdays on Disney Plus.