Marvel Studios
Heading into the release of Avengers: Endgame, everyone who had been a fan of the decade-old behemoth franchise knew that by the time the movie was over, some of our favorite heroes were going to be gone from the Marvel Cinematic Universe forever.
Warning: spoilers for Avengers: Endgame will follow.
Now, I’ll openly admit that heading into Avengers: Endgame, I thought that Steve Rodgers/Captain America was going to be the main heart-string-tugging casualty in the battle for the fate of the universe against Thanos.
Given that Rodgers had always been a “man out of time” and the emotional and moral compass of the Avengers, him paying the ultimate price for the better of humanity seemed like the obvious route.
Alas, Rodgers not only survives but finally gets the life full of love that he deserved, as he traveled back in time to spend the rest of his days with his beloved Peggy Carter, leaving Iron Man as the MCU centerpiece that was forced to serve as the film’s emotional knockout blow.
However, according to Avengers: Endgame screenwriters Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus, they had “considered ways to let Tony live” while penning the script.
“We weren’t there to just kill characters off,” Markus says in a phone interview. “We were told, ‘If the story demands it, you can take people off the board. But if there’s a good story to be told and no one dies, go ahead and tell that one too.’ ”
“In Endgame, we were trying to finish arcs and for Iron Man/Tony Stark to give up his life and sacrifice himself for the good of the universe seemed like a really good narrative closure for the billionaire playboy who had been learning over the course of several films (to be a better person).”
“We considered ways to let Tony live and whether there was a story there. But (dying) was the last thing he needed to do to become a fully-realized hero. There was never a better story than that. As for Captain America, he was willing to kill himself twice in his first movie. So it didn’t seem like a particularly interesting thing to have him do.” [Canada.com]
While Tony Stark surviving would have felt better in our guts when we left the theater, the fact is, killing off the soul of the MCU was the smartest decision, as it embedded the film with a true emotional gravity that could not have been achieved otherwise.
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Eric Italiano is a New York City-based writer who still isn’t sure how he’s allowed to have this much fun for a living and will tell anyone who listens that Gotham City is canonically in New Jersey. Contact him: eric@brobible.com.