When you sit down with the President of Marvel Studios, you expect to endure tight lips and aloof answers for the sake of movie magic. That was not the case with Kevin Feige. As the film producer responsible for Marvel Cinematic Universe blockbuster hits, he was open to answering all of our questions about his past projects, and his current one, Avengers: Age of Ultron. From end credit scenes, the possible appearance of SpiderMan, and his favorite comic book character, Feige shares it all below.
Q: Why is there no end-credit scene? What’s the story behind that?
Well, why is there no end-credit scene? Well, there’s a mid-credit scene, as we call it, and we’ve always really said it’s not a fast and hard rule that there must be something after the credits. Joss was a firm believer that we shouldn’t do something that seeming like we were aping the scene at the end of it, and that his version of the story really culminates where it does at the end of the film and with the mid-credits. Everything we were thinking of just felt like a- just felt like an add-on that wasn’t worth doing. But that’s one of the reasons why he wanted to get it out there so people didn’t sit there for seven minutes and go, what? [AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
Q: In the movie, the team is very cohesive. They’re even doing combos with their abilities. How many years [are there] in-between [the last Marvel Cinematic Universe movie and this one]?
I’m not sure we ever directly say it, but we always sorta thought it. It’s between six months to a year after- probably a good year after the events of The Winter Soldier. S.H.I.E.L.D. has been brought down at the end of The Winter Soldier after revealing that Hydra had been growing within it, and that there’s a lot of fallout. Some of that is on the television series, and some of that we see at the very beginning of this movie. That scepter- Loki’s, which if you look at the end of the first Avengers movie, the last time you see it, Black Widow is holding it in the shadow of all the Avengers as they’re finally taking down Loki. And our backstories, clearly that went to a secure S.H.I.E.L.D. vault somewhere. But of course, S.H.I.E.L.D. was not secure, and it ended up in the hands of Strucker at the beginning of this film.
Q: Are we gonna see Spiderman make an appearance in Captain America: Civil War?
Well, you know, you’ve heard the announcements- we’ve teamed up with Sony to bring Spidey into our universe, and doing a new Spidey film in 2017, but I think we’re being less than specific about where we’ll see him first.
When asked how it feels to have a fan base that actually anticipates Marvel sequels, Feige had this to say:
Well, at Marvel, their big story is about everyone that goes back, you know, fifty years, and through hundreds of comic issues. […] And what’s really exciting is that the comic fan base was one thing- it’s the solid foundation of, of everything we do, but now it’s increased dramatically with the film base and with the film fans. It gives us a certain amount of pressure and sleepless nights to deliver on expectations each time. But, it’s also knowing that people are so excited for what’s next. And we often have to go, never mind what’s next. Take a look at this because we do want each of the films […] to stand alone whether you’ve seen the other ten films or not. We believe each film works as a beginning, middle, end into and unto itself. And we worked very hard to do that. All we’re interested in is making one singular great movie at a time.
Q: Do you have somebody in the Marvel Universe that you really wanna bring into the stories?
Well, it’s, I used to say Guardians of the Galaxy to that question. I used to say Vision to that question; I used to say Falcon; [AUDIENCE LAUGHS] and I used to say Doctor Strange a lot, and obviously we’re deep into that with Benedict Cumberbatch now. We start filming in November. It’s really been amazing. Now, it does come down to very individual and specific characters, but if I say too many of them, it’ll give away exactly what we’re doing with Guardians 2 or with the future ones. But, it is a testament to the Marvel comics, and how deep its bench is that there’s still hundreds of great characters that we haven’t even touched yet.
Q: What was it like to bring in Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch into this movie?
It was great. I mean, they’re key Avengers characters in the books. They have a great backstory that we really wanted to explore; and they have a great relationship, the two of them, that we really wanted to explore together. And it was one of Joss’s very first notions- probably second notion after Ultron- to bring them in. [They] have a very different viewpoint of the Avengers and [they] come into the team from a very different angle than any of the other characters.
Q: Were you big on the Marvel comics as a kid, and did you have a favorite character when you were little?
I was more into movies. I was more into movies as a kid. And I had a lot of favorite movies. I remember a story in particular when I was in the backyard with a bunch of friends of mine when we were, I don’t know, say eight years old- ten years old. And we were playing super heroes, and somebody had chosen Batman, somebody had chosen Superman, and somebody had chosen Spiderman, and I remember going, well, I’ll be Iron Man. I’ll play Iron Man because I’d seen him in the reruns of the old ’60s cartoon.
Kevin let us in on quite a lot within this interview! Which part were you most excited about: the addition of SpiderMan to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the possibility of adding even more characters from the comics, or the the filming of Doctor Strange, which starts in November? Tell me in the comments below.
