Joe and Anthony Russo are famous. They have directed four films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They are here today to discuss their work on a giant movie for Netflix, The Electric State.
If you are reading this you probably already know who they are. Yet the brothers may be the most successful people in the entertainment business who can walk down the street largely unmolested. They are, with James Cameron, among only two film-making units to have directed two films that have taken more than $2 billion at the world box office. Avengers: Endgame, from 2019, held the title for highest-grossing film ever until being passed out by a re-release of Cameron’s Avatar.
They seem pretty unfazed by it all. Two guys from a comfortable background in Ohio, they are both good-humoured and businesslike. They now arrive blinking into the sun after five years working on The Electric State.
“We love telling stories,” says Anthony, the elder of the two. “And what we love about telling stories is the way that we can bring them to the world and communicate with people and share ideas – share the work that we’ve been, as you say, hidden away at, toiling at for years.”
We will get back to the elephant in the room that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe later. But let’s ponder The Electric State for a moment. Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt star in a science-fiction comedy about the aftermath of a conflict between humankind and AI beings.
I was amused that the film ends with a fairly explicit message about remaining wary of technology and living in the real world. What the brothers do is deeply wound up with technology. The Avengers films and The Electric State would be unimaginable without computers.
“The movie does recognise the ambiguity in technology,” says Joe. “There are these robots who become such important characters and have our pivotal relationships in the movie. They are technology as well. You can find humanity in technology. You can also find inhumanity in technology. This is a perfect example of connection through technology.”
“The movies are not intended to demonise technology,” says Anthony.
They have come a long way from indie roots. The boys were born, 53 and 55 years ago, in Cleveland to Patricia Gallupoli and her husband, Basil Russo, a judge. Like so many film-makers who end up at the top of the mainstream ladder, they happily ploughed through both high and low cinema as young men. While graduate students at Case Western Reserve University, in their home city, they began work on a no-budget feature called Pieces. That film attracted the attention of a modern master and they were away.
“We loved both giant commercial movies and art-house films,” says Anthony. “We didn’t really discriminate between them. It was just about whether we were entertained by the story or not. So we had the background for being that kind of film-makers. When we came into the business it was squarely independent. It was the textbook independent-film-maker story: we made a movie for nothing and got discovered by a giant film-maker in Steven Soderbergh.”
The director of Traffic and Oceans Eleven, working with George Clooney, produced Welcome to Collinwood, the Russos’ rough-hewn caper comedy, in 2002. They worked in telly on Lucky for the FX Network and on Fox’s much-loved comedy Arrested Development. You, Me and Dupree, their 2006 romp with Owen Wilson and Kate Hudson, was a decent hit. Then came induction into the land of giants with Captain America: The Winter Soldier, in 2014.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is, for better or worse, the defining institution in 21st-century popular culture. The films have grossed more than $31 billion. That empire of men in tights stretches across streaming and video games. I feel obliged to ask how much control they have within the Marvel dominion. The boys have continued to make films away from that umbrella: Cherry for Apple TV+ and The Gray Man and, now, The Electric State for Netflix. Do they feel liberated when unencumbered in this way?
“Our experience with the MCU has always been fluid,” says Joe. “We were always able to make the movie we wanted to make, starting with The Winter Soldier – our initial movie at the MCU. We came in with a very bold and an unexpected vision for that movie. They embraced it and allowed us to make that movie. Moving forward, we had so much freedom within the MCU that it didn’t feel we had to compromise anything.”
Three further films for the MCU followed: Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and the annihilating Avengers: Endgame. They say Alexander wept because he had no more worlds left to conquer. Whatever about that Macedonian, it looked as if Marvel and the Russos then elected to part amicably.
“When we directed Avengers: Endgame we really believed it was the end for us in the Marvel Cinematic Universe,” Joe later said.
If you pay even a smidgen of attention to franchise gossip you will know how that worked out. Last July it emerged the brothers were to direct Robert Downey jnr – formerly Iron Man, confusingly – as Dr Doom in Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. What happened? What brought them back together?
“We said no a number of times. We just didn’t see it,” says Anthony. “If you make four of those movies in seven years, you’re going to be tired. Also, we just didn’t have a story to tell. We didn’t have a way in that was a good story – or that was worthy of continuing the story.
“We like serialised storytelling. We like the experiment of the Marvel Universe. There’s nothing quite like it. We like participating in that experiment. We like the scale of those movies. We like the reach that they have with the global audience.”
I can see how that might be a powerful drug. Footage of the boys unveiling Downey jnr at Comic-Con in San Diego is faintly terrifying. And that sort of hysteria also breaks out in cinemas. They must occasionally feel like tribal leaders.
“You know those clips of people reacting to Infinity War and Endgame?” he continues. “The real proof of the power of movies is the fact that they bind us together – one of the last things that do actually bind us together. It doesn’t matter your political background, your race, your colour. People get into the theatres and respond.”
We could not have predicted the path that we were going to take
Now we have to get into a tricky area. Over the past year or so a sense has emerged, as the original cast drifts away, that the MCU is in a state of crisis. Neither The Marvels nor Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was a success. The recent Captain America: Brave New World got some of the worst reviews in the sequence’s history and underperformed at the box office. Bringing back Downey jnr and the Russos feels like the BBC bringing Bruce Forsyth back to The Generation Game in the 1990s – an admission that, well, the new world is not so brave after all.
The Russos, amiable fellows, do not bristle at the question.
“Everything ebbs and flows,” says Anthony. “Yes, nothing can have the same trajectory forever. Otherwise there’s no texture to it. Certainly, some of the stuff they’ve done recently hasn’t connected with audiences the same way, but I think the experiment is still a valid one. And the idea behind these next two films will, I think, see a resurgence.”
Given how nervy the studios are about spoilers right until release day, there is no point asking what those ideas may be.
“One thing that we were able to contribute to the MCU was we followed a very specific, strong storyline through those films,” he continues. “I think it’s a nice time for us to be able to pick up that strong storyline and carry it forward. It seems like the state of the MCU also makes it feel like at the right time.”
Make of that last sentence what you will.
You have to admire the sangfroid of these guys. There is little sense of two blokes thrown unexpectedly into the whirlwind. They stand on the stage at Comic-Con less like titans, more like the friendly chaps who come to check the sound system. Does this really feel like the same job as directing and promoting their early films? Getting up at the crack of dawn to shoot Pieces with barely enough money to pay for lunch?
“We could not have predicted the path that we were going to take,” says Anthony. “It’s been a unique path, but it’s been super rewarding. And, you know, we still love doing it. Which is a good thing.”
The Electric State streams on Netflix from Friday, March 14th
