An Interview with Kevin Feige, President of Marvel Studios #AvengersEvent

Are you ready for another post that reveals even more about the Marvel Universe and Avengers: Age of Ultron? In case you’ve missed any of my previous posts, there’s interviews with Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen and Joss Whedon. Next up is an interview with Kevin Feige, President of Marvel Studios and a Producer for Avengers: Age of Ultron. He shares with us more about the movie and the Marvel Universe!

Talking About Avengers: Age of Ultron

When I first read this interview with Joss Whedon sharing that there won’t be a post-credit scene after Avengers: Age of Ultron, I didn’t buy it. But sure enough, there’s a mid-credit scene that you’ll want to stay for but not one at the very end of the credits. We asked Kevin why no post-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, and Joss was a firm believer that we shouldn’t do something that seemed like we were aping the Shawarma scene at the end of it and that you know, his version of the story really culminates where it does at the end of the film and with the mid-credits.  And everything we were thinking of just felt like an add-on that wasn’tworth 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?

When you watch Avengers: Age of Ultron, you’ll notice from the beginning how well the team works together while fighting. Kevin reveals how long it’s been since Captain America: The Winter Soldier,

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.

{The sceptor} went to a secured 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.

I’ve mentioned how much I like the characters of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. Both Joss Whedon and Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen shared how the characters of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch joined the Marvel movies, but Kevin shares more,

It was great.  They’re key Avengers characters in the books.  They have a great back story 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, who have a very different viewpoint of the Avengers and who come into the team from a very different angle than any of the other characters.

The other characters were sort of assembled together by Nick Fury in the first movie and Thor obviously came into the mix because of the presence of Loki and now having characters come in from a totally different side- which is also a very Marvel thing to do.  There are a lot of Marvel characters who start on the other side of a disagreement, or the other side of an argument or the other side of the law through a great Marvel redemptive arc and become heroes.  We wanted to do that in an Avengers movie.

Talking about the Marvel Universe

Have you ever wondered how do they keep the Marvel Universe straight? Between the movies and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Kevin shares,

Well, there’s a television division; there’s a studio division and there’s a solid brain trust of seven or eight of us at the studio that oversee each of the films.  And then beyond that, of course, dozens and then hundreds, and then thousands, eventually, on each production.

In general, sometimes people dread spin-offs and sequels, but Marvel fans can’t wait for the next release. Kevin shares how he feels about having that kind of fan base,

Well, it feels great, obviously and I do think spinoffs when you’re dealing with certain properties, can somehow get a bad connotation of meaning.  Oh, there’s something that had a little story potential that was interesting, so now, now they’re gonna try to build the whole big story about it.  Well, at Marvel, their big story is about everyone that go back, you know, fifty years and through hundreds of comic issues.  So for us, it’s all just- it’s exciting that people… 

What’s really exciting is that the comic fan base was one thing- it’s the solid foundation 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 and Age of Ultron’s our eleventh Marvel Cinematic Universe film. 

We want each of them 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.

The rumors have been all around about Spiderman appearing in a movie with the Avengers, so we asked Kevin if Spiderman would be making an appearance in Captain America: Civil War. Kevin was of course mum on the subject,

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, where we’ll see him first.

There’s a lot of great Marvel movies coming up, but I asked Kevin Feige if there were any specific characters from the Marvel Universe that he wanted to bring to the big screen.

I used to say Guardians of the Galaxy to that question.  I used to say Vision to that question; I used to say Falcon; I used to say War Machine 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. So 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.

Being the President of Marvel Studios, we have to assume he was big into Marvel comics growing up, right? We ask Kevin about reading comics growing up and who his favorite superheroes were.

I was more into movies as a kid.  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.

And some kids didn’t even know who he was.  I was like, he’s cool.  He’s Iron Man.  Trust me. It was fun bringing him to life after some kids didn’t hear of him when I chose him in the backyard thirty- thirty-two years ago.

Avengers: Age of Ultron is in theaters on May 1st and you won’t want to miss it! I’ll be sharing interviews with the cast over the next few weeks. Until then, check out my interview with Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth, Joss Whedon and also Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen.

Disclosure: Disney provided an all expenses paid trip to Los Angeles including travel, accommodations and activities. All thoughts and opinions are my own.