Hawkeye's Avengers: Endgame Intro Was Inspired By A Ridley Scott Cult Classic
Five years removed from "Avengers: Infinity War," it's easy to forget just how traumatizing Thanos' snap was for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The most tragic aspect of wiping out half of the galaxy's population with the Infinity Gauntlet was the incomprehensible randomness of that cataclysmic event. One second your loved ones are there in the flesh, only to be a pile of dust and ash in the next. No one scene encapsulated that more than the beginning of "Avengers: Endgame," when Clint Barton/Hawkeye's (Jeremy Renner) entire family vanishes in an instant on an otherwise idyllic summer day.
In the sprawling three-hour commentary for "Endgame," directors Joe and Anthony Russo are joined by screenwriter Stephen McFeely to discuss a slew of topics, including Hawkeye's transition into a ruthless mercenary taking out nameless villains on the neon-tinged streets of Tokyo, Japan. The re-introduction of Hawkeye is, of course, inspired by the persona of Ronin that appeared in the comic "The New Avengers." For a few moments, "Endgame" spins off in an entirely different, unexpected direction. "It's like each of these characters are in their own movie," explained Joe Russo. "And they have to be pulled out of it and brought back to the main story."
During their conversation on the "Endgame" commentary, McFeely asked the Russos to speak about what other films influenced the look and feel of the Ronin segment, and the answer may surprise you — especially if you're a Ridley Scott fan who hasn't seen the visionary director's gone-but-not-forgotten cult classic neo-noir thriller from the late '80s, "Black Rain."
'We had a perfect excuse for doing that'
As disclosed in the commentary, the Tokyo sequence in "Avengers: Endgame" was filmed over two nights in Atlanta. McFeely remembered the Russos using Ridley Scott's "Black Rain" as a baseline for the look they wanted to create. "It was the sort of neon look of 'Black Rain,'" acknowledged Joe Russo. "Of course, the water drops falling from the sky." The Tokyo segment in "Endgame" looks completely removed from what fans had previously seen in the MCU, which made sense to both directors considering how far Hawkeye has fallen. Chiming in, Anthony Russo explained, "By pushing things stylistically here, we had a perfect excuse for doing that 'cause Hawkeye had gone to such a dark and fringe place compared to everybody else."
It's certainly not surprising the Russos would want to emulate Scott's previous work, slipping what amounts to a gangster movie inside of a massive tentpole. In "Black Rain," Scott himself was possibly too concerned with emulating the futuristic world of Los Angeles from "Blade Runner." The 1989 film stars Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia as two New York City cops charged with escorting a killer back to Osaka where they accidentally hand him over to a group of criminals cleverly disguised as police. It's a perfectly fine if largely predictable procedural that cares more about the startling visuals on display than any real character development. Douglas is swallowed up by the scenery, along with the giant aviator sunglasses that manage to hide half of his face.
Where "Black Rain" was a case of style over substance (although it's still worth a watch), the Russos managed to pay an unlikely tribute to one of Scott's under-seen films before getting the OG Avengers back together to go save the world one last time.