Why can’t The Avengers directors Russo Brothers repeat their success outside the MCU?

What is it with the Russo Brothers? Anthony and Joe, the sibling filmmakers from Cleveland, Ohio, have made four of the best Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films, among them Avengers: Endgame (2019) and Avengers: Infinity War (2018) – respectively, the second- and seventh-highest-grossing films of all time. Only James Cameron is ahead of them, with his two Avatar films and Titanic occupying three of the top five spots on that illustrious list. Yet Cameron is an established filmmaker with a string of classics to his name – everything from The Terminator to Aliens and The Abyss. However, outside the MCU, the Russos have struggled to replicate the success that began when they made 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier. A film steeped in the language of classic 1970s Hollywood conspiracy thrillers like The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor, the Russos followed it with Captain America: Civil War two years later – the film that brilliantly introduced Tom Holland’s iteration of Spider-Man as the Avengers were sucked into internal conflict. It remains possibly the best MCU movie to date. The Avengers films that came afterwards were the perfect culmination not just of their work but of every MCU movie that had gone before. It felt like there was nothing they could not do. Yet it would be hard to deny that the Russos’ subsequent work has disappointed. This week sees the Netflix release of The Electric State, a lavish, expensive take on an illustrated sci-fi novel of the same name by Swedish artist Simon Stalenhag. Among a proliferation of poor reviews, trade paper Variety noted how the Russos had “diluted” the author’s “salient, bleak thriller”, turning it “into a whimsical, sanitised mess of mimeographed ideas from a handful of far better cinematic inspirations”. And that’s being kind. Set in a retro-future alternate version of the 1990s, in the wake of a war between humanity and robots, this bland sci-fi sees Strangers Things star Millie Bobby Brown play Michelle, a young woman seeking her missing brother. Chris Pratt channels his roguish MCU character Star Lord as Keats – a shaggy-haired fencer of stolen goods who joins her, and their talking robots, for what The Hollywood Reporter called a “dismally soulless odyssey across the American Southwest”. The film reportedly cost Netflix US$320 million, and features an impressive cast both on screen – Stanley Tucci, Giancarlo Esposito, Ke Huy Quan – and off, Anthony Mackie, Woody Harrelson, Jenny Slate and Brian Cox all voicing robots. But everything dark and intriguing about Stalenhag’s work – a book that explores our relationship with technology with great humanity – has been stamped out here. It is hardly an aberration. After Avengers: Endgame, the Russos took their new-found industry clout and channelled it into making feature film Cherry for Apple TV+. Based on a semi-autobiographical 2018 novel of the same name by Nico Walker, a decorated US Army veteran, it cast Holland as a war veteran with a drug problem who becomes a bank robber. If it was meant to re-establish the Russos’ more gritty indie qualities, the film instead felt like a misfiring slice of social realism – or, to quote Variety again, one with “the glossy inauthenticity of a bad Tony Scott movie”. The brothers followed this with The Gray Man, an espionage action vehicle for Ryan Gosling adapted from the 2009 novel of the same name by Mark Greaney. Any film fortunate enough to feature Gosling, with his natural charm, is worth a watch – but this was a production designed to launch a franchise for its backers, Netflix. With the James Bond series on hiatus as those behind the scenes struggled with what to do after Daniel Craig’s departure, who could blame them? Despite some impressive sequences, it was another cookie-cutter action film. The same could be said for Citadel, a six-part global espionage series the Russos cooked up for Amazon featuring Richard Madden and The Electric State’s Tucci. With the brothers ultimately taking executive producer credits, it was another costly misstep. Ditto Extraction and Extraction 2 – two films they produced with Chris Hemsworth, another MCU alumnus, in the lead. The story of a black-ops mercenary, it came adapted from the graphic novel Ciudad, which the Russos were involved in creating. This begs the question: what has happened to these filmmakers? When this writer last met them, it was at the 2019 Venice Film Festival, where their production of Mosul – a credible look at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017) depicting Iraqi forces taking on Islamic State – was screening. “We’ve been on a very long journey for success. We call it a 20-year overnight success,” Joe Russo told me. “We spent 10 years in television, 10 years making large IP concept movies. This [Mosul] is really just a reflection of who we are. It’s a business, filmmaking, and it requires a certain amount of brand level and brand capital to get to a place to make a movie like this.” It is to their credit that they aimed to get a film like Mosul made – especially in the wake of Avengers: Endgame, which had just smashed records at the box office that summer. But there has arguably not been enough of this risk taking. If anything links Cherry, The Gray Man, Citadel and now The Electric State, it is that they are all bankrolled by streaming platforms which seem intent on exploiting the Russos’ cachet among the Comic-Con crowd in the hope that film franchises may be factory-assembled into existence. It hardly seems like the best use of the talents of the once defiantly indie filmmakers, who first came to attention with 2002’s rollicking crime-caper comedy Welcome to Collinwood. Perhaps the streaming companies’ innate ability to churn out digital “content” is to blame. Take acclaimed filmmakers, pair with them high-profile Hollywood stars and water down whatever they are adapting – this seems to be the modus operandi for these companies to help feed the production pipeline. Still, the Russos need to take some blame. They have worked repeatedly with Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus – on their four MCU movies, The Gray Man and now The Electric State. Perhaps a break from these screenwriters might be in order for the Russos to find new inspiration. This is unlikely, though, given that the brothers are about to return to the MCU for Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, currently due in cinemas in 2026 and 2027 respectively. No doubt these Avengers films will pull in audiences, despite Marvel having struggled to reach again the pinnacles of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. But it feels shocking that the Russos’ creativity seems to dry up outside the MCU. Given the “brand capital” they have built up, it seems a shame for them to squander it on pale imitations of bigger, better films. As Joe Russo told me: “We grew up watching James Cameron movies. We’re inspired by him.” Yet they have a long way to go before their films can ever match Cameron’s distinctive body of work. The Electric State will start streaming on Netflix from March 14. Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook

Why can’t The Avengers directors Russo Brothers repeat their success outside the MCU?

After 2 Avengers films that were the 2nd and 7th highest grossing of all time, the Russos’ output has been disappointing in recent years

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