Pro: The Russos Know the Marvel Universe
The Russos seem to genuinely love the Marvel universe, and in fact have stated many times that Secret Wars would be the one property that could lure them back after the exhausting seven years they spent making their previous four MCU pictures. They’ve directed more MCU movies than anyone else, they are familiar with the canon and history, and they seem uniquely able to steer the characters, tone, and story in the right direction.
Con: The MCU Has Changed A Lot Since Endgame
This is not the MCU that the Russos left behind five years ago. That was a universe in which all its main characters were united by a singular purpose where each battle seemed in service to a larger goal, and where the characters’ arcs were all driven by the story they were telling. Ever since kicking off Phase Four in 2021, the MCU does not seem to have had the kind of overarching, unifying narrative that gradually moved from the background to the foreground, building in excitement and scale.
Characters have been introduced and vanished, storylines started and then dropped, and even the underlying threat—Kang the Conqueror running rampant through the multiverse—is now definitively scrapped (Downey’s Doctor Doom will fill that slot). When the Russos first came aboard, the MCU was (at least from the outside) a smoothly running machine. Now, not so much.
Pro: The Players Are the Same
Even before the announcement of Downey’s return to the MCU, the Russos were coming back into an organization that in many ways has been strikingly consistent over the years: Kevin Feige, of course, is the chief creative officer and architect of the whole shebang, with co-president Louis D’Esposito also a consistent presence and executive producer on every Marvel film since 2008. Other creative execs, such as Trinh Tran and Brad Winderbaum, have also been part of the Marvel factory for years. And while his writing partner Christopher Markus is apparently going to sit this one out, screenwriter Stephen McFeely, who co-wrote all four of the Russos’ previous MCU films, as well as others, has been tapped to handle the newly revamped Doomsday and Secret Wars.
Con: Not All the Players Are the Same
However, the MCU has also seen some behind-the-scenes personnel depart the fold since the Russos last hung out there, most notably former president of visual effects and post-production, Victoria Alonso, who was dismissed in 2023 amid growing criticism of both the MCU’s visuals and the way VFX workers were treated. And then there are the actors: how many of the surviving OG Avengers will return for Secret Wars, and how many new faces will the Russos contend with? They have yet to work with the likes of Simu Liu (Shang-Chi), Florence Pugh (Yelena Belova), potential Young Avengers like Hailee Steinfeld (Kate Bishop), and even Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool), while the involvement of some of their regulars like Chris Evans, Tom Holland, and Mark Ruffalo remains unknown for now.
Pro: The Russos Know Their Way Around Blockbuster Filmmaking
It was their outstanding work on The Winter Soldier that got the Russos the chance to return for Civil War (also known to many as Avengers 2.5), and that in turn led Kevin Feige to promote them to the biggest directorial chairs possible after original Avengers writer-director Joss Whedon hung up his Infinity Gauntlet. But the Russos easily rose to the challenge: Infinity War and Endgame, whatever you may think of them, are two of the biggest blockbusters of all time in terms of scale, scope, and narrative ambition. The brothers handled them with style and class, building on the previous decade of storytelling to keep the beloved core characters front and center throughout and creating a series of huge moments and payoffs in both movies that captured the imagination of the world.