The Russo Brothers Seem Very Obsessed with Wolverine Lately, Let's Read into That

By Mike Redmond | Film | August 15, 2019 |

By Mike Redmond | Film | August 15, 2019 |

After directing the back-to-back cash behemoths of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame the Russo Brothers can presumably do whatever the hell they want at Marvel Studios now even after failing to deliver a film that featured butthole-based combat. (I’ll never forget.) They’ve made the MCU so much money that it practically spits in the face of God, and if they wanted to, they could probably turn that into a Marvel movie and no one could stop them.

“What do you want to direct next?”
“Godspit.”
“That’s not a Marvel character.”
“It is now! CASH-CHING.”

But despite having a whole lot of pies in the oven, the Russos have made it very clear that they’re not done with the MCU yet, and they’ve been oddly fixated on one particular character while doing press for the Endgame home video release. That character? Wolverine. During a Reddit AMA last week, the Russos were not at all shy about their love for the stabby Canuck.

Via CBR:

The thread garnered almost 5000 comments and questions, with one notable inquiry coming from user ethanplem: “Which superhero’s movie that is not currently in the mcu would you guys most want to direct in the future?”

Their response? “We’ve always loved us some Wolverine.”

Cool. That’s a big hint on the heels of Kevin Feige announcing at Comic-Con that the X-Men will make their MCU debut in Phase 5. But the Russo Brothers didn’t stop there. While appearing on IGN’S Up At Noon Show, Joe was asked which mutant he would’ve kept alive after Thanos’ snap. You’ll never guess who he said.

“I’d love to see a fiercely motivated Wolverine going up against Thanos,” Joe said of his extreme decision. For anyone looking to call him out for not eliminating exactly half of the X-Men, he pointed out how the snap didn’t always evenly halve any given group — like how Hawkeye was the single survivor of his five-person family.

While turning the rest of the X-Men to dust would be upsetting to see, Joe explained, “It’s not our job to give the people what they want, it’s to give them what they need.”

Yup, these dudes have Wolverine on the brain, and they’re not exactly wrong that watching him go berserk on Thanos would explode my nerd-face into dust. But to the Russo’s credit, they still delivered an absolutely badass final fight using Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man, who not too long ago were shithouse, B-level characters as far as movie audiences were concerned. The power of the MCU is that it succeeded despite not having box-office heroes like Spider-Man and the X-Men, and the Russos were a huge part of that. They made Captain America DOPE, which is not an easy thing to do. Hell, they made me shed a tear for Tony Stark, who I always felt was a crutch made solely out of Robert Downey Jr.’s charisma.

Anyway, the big question is are the Russo Brothers directing the X-Men’s arrival in the MCU? It is a pretty huge deal, so it only makes sense that Marvel would rely on the architects of its biggest blockbusters. The Russos somehow managed to juggle 47 billion characters in Infinity War and Endgame, so working with only five or six mutants probably seems like a vacation to them. That said, they are oddly fixated on Wolverine, which suggests that Kevin Feige is trying to differentiate the MCU version of the X-Men from the Fox movies by not focusing them entirely on Wolverine. Which to be honest, is what I’d like to see. The X-Men have some compelling-ass characters, and it’d be nice if they did more than just stand in the background while Wolverine stabs everyone.

However, that implies that Marvel is contemplating a solo Wolverine movie, which has the unfortunate task of going up against Logan, a film that I’d easily classify as one of the best comic book movies of all time. But if someone can pull it off, it’s probably the guys who literally ended the most ambitious movie series ever made by going, “Eh, what if we just Back to the Future it?”

In the meantime, back in April, God of War art director Raf Grassetti took a pitch-perfect crack at what Wolverine in the MCU might look like, and that “SNIKT!” you just heard was my pants.

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A post shared by Raf Grassetti (@rafagrassetti) on Mar 31, 2019 at 7:05am PDT