Listen to the latest episode of Fast Company’s podcast Creative Conversation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, RadioPublic, Google Podcasts, or Stitcher.
It’s easy to get caught up in the staggering commercial success Joe and Anthony Russo have had in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
The four films they’ve helmed (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame) have pulled in more than $6.7 billion at the global box office, with Infinity War and Endgame landing in the top five highest-grossing films of all time. But what’s always worth mentioning are the creative swings the Russo brothers have taken, not just in the MCU but throughout their career in TV and film.
“We define creativity through fuckery,” says Joe in the latest episode of Fast Company’s podcast Creative Conversation.
“If you look at what we did from Winter Soldier through Endgame, it was just relentless disruption of traditional storytelling in commercial movies,” Joe says. “We took [Captain America who] had been presented in the first film as an emblematic, heroic character, and we turned him into a dissident by the end of his second movie. Then we took the Avengers in Civil War and smashed them into each other and tore them apart. In Infinity War, we killed half of them. People are leaving the theater with experiences that they weren’t expecting.”
And now the Russos are translating that subversive energy to their latest film Cherry.
Based on Nico Walker’s bestselling novel, Cherry follows an Iraq War veteran dealing with severe PTSD that leads him into an opioid addiction and eventually a spree of bank robberies.
What could have been a fairly linear adaptation, the Russos lean into bold visual choices and narrative devices, from dreamy freeze-frame shots to breaking the fourth wall.
“The book is highly dependent on an inner monologue, and that inner monologue is often out of sync with the external events of what’s happening to the character. We wanted to maintain that as we translated it to film,” Anthony says. “An inner monologue doesn’t work in film. We certainly used voiceover in the movie, so we did get his inner thoughts, but it doesn’t work in the same way as a novel. We had to come up with other ways to make the movie very subjective and very specific to Cherry’s experience.”
What also drove their creative decisions for Cherry was a need to appeal to Gen Z.
In this episode, the Russo brothers explain what’s at the root of their creative “fuckery,” their dynamic as a directing duo, how they’re using their massive platform to elevate overlooked stories, and the career-changing advice Steven Soderbergh gave them.
Listen to the latest episode of Fast Company’s podcast Creative Conversation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, RadioPublic, Google Podcasts, or Stitcher.