The Delusions of Joe and Anthony Russo

The Gray Men

This past week, Variety profiled Joe and Anthony Russo, the directing duo made famous for their work on Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame. They’ve used their clout to form their own production company, AGBO, which has a likely Oscar contender this year with Daniels’ Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. However, they were selected as Variety’s “Showmen of the Year” not because they backed a quirky film with a unique voice, but because of how they wish to participate in the transformation of Hollywood. They are two guys who take themselves and their work very seriously, but what exactly is their vision? What do they care about?

This past July around the time of the Russos new film, The Gray Man, writer Adam Nayman posted a scathing piece in The Ringer about the duo, essentially equating them as middle managers:

It’s ironic that the brothers like using profitous desk jockeys as foils in their unfathomably expensive blockbusters, because as directors, their style is strictly middle management. 2022 has been full of big-budget movies with at least some semblance of personality: Sam Raimi’s endearingly idiosyncratic Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness; Joseph Kosinski’s brilliantly efficient Top Gun: Maverick; even Taika Waititi’s smugly goofy Thor: Love and Thunder. On the contrary, the Ohio-born Russos prove that it’s possible for filmmakers working with brand-name movie stars, top-tier stunt teams, and no less than four credited editors to somehow be distinctively bland.

Before the Russos went to Marvel, their previous films were the low-budget indie Pieces, the indie comedy Welcome to Collinwood, and the unremarkable studio comedy You, Me and Dupree. Where they started to make a name for themselves were as directors on acclaimed sitcoms like Arrested Development, Community, and Happy Endings. Essentially, their ability to come into an ongoing production and find the comedic beats served them incredibly well when they went over to Marvel since the Marvel Cinematic Universe is essentially an ongoing TV show that relies heavily on humor.

What’s fascinating about the Russos post-Marvel career is the divergence between who they think they are and what they’ve actually done. Their two post-Marvel movies—Cherry and The Gray Man—are po-faced and devoid of personality. Cherry, a chronicle of an Iraq War veteran who turns to bank robberies to feed his heroin habit, has no shortage of style, but it’s in service of nothing. It feels like after years of serving Kevin Feige’s vision for the MCU, the Russos were let off the chain only to realize they had no firm vision of what they wanted to say. As for The Gray Man, it’s pretty much unwatchable, and arguably not meant to be watched at all as much as it feels designed to be played in the background while you screw around on your phone.

Given the latitude to tell stories they care about in the aftermath of their Marvel hits, the Russos seem to have nothing to say. And yet this Variety piece has the brothers spouting off as if they are the future of Hollywood. To begin:

“Things are changing fast, which we’re very excited by,” says Anthony. “We’re futurists. We love new technology. We love the energy that it brings to our process, the possibilities that it creates for how we communicate with audiences. Then we meet the market where it is at that moment. That’s been our agenda from the beginning, and it’s served us very well.”

I’m not necessarily against directors being for “new technology,” but it’s weird to hear directors talking about wanting to “meet the market” as if they have a product ready for rollout. Sure, studios see their movies and TV shows as “product” but it’s surprising to see a filmmaker refer to their own work as such. But hey, they’re running a business, and the Variety piece continues that what makes the Russos ideal for running a billion-dollar studio is they know how to manage the franchises that streamers are looking to create.

I also don’t even cringe at the Russos’ anti-theatrical position, although I do think it’s poorly founded. “This is a shoot-the-messenger situation,” Joe says. “I’m just telling you what I see, as a guy who has been in this business for 25 years. I don’t know that the market is going to be able to support art-house films the way that it did in the past.” Perhaps that’s true, but I feel like Parasite had far more of an impact than The Gray Man (Netflix touts high viewing numbers, but what counts as “a view” is debatable as is any cultural relevance that makes a movie more than disposable content).

The Russos aren’t even necessarily unreasonable in their sense that technological changes will lead to creative ones:

“I’ve had conversations with the folks at Disney recently — they have the same philosophy, that we’re headed towards the digital future that allows them to access their audiences anywhere at any time with any of their assets,” Joe says. “Whether we like it or not, the advent of AI, the advent of three-dimensional projectors that don’t require glasses, the advent of deepfakes — everything that’s coming is going to transition the face of media as we know it. And we’re interested in turning the car towards that.”

However, I think this quote from Joe Russo is a misread on the situation. Essentially, while studios can reach anyone at any time, that in turn makes them less desirable. Humans tend to be motivated by scarcity, and streaming obliterates any kind of urgency beyond something possibly catching fire on social media (which is not a strategy as much as it’s luck). So while a transition is certainly coming, simply pointing to a bunch of new technology doesn’t necessarily precipitate a particular change.

But whatever that change looks like, the Russos probably won’t be the ones who grasp it. This is quote from Joe Russo is the most unintentionally comic of the entire piece:

“Filmmaking is going to transform into some other medium,” Joe says, growing more animated the longer we dwell on this topic. “I don’t know what that media is going to be. My guess is that when you can sit in your house, turn to one of the actors that is standing in front of you and say, ‘Hey, Tom Cruise, hold on a second. Tell me about how you filmed this scene,’ and the AI-fueled Tom Cruise can turn to you and start explaining, it’s over at that point, right? That’s when technology will dominate whatever new form of storytelling is coming.”

Setting aside that Tom Cruise—one of our most guarded actors who is the biggest proponent of the theatrical experience right now and tightly controls every aspect of his image as much as humanly possible—is a horrible example, the biggest vision the Russos have for the future of filmmaking is…a commentary track. Tossing around “AI-fueled” (read: deepfaked) is fun, but it’s ultimately meaningless when the big vision is something that already exists and has been dying off in popularity since the home entertainment market lost ground to streaming.

But that kind of weak example is a good summation of why the Russos aren't the leaders they think they are. To go back to Nayman’s “middle managers” comparison, the Russos are guys trying to ride the wave by looking at which way the wind is blowing rather than charing a course they believe in. Early in their careers, the advice they got from Steven Soderbergh was that they shouldn’t keep trying to make movies like their 1997 work “Pieces” because they would never get work again. And maybe Soderbergh was right (I haven’t seen it), but the Russo’s guiding ethos seems to be, “If we have the right technology, then we’ll never be left out in the cold.” I suppose that’s great for their own job security, but it’s weird to see them hold up their own agnosticism as merit. The Variety piece ends:

“We could be developing something for two years, and then the market shifts or some new medium shows up that’s better suited for this story,” Joe says. “Let’s spend another six months converting it to that model. Let’s take this feature and turn it into an event series. Or let’s take this idea and sell it to a gaming company. It allows us to survive as creatives no matter what happens in the world.”

Anthony nods intently. “AGBO is designed to allow every project we work on to have its own unique life,” he says. “That was the fundamental cornerstone of the company. All possibilities are always available to us. There’s nothing that’s off the table.”

They see these pronouncements not as barbs or provocations but as the same kind of wake-up call that Soderbergh gave them at the start of their careers — alerting up-and-coming storytellers to focus on meeting audiences where they’re going, instead of believing they’ll stay where they’ve been.

“As the market continues to shift, it’s important that artists be agnostic in order to continue to tell stories,” Joe says. “Don’t let a very vocal minority tell you what kind of stories you can tell. Because you can have success telling any stories that you want.”

To start, changing your content to suit a new medium is not remotely a new idea. The landscape is littered with shows that became movies and movies that became shows when someone crunched the numbers and found that the project had a greater chance at success as something other than its original vision. To say, “Hey, if you come to us with a pitch for a TV show and we’ll sell it as a video game,” isn’t groundbreaking.

The problem with the Russo’s belief that you can meet audiences “where they’re going” is that you’ve ceded all vision in the hopes that technology will do the work. But the Russos are the vocal minority telling you what stories you can tell because if I have a narrative designed to run feature-length and AGBO tells me that Netflix is interested only if it’s an 8-episode limited series, then I’ve taken one story and tried to stretch it in an attempt to meet “the market” except that’s the need of a company, not the need of the audience.

I’m sure it’s easy to look at a teenager on their phone watching TikTok and think, “Ah, this is the future,” but that assumes you, as an artist and a producer, have nothing to offer than meeting consumer demand rather than having a vision that others will want to follow. The Russos seem to believe that because they believe in nothing they can pivot to anything.