By now, most of you already know that the ending of Thunderbolts* results in the team receiving a rebrand as the New Avengers. But that big Avengers name-change reveal didn’t originally land the way director Jake Schreier wanted. In fact, test audiences were quick to inform Marvel Studios they really didn’t care for it. After hearing the feedback loud and clear, director Schreier went to Plan B. Here’s what he told Collider about how they tweaked the Thunderbolts* ending after negative audience feedback after an early screening.
When we were making the movie… it really is basically the same piece of music, and I was editing. In my head, I was like, ‘We’re going to go to that, she’s going to announce. Yelena will walk up. It’s building up, and then push in on a close-up of her face in the background. Hit the credits. You know she’s going to say it [the New Avengers]. Everyone’s going to cheer…’ And that didn’t happen.
This led to a change in the way Marvel Studios presented the Thunderbolts* end credits. The final film had the credits roll over skeptical headlines questioning this B-list group of heroes as the official new Avengers team. We saw headlines saying things like “B-Vengers” and “Really?” Schreier said that executive producer Brian Chapek also felt the new credits gave time for the audience to process the idea that the Thunderbolts were now the New Avengers, before jumping into the “14 months later” post-credits scene.
The newly altered ending landed with the test audiences this time around, and that’s what they ultimately went with. Test screenings can sometimes damage movies terribly if every dumb comment someone makes has to be adhered to. But sometimes, it does legitimately help to improve the final edit of a film. We’d put Thunderbolts*/New Avengers in the latter category.
Content shared from nerdist.com.