When it comes to big franchise movies, we can easily find ourselves obsessing about the smallest details, including the title. Just look at the countless articles theorizing on the potential titles for the next James Bond movie, the next STAR WARS movie, or the next Marvel movie. It never ends, and here's one more. As we know, the title for the fourth AVENGERS movie was kept secret for quite some time before it was finally revealed in the first trailer for the film.
I'm not sure what we were expecting, but AVENGERS: ENDGAME wound up being somewhat of an anti-climatic title, especially as Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige had previously said that it wasn't going to be revealed prior to the release of AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR as it could be considered a spoiler for that film. Feige later admitted that it had "gotten entirely out of hand, and now will have no chance to living up to any expectations of what it’s gonna be." Spot on. While speaking with Collider, Kevin Feige explained why the AVENGERS: ENDGAME title was a spoiler for AVENGERS: ENDGAME.
Well, I think I’d said that it all had gotten blown out of proportion to some extent. But it was a spoiler, because if you knew before Infinity War came out that the next movie was called Endgame, then you know that there wasn’t an ending to Infinity War. But that had been the title of the movie from the moment we conceived of doing the two films. In large part, because…it’s seeded right there. I mean, it’s seeded in Ultron.
As the film was initially announced as AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR – PART II and shot back-to-back with INFINITY WAR, I can't imagine that fans were enormously shocked when the film didn't wrap up in a neat little bow. Feige had previously said that the title was in place for quite some time and that Doctor Strange's (Benedict Cumberbatch) endgame line in INFINITY WAR was entirely intentional, but Feige also mentioned AGE OF ULTRON in the above quote, and it's true; Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) does mention an endgame while the team tries to come up with a plan to defeat Ultron (James Spader).
AVENGERS: ENDGAME is set to hit theaters on April 26, 2019.