Last summer, I was invited alongside a group of journalists to visit the Atlanta, Georgia set of Avengers: Infinity War. You can read a more in-depth account about my experience on the set here, but suffice it to say that it was indeed epic. The amount of star-power in this movie is mind-boggling, and over the next several weeks I’ll be publishing interviews with the cast and creatives behind it all. They couldn’t reveal much in the way of specifics, of course, but it was really fun to just see their banter and interactions — which is really the crux of what the Avengers movies are all about.

So much has happened in the MCU since we visited Pinewood studios, but our wide-ranging interview with Joe and Anthony Russo (who also directed Winter Soldier and Civil War) dives into it all, including how they balanced having such a large cast, what it was like incorporating the tones of all these different movies into one, and some of the movies that influenced them. Plus, they spoke about working with IMAX cameras, what some of our heroes have been up to since their solo movies, and the high emotional stakes of these final chapters of this phase of the MCU.

[Note: This is a very long interview, so if you scroll too quickly there may be a slight delay as each section loads]

QUESTION: So, aside from the culmination of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, what is this movie about?

Anthony Russo: Endurance. For us, since we entered the MCU as story tellers, and we picked up the story with Winter Soldier, we’ve been carrying a thread forward from that point, a narrative thread. And for us this movie is very much about, how do we move forward from Civil War in a big way, and what happens to that division between the Avengers, and how does that affect them. What does that mean when the greatest threat they’ll ever face comes to them, in that kind of a condition, in that kind of divided condition?

Joe Russo: It’s been a personal journey I think, for us as filmmakers from Winter Soldier, of a theme set in that movie that I think we then tried to expand upon in Civil War, that then led to Infinity War. It’s how we feel about the characters, as comic book fans, the story that we want to see. Re-imagining these characters to a very personal point of view. So it’s not only a culmination of the last ten years of Marvel storytelling, but for us, it’s a culmination of our journey as directors in the Marvel Universe, and I think having at our disposal all of those characters and allowing ourselves to refilter them through the way that we see the universe, the way that we feel about the characters, the themes that we really want to bring to the forefront, that’s what these two movies are for us.

What can you say about the state of the world? Are the Sokovia accords still a thing?

Anthony Russo: It’s a direct corollary to the end of Civil War, you’re going into this film with the ramifications of that film at the forefront.