Ms. Marvel’s directors explain AvengerCon, ‘the most fun set we’ve ever had’

This is the climax to the first episode of Disney Plus. Ms. Marvel seems like it was designed for freeze-framers, screencappers, and “all the Easter eggs you missed” listicle-writers. There are many references to in-jokey and the setting moves very quickly. The action also blitzes past numerous characters and locations.

Belgian producers Bilall Fallah and Adil El Arbi, who directed episode 5 and the pilot episodes of the opening season’s six-episode series, said that this sequence was their highlight in their career as directors and on television. El Arbi, Fallah and their previous collaborations on 2020 were during film school. Bad BoysContinuation Bad Boys For Life The Belgian crime-thrillers Black Gangsta. They’re currently in post-production on the DC Extended Universe movie Batgirl. However, they do not say Ms. Marvel is where they’ve enjoyed themselves most in their career — including giving a specific look to an action sequence that was only a vague overview in the script they were given.

[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for episode 1 of Ms. Marvel.]

Image: Disney Plus

Most of the episode’s first season was Ms. MarvelThis is a story about Kamala Khan (16 years old) (Iman Vellani), who lives in New Jersey with her Muslim family and dreams of the super heroes she sees. She’s particularly obsessed with Captain Marvel, and she’s put together a cosplay outfit that she’s excited to wear to a costume contest at a local fan gathering dubbed AvengerCon.

“It was the most fun set we’ve ever had,” El Arbi tells Polygon. “We were there taking pictures, playing with all the toys, and the producer had to grab us and focus us on the directing, because we were just having so much fun. It was an Easter egg paradise.”

“So much detail you can see — you should go shot by shot. Everywhere, something’s going on,” Fallah says.

“It’s a real homage to the fans,” El Arbi says. “I think fandom is the most important aspect of these movies and shows, and without them, you don’t have successful Marvel movies or superheroes. It is my hope that they will be able to appreciate the effort we made to recognize them and their love of these films. So that was just a big pleasure, a big homage to them.”

According to the duo, Christopher Glass (the production designer) and his crew are all Marvel lovers so they contributed props and ideas. El Arbi characterizes the directors’ instructions as “OK, guys, it’s AvengerCon, everybody go loco!”

“They’re all fans, everybody was a fan, so everybody had ideas,” Fallah says.

Image: Disney Plus

El Arbi claims that the two shot too much footage to be able to cut it to the right length to use in the convention montage. However, early viewers wanted more. “We shot So much footage,” he laughs. “Our version of the director’s cut had SuchA long sequence of events that [the producers]A shorter version was made. Then [after]They tested it and came up with a version. longer than our director’s cut. It did. AllIt was like our photos in it That’s it! It’s pretty cool.”

Fallah and El Arbi also credit Glass for the episode’s big action sequence, where a giant-sized statue of Ant-Man loses its head, which goes rolling through the convention, smashing walls and creating havoc. They say that sequence wasn’t scripted with any specifics in mind — the idea was just that Kamala’s newly discovered powers would go haywire and make some sort of mess.

Fallah says that moment was their favorite part of the whole AvengerCon sequence, and the part they most want fans to enjoy: “It’s the biggest moment, Ant-Man’s head falling on them.”

Both men claim that Glass proposed the sequence as a tribute to the famous Raiders of the Lost Ark Indiana Jones escapes Indiana Jones’ giant boulder, hiding in a tomb of traps. “It was not in the script,” El Arbi says. “The script was a base, and then we just went crazy with it. And as we were brainstorming with Chris—”

“We wanted to have destruction,” Fallah jumps in. “So then Chris Glass came up with—”

“How about an enormous Ant-Man head, which just happens to fall?” El Arbi says. “Yeah! Let’s do it like Indiana Jones! And that’s how it happened.”