Director: Anthony Russo

Anthony Russo directs in permanent partnership with his brother Joe, and the two came out of television comedy, running Arrested Development and Community, before Marvel hired them on the strength of a single Community action episode. That background is not the obvious preparation for the highest-grossing films ever made.

Their four Marvel films, The Winter Soldier, Civil War, Infinity War and Endgame, moved the series toward the 1970s conspiracy thriller and then toward ensemble management on a scale nobody had attempted. Endgame required staging dozens of established characters without any of them disappearing.

Their post-Marvel work has been mixed, with The Gray Man and Cherry both receiving poor notices, which raises a fair question about how much of the earlier success was structural instead of authorial.