The intense real-life addiction drama Cherry may seem like an odd move for the Russo Brothers after their quartet of hugely successful blockbuster MCU movies, but the subversive film couldn’t be a better fit for the Avengers: Endgame helmers. Released in 2018, American author Nico Walker’s debut novel Cherry is a critically-acclaimed autobiographical retelling of the writer’s struggles with addiction after his traumatizing time as an Army medic.
Walker’s unnamed narrator, like the author himself, eventually turns to bank robbery to fund his opioid addiction, with the novel and its movie adaptation tracking his time in the Army, return to America, his descent into drug problems and crime, and eventual imprisonment. It’s an arresting, vital story and a deeply topical one given the rapidly worsening US opioid epidemic—which makes it all the more seemingly surprising that the movie adaptation of Cherry comes from central MCU figures/Avengers: Endgame directors the Russo Brothers.
Best known for directing a pair of record-breaking Avengers blockbuster installments, the Russo Brothers have also been heavily involved in shaping the ambitious, sprawling MCU and made two Captain America movies before their first Avengers film, Avengers: Infinity War. Understandably, after two years of quiet producing from the pair, some film fans were surprised to see them pick a dark, gritty character drama like Cherry as their next project. However, this not only fits the Russo Brothers’ stated attitude of creating a small-scale more personal project for each big-budget blockbuster they make, but it also fits the recurring themes that cropped up in a lot of the pair’s earlier projects.
Like Tom Holland's similarly dark The Devil All The Time, Cherry’s story touches on difficult themes ranging from drug addiction, the US’s slate of ongoing “forever wars,” and the lack of treatment for veterans returning from service with PTSD. While it may not be an easy commercial sell, Cherry’s story was one the Russo Brothers were emotionally invested in bringing to life with a bigger budget than a less famous filmmaker could wring for such a risky investment. In a Variety interview, Joe Russo said the duo wanted to follow Ocean's 11 director Stephen Soderbergh’s system of actively leveraging the experience and brand power they gained from recent studio tentpoles into making a smaller-scale, more personal passion project. And it’s also no surprise that a passion project for the Russo Brothers means a movie that criticizes society and culture in contemporary America through a darkly comic lens.
The earlier work of the Russo Brothers, such as Welcome to Collinwood and the short-lived TV series Lucky, wrung dark laughs out of a heist gone wrong and gambling addiction respectively. More pertinently, the series where the pair cut their teeth in cult TV was famous for offering cutting satirical jabs at the US military-industrial complex, the country’s poor public healthcare provision, and its underfunded public programs. Arrested Development featured risky satirical indictments of everything from the public education system, to Army recruiters, to the then-extremely-contentious invasion of Iraq, to the torture of civilians in Guantanamo Bay. With that context in mind, it’s no surprise that the first post-MCU project for the Avengers: Endgame directors is as pointedly satirical and relevant as Cherry.
