MAJOR spoilers ahead from Avengers: Endgame and Avengers: Infinity War.
Snap your fingers. Right now. Loud? Quiet? Some people have great cracking snaps, others can't get much snap at all. But to get a snap like The Snap of the past two Avengers movies took the work of professionals. As one of two re-recording mixers with Skywalker Sound, Juan Peralta was responsible for The Snap in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.
We needed it to be an event. We wanted to make sure the snap is felt as well as heard.
Yes, The Snap was a major event -- three times. Thanos' snap felt devastating in Avengers: Infinity War, but The Snap took on a whole other meaning in Avengers: Endgame. It felt like victory. First, The Hulk snapped back the 50% dusted in The Decimation. Then Tony dust-busted Team Thanos.
Juan Peralta told CNET his job was to blend the various sounds heard in the films, including finding a way to maximize the impact of a relatively small noise like a finger snap.
In Infinity War, the sound designers segued from the explosions of battle to a moment of quiet for The Snap, adding a metallic note for the metal of Thanos' Infinity Gauntlet. After hearing a boom and Thor's cry, the music fades and we just her the wind of 50% of our friends turning to dust.
Juan Peralta's job was different in the more intimate Endgame vs. the heavier action of Infinity War.
I was very conscious of making sure the audience wasn't just hit over the head with the sound. When we got to Endgame, it was refreshing to start the movie off with a lot of character development and a lot of emotions.
Tony Stark's own Endgame included using the Infinity Stones to snap out Thanos and his army, turning them to dust this time. Thanos initially believed he had all the Stones, dropping this confident line:
I am inevitable.
But not invincible. When Thanos snapped his fingers again, nothing happened. Instead, Tony had taken the Stones for himself. Before Stark's own powerful event Snap, he got to drop this epic reply to Thanos:
And I am Iron Man.
BOOM. Apparently that wasn't how the moment played out during original filming. As the Russo Brothers explained during an event in Washington, D.C. (via /FILM):
Tony used to not say anything in that moment. And we were in the editing room going, ‘He has to say something. This is a character who has lived and died by quips.’ And we just couldn’t, we tried a million different last lines. Thanos was saying 'I am inevitable.' And our editor Jeff Ford, who’s been with us all four movies and is an amazing storyteller, said ‘Why don’t we just go full circle with it and say I am Iron Man.’ And we’re like, ‘Get the cameras! We have to shoot this tomorrow.'
So they did. They added that scene in reshoots and it ended up the final scene they directed for Avengers: Endgame, which may be their final MCU movie.
It's amazing how much gets added after the scripts are already in. Clearly it took more than a village to make Avengers: Endgame. The credits go on and on for a reason. A lot of names you haven't heard as often as Robert Downey Jr. also had a huge hand in making this movie a Titanic-crushing success.
Some fans are already suggesting Robert Downey Jr. for an Oscar nomination, but the sound, visual effects, editing, and other behind-the-scenes teams may hear their names mentioned as well.
