Get A Behind-The-Scenes Look At Chris Evans' Last Day As Captain America
Avengers: Endgame marked the end of many characters' time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including the much-adored hero Steve Rogers, who grew old in a flash and passed on his superhero shield at the end of the film.
From 2011 to 2019, Chris Evans portrayed America's Greatest Soldier on the silver screen, becoming almost universally celebrated as the perfect characterization of all the best iterations of Captain America that have appeared in comics over the decades. Pop culture is naturally given to reinvention, rebooting, and reinterpretation, which sometimes disincentivizes us from slowing down to appreciate real, true endings. In a lot of ways, Endgame's themes play into that fact. For the people who made these movies, however, there's a much more personal attachment that anyone would be inclined to record.
During a livestream to celebrate one year since the movie first hit theaters, Avengers: Endgame co-directors Joe and Anthony Russo shared to Twitter a number of personal pictures and videos from filming — and that included a short video of Evans' last day as Captain America. All around Evans, the entire crew is seen applauding him after the call for cut; the actor makes a short circuit around the people closest to him to give hugs.
This is from @ChrisEvans’s last day of playing Captain America, ever. Much love and respect to you sir. What an amazing run. #AvengersAssemble pic.twitter.com/LreTlM2JrZ
— Russo Brothers (@Russo_Brothers) April 28, 2020
Celebrating the end of an era
Leaving behind any beloved role can be emotionally difficult for an actor, and that grows by magnitudes depending on how many years they served in said role. Evans is known for being a reserved yet rather emotional man; even if you can't necessarily see it in the Russos' video, the actor's last day playing Captain America was probably a challenging one to get through. It's very common for everyone to clap on the final day of principal photography on an entire film, but knowing that that tradition is going to be exercised on you personally would hang over anyone well before and after. It wouldn't be surprising to hear that Evans got choked up or shed a few tears after the cameras stopped rolling.
Now that he has the benefit of time behind him, Evans looks back on his years-long run as Cap with deep fondness for both the people and the experience. In a November 2019 installment of Variety's "Actors on Actors" video series, the Captain America actor told his fellow MCU star Scarlett Johansson, the actress behind Black Widow, "I'm very protective of it. It was such a precious time, and jumping onto the movie was a terrifying prospect to me. I said no a bunch of times, and there's a million and one ways it could have gone wrong."
As the video shows and the Russos themselves note in their reminiscent tweet, people respect Evans' talent and humility that he brought to the role, and that could only ever bring him immense success.