Composer and lyricist Marc Shaiman is unquestionably talented. During his long career he helped create John Waters’ long-running musical Hair spray, tagged movies like Insomnia in Seattle and Mary Poppins Returns, and won a Grammy, Emmy, and Tony for his work (meaning he only needs an Oscar to complete his EGOT, and he’s been nominated seven times). Sadly, this gave Shaiman and his co-songwriter / lyricist Scott Wittman the unique challenge of creating the intentionally bad Rogers: the musical song “I could do this all day” as seen in Hawk Eyethe post-credits scene of.
In a very informative interview with Reverse, Shaiman explained why Ant-Man is mistakenly a part of the Battle of New York, as seen in the first Avengers movie (series showrunner Rhys Thomas purposely included this to make Clint even more annoyed by the musical), how many ideas Kevin Feige rejected (almost none!), and more. But for me the most interesting part is when Shaiman talks about his reaction to the fans’ reaction to the song:
“The hardest part was writing a song that had to be something that Hawkeye or the people who don’t like musicals would roll their eyes. It was difficult because we did our job well, and that meant there were a lot of people who were like “Wwhat’s this ?’
“I understand that there are a lot of people out there who would have expected the post-credits scene to be a new core of what’s going to happen next in the MCU. I completely understand. But it was hard to know that by doing our job well, we did something that not everyone likes. It’s been almost bittersweet, but being in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is crazy.
When you do something intentionally cheesy, some people just don’t get the joke. If Shaiman and Wittman were able to use all of these talents to make the song and the stage great, there would be a lot less grumbling fans. Sadly, when you do something intentionally cheesy, there will always be some people don’t understand the joke.
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