3000만큼 사랑해

Origin

‘I love you 3000’ is a line from the 2019 film Avengers: Endgame. Tony Stark puts his daughter Morgan to bed and tells her he loves her ‘tons’; Morgan answers, ‘I love you 3000.’ A child’s attempt to put a number on affection, delivered straight.

The line was not in the script to begin with. Morgan originally replied ‘I love you tons’, and it changed because Robert Downey Jr., who played Tony, told the director Anthony Russo that one of his own children says ‘I love you 3,000’. The directors liked it enough to put it in the film as it was.

Spread

The line moved onto social media as soon as the film opened. Within Marvel fandom it stood in for Tony Stark’s ending; outside it, it became a construction where any number could be swapped in.

Various readings of the number circulated — most popularly that the combined running time of the MCU films comes to roughly 3,000 minutes. That is a fan interpretation, not an explanation offered by the filmmakers. The real source is one actor’s family life, and the number carries no calculated meaning.

The Indonesian singer Stephanie Poetri’s 2019 song ‘I Love You 3000’ became a hit, giving the phrase a second run outside the film’s fandom.

Usage

Exaggerating affection
Substituting other numbers to express degree
Quoted within Marvel fandom in memory of Tony Stark

Since the source is a small child’s line, a certain childishness is built in, which suits light affection or a joke better than a serious declaration.