Is it time for us nerds to start anticipating THE AVENGERS, directed by Joss Whedon?

Full (main) cast was revealed at Comic-Con yesterday:

http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/8/2010/07/500x_hr_the_avengers_1.jpg

Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury
Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark
Clark Gregg as Agent Coulson
Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow
Chris Hemsworth as Thor
Chris Evans as Captain America
Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye
Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner / Incredible Hulk

Thor and Captain America movies are shooting now. No word on whether they'll try to squeeze in a standalone Hulk flick with Ruffalo first, or just consider this a cast change from the Edward Norton version. Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye will probably be pretty cool. No Hank Pym/Ant-Man in this, which calls into question Edgar Wright's standalone Ant-Man movie.

So. There it is, then.

Renner as Hawkeye is pretty inspired.

i know he's been straight for years, but pics of robert downey jumping around like an idiot at this thing are reminding me how crazy it is they've basically rested this whole enterprise on his shoulders.

U.S. Nerds

has there ever been a movie on this kind of action-fantasy ensemble scale before?

http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/images/asian-movie-posters/destroy_all_monsters.jpg

An Avengers movie with Black Widow as the sole female member?! And played by Scarlett Johansson? Bah! I want She-Hulk, Scarlet Witch & Wasp!

And who the heck is "Agent Coulson"?

a character introduced in the Downey Iron Man movies

this looks like it will be a glorious clusterf--k of a movie.

a character introduced in the Downey Iron Man movies

I guess he was in the second one, as I've seen the first one and can't remember any agents... Anyway, instead of him couldn't they have cast at least one more woman? The Avengers haven't been a "one token female" type of group since the 60s or something, and Black Widow is rather boring as a character. (And I can't even remember her being in The Avengers?)

Christ, I sound such a nerd! But I really do like The Avengers more than almost any other Marvel title, and I hope they don't screw up this one.

"sound like such a nerd"

where is the super friends movie, starring the Wonder Twins?

http://liberty92.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/wonder-twins11.jpg

Coulson was in the first Iron Man movie.

Would die of joy if Jennifer Jason Leigh joined this as the Wasp

Especially if the movie were in 3D so I could experience a tiny Jennifer Jason Leigh buzzing around my head

Sorry, no Hank Pym probably means no Janet, either. But why can't we have Ms. Marvel?

ok this cast is awesome and if joss is back to his best this will be the best film ever but it will just end up sucking and making me wish he was hit by a bus once serenity/angel finished.

Joss Whedon can suck a bag of dicks, as the cool kids say. This will be a 3hr movie with 30 mins of plot and 2.5 hours of painful dialogue and faux lesbians.

Def voting for The Black Widow and Thor to lez out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ1uHu0ixbw

ughhh whedon

shouldve let dan slott have a go at writing it, bout time he branched out

Filming kicking off.

Feige on Hulk.

Cleveland mayor's office issued a memo last week detailing street closings for the shooting period here. Some of them are going to be VERY disruptive, right in the heart of downtown on some major streets.

my ILM buddies are working on this but I don't have too many details yet. I'm a little skeptical but we'll seem

see

Captain America was solid boilerplate, but it sometimes felt like it was in a big hurry to be over, just to set up the transition to the Avengers.

here's the aftercap teaser, only cam versions are online

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnTI_D0zzBM

liked the "woo" at the end!

Woo!: The Movie. 2012, in 3-D.

the first comment on that page is otm...

The biggest mistake made by the 70's TV series and both movies is they don't allow Hulk to have a personality and substantive dialogue. Hulk is a character in his own right who in the comics goes on adventures and interacts directly with allies and adversaries. In the filmed versions, Hulk's role is mostly limited to angry rampages and chases. Hulk may speak in a childlike manner, but he's not a mindless brute.

uh there are plenty of comics where Hulk is a mindless brute

but yes HULK SMASH

but yeah, from what limited hulk I've read, he's also funny and gets dialog and stuff. does normal, non fight-scene stuff while he's the hulk.

http://superevil.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/kochalkahulk01.jpg

oh crap, totally forgot how to insert images.

<image>http://superevil.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/kochalkahulk01.jpg<;/image>

i give up.

http://superevil.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/kochalkahulk01.jpg

...is what I think you wanted

I like to think the rain hides the tracks of Hulk's tears.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0hCCTwlaYg

http://i.annihil.us/u/prod/marvel/i/mg/c/70/4ba975c0eb3f7.jpg

http://twitter.com/#!/drunkhulk

Joss Whedon be blowin' shit up all over downtown Cleveland. Chris Evans is on set today doing the Captain America thing.

The likelihood that this is going to be a Skrull invasion plot is looking pretty good. All of the bad guys in the fight scenes are in motion-capture suits, and a lot of reaction shots from both actors and extras have been to things that are clearly going to be SFXed in later. One photographer captured what appears to be a crashed Skrull ship:

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/526/img3049k.jpg

http://img803.imageshack.us/img803/1951/2779289.jpg

Plus some kind of exotic weaponry being examined by Captain America:

http://img851.imageshack.us/img851/8792/2776755.jpg

http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/1001/29972924613260208802815.jpg

And a dude in an overlooking office building captured this Captain America/Thor vs. the motion capture army fight scene yesterday:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOOFJBHcm3k

Sam Jackson has wrapped on the Cleveland/Northeast Ohio locations and left town already. Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth are here for the duration, Scarlett Johannson is supposed to show up today, and Marvel will not comment on whether Robert Downey will be here or not. Monday night, they start night shooting on another location downtown, which they're dressing to look like Stuttgart, Germany.

If it's a Skrull invasion, I wonder if this will be based on Ultimates Vol. 2, then? I mean, the characters in the movie are pretty much the same as in that story (minus the Wasp), and movies based on Mark Millar comic have proven to be quite popular in the last few years.

I think it will be pretty close. Sam Jackson's Nick Fury is clearly the Ultimates version, and all the new character costumes seem to mirror their Ultimates versions pretty closely.

Trailer!

http://gawker.com/5848611/the-avengers-a-special-kind-of-club

biggest failing was the sudden + inexplicable turnaround of hulk from uncontrollable rage monster to valuable team player, but obv the movie is v rewarding if you just go with it so

I thought it was pretty obvious in the movie why there was such a difference between his two metamorphoses... Banner has learned to control him changing to Hulk to some degree (see his "I'm always angry" comment), but the first time he transforms he's shocked by the attack to the helicarrier, plus he doesn't trust Black Widow and the other S.H.I.E.L.D. folks, feeling that they've lured him in to use him – hence Hulk's angry at everything and everyone around him. The second time, however, Banner transforms at will, not because of some shock, and he trusts the good guys and knows who the bad guys are, so Hulk goes to attack the latter.

So it isn't random or inexplicable, it's part of his character arc.

Yeah that's a good point. His mindset going into the transformation affects the direction of Hulk's rage. And of course talking with Harry Dean Stanton.

Ta-da

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDajL441mZc

lol @ the repair scene, good call

"gay bane"

leather boobs

"which doesn't matter, because that shot was awesome" does sum it up

Q: What’s most important in shooting a film?

A: What’s really important is storytelling. None of it matters if it doesn’t support the story.

I thought “The Avengers” was an appalling film. They’d shoot from some odd angle and I’d think, why is the camera there? Oh, I see, because they spent half a million on the set and they have to show it off. It took me completely out of the movie. I was driven bonkers by that illogical form of storytelling.

Wally Pfister on The Avengers

http://arts.heraldtribune.com/2012-10-16/section/home/q-a-with-oscar-winning-cinematographer-wally-pfister/

why do they keep referring to Inception as The Inception

i was going to rofl at dude who shot batfilms complaining about an "illogical form of storytelling" but it sounds like he didn't care for the batshit either in that interview

he still shot them though

oh if he was the bateditor i'd definitely be roffling

instead of showing off the set like a hack, batcarvaggio was more interested in making sure the lighting on the turdmobiles looked natural

article buries the lede imo

On Tuesday, dressed in jeans, and a black polo shirt with several silver rings on each hand (the two on the right are skulls), he addressed everything from his many projects with award-winning director Christopher Nolan to a recent feature he considered “appalling.”

"Black polo shirt" with all the Affliction stuff on the back.

"life model decoy" right out the gate, lol

FINALLY seeing this damn movie for the first time

Wasn't disappointed, didn't top The Dark Knight though

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/joss-whedon-avengers-2-script-446540

In the current version of the story, Whedon teases the introduction of a brother-sister duo from "back in the day" and, of course, new villains, on which he is keeping mum.

Some speculation he's referring to Quicksilver & The Scarlet Witch. Fun reason for Marvel to get Quicksilver on screen is that, by having both a super-archer and a super-speedster in the Avengers, they make Justice League that much more unlikely.

Scarlet Witch!?!? You mean #14 in Comics Buyer's Guide's "100 Sexiest Women in Comics" !?!?!?!?

There's been an internet theory going around for a while that Agent Coulson didn't completely die in the movie, and that he'll become The Vision in Avengers 2, and that the "cellist" he mentions seeing is actually Wanda Maximoff. (Also, Coulson was was probably trying to recruit her to join the Avengers, not dating her, as he claims to Pepper.) If The Scarlet Witch is actually gonna be in the A2, then the theory could be true.

Regardless of whether The Vision is in, I think SW is pretty likely to be in the next movie though. They gotta include more female heroes besides Black Widow, and SW and Wasp are the most iconic female Avengers, but I suspect Wasp migth look a bit silly on the big screen, so SW seems like a more likely choice.

Coulson is presumably appearing in the TV series, though, as Clark Gregg is the primary cast member last I heard. So we'll find out soon enough.

yeah, the vision thing seems pretty likely. they're definitely integrating that actor into the longterm plans for the franchise in the same way as sam jackson

Wouldn't mind a bit of Ultron.

I like the versatility they're building into this franchise -- I hope they're willing to take advantage of it. Large scale superheroics and smaller scale espionage stuff, cosmic and terrestrial, theatrical releases and tv. Guardians of the Galaxy and a Hawkeye/Black Widow comedy-adventure (in a Romancing the Stone vein) in the same storytelling universe -- why not?

they just got the Daredevil rights back too...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PerIAuv27SQ

looks quippy

i am unrealistically hopeful.

^^^

so they're doing power man now with this?
getting a very BBC vibe off the trailer.

FYI!

S.H.I.E.L.D. -- Marvel meets Joss Whedon meets...TV!

http://24.media.tumblr.com/50ea70cf0ea25a2f7488fe3006883bcb/tumblr_mq9lh7277g1qzvnpdo1_500.jpg

OK I'm hoping that's not a hoax

There's a reason I already started this thread, folks:

The Avengers 2 -- Age of Ultron

i finally watched this

yeesh

I still can't figure out how so maybe people praised the hell out of this

will admit i'm not in a rush to see it a second time, though that's partially cuz of word the sound mix is very "mumblemumblemumbleKABOOOM" on dvd

but there was also was a bit of novelty rush when seen in theaters by people eagerly anticipating the team-up

as opposed haters hating from their little entertainment room of hate

Hey, don't worry:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BuYVniuIEAEPXUr.jpg

This movie held up surprisingly well on a second viewing. OTOH, if you do not enjoy superhero flicks, don't bother watching it.

BL

will admit i'm not in a rush to see it a second time, though that's partially cuz of word the sound mix is very "mumblemumblemumbleKABOOOM" on dvd

This might sound stupid but: see if there's just a 2.0 stereo option. I was seriously worrying I'd started to lose my hearing from too many loud shows, headphones up too high, etc until I realized that most DVDs released nowadays default to 5.1 and other exotic stereo setups and make dialog impossible to understand for those of us with normal-people TVs. I was watching Thunderball the other day and was wondering what the hell was going on until I realized that this movie from 19-fucking-65, released in mono, defaulted to a 5.1 remix.

looking for a 2.0 mix is the first thing I do on just about any dvd.

Also realized I signed my initials to previous post, lol@work.

thanks for the tip re: stereo. i've got a ps3 going into a goofy old tv so i'll give that a look

who knows what kind of profit they could've turned with an agent coulson movie

― JIM THOMETHEUS (zachlyon), Sunday, May 6, 2012 2:06 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

i gave this another shot. it got better.

things this movie has going for it:

- robert downey jr
- some pretty wikkid fights

Yeah but that battle vs aliens in the city was freaking interrrrminabllllle. Liked the SHIELD helicarrier battles, tho.

i think i sort of snoozed off during that scene