Trailer: The Avengers: Age of Ultron (SDCC 2013 Reveal)

Posted on September 27, 2013 by Arleigh

This past summer those who attended the Marvel panel over at San Diego Comic-Con 2013 were treated to Joss Whedon’s reveal for The Avengers sequel.

From the mid-credits scene at the end of The Avengers many thought that the villain for the sequel will be the cosmic baddie Thanos. I guess Whedon and Feige decided that it was best to keep Whedon in their pockets for now and went in a different direction. The sequel to The Avengers will have one of the superhero team’s toughest and most persistent archenemies: The self-aware and truly pissed off android known as Ultron.

The Avengers: Age of Ultron will not be following the events from this past year’s Age of Ultron crossever series in the comics. It instead will just use the title and create a brand-new story behind the origins (this time around it won’t be Hank Pym aka Ant-Man who creates Ultron, but someone else) of the Avengers main enemy and it’s plans for the team and Earth.

This change in Ultron’s creator didn’t sit well with some of the purists who want everything in the Marvel Universe to be adapted exactly how it was originally written. Fortunately, I’m not one of them and I actually think this change further solidifies the Marvel Cinematic Universe as it’s own alternate universe that comprises the near-infinite realities of the Marvel Multiverse. Where the universe with make’s up the original comic books have been given the Earth-616 label the Marvel Cinematic Universe has now been given it’s own of Earth-199999.

It’s going to be interesting to see what Whedon and company will come up with to make Ultron a villain worthy to get the team back together again. It helps that they’ve chosen James Spader to voice the bugshit-crazy and angry Ultron.

The Avengers: Age of Ultron will premiere in our universe on May 1, 2015.

Review: Marvel One-Shot “Agent Carter”

Posted on September 24, 2013 by Arleigh

Ever since Thor was released on video (DVD/Blu-Ray) the people over at Marvel Studios have added as a special bonus to the video’s extras a small short film they’ve dubbed “Marvel On-Shot”. So far, they’ve either been about the adventures of fan-favorite SHIELD agent Phil Coulson or a brief look at a post-Avengers New York. The short films were cute, but nothing to really write home about.

With the release of Iron Man 3 on DVD and Blu-Ray we get a new Marvel One-Shot and it looks like the creative minds at Marvel Studios have decided to work a tad harder on making this new short film much better. It’s a flashback moment to one Agent Peggy Carter who is still grieving a year after Captain America (aka Steve Rogers) supposedly died trying to save New York from a HYDRA bomber full of tesseract-fueled bombs.

We see how she’s been relegated to doing paper work and kept from doing the field work she’s more adept at. This one-shot film actually shows in it’s short running time how even someone as skilled and heroic as Peggy Carter must still navigate and deal with a male-chauvinistic society that dismisses whatever accomplishments she’s earned in the past and seen more as a sort of “affirmative action” hire.

The film doesn’t try to force-feed this theme, but instead tries (and does so successfully) to blow-up the damsel-in-distress stereotype by showing Agent Carter at her best. And what she does best is doing the sort of field work that earned her not just the respect of the soldiers she worked with during WWII in Europe, but those of Captain America himself.

“Agent Carter” stars the original Peggy Carter in the form of British actress Hayley Atwell and she does a fine job of helping continue her character’s growth. She continues to show that she’s just as useful and skilled as Captain America which she showed in the film of the same name. In this one-shot we’re reminded of it and it also does an interesting thing in making it plausible to create a spin-off around her character.

Marvel has intimated that it’s something they’d be interested in doing and if the quality of this one-shot is anything to go by then a series (tv or web-based) starring Ms. Atwell as Agent Carter would be well-received by fans everywhere. This short film also showed that Marvel Studios has a new secret weapon to keep DC at bay. This was the first one-shot that truly belonged as a prologue to a feature-length Marvel film on the big-screen. Here’s to hoping that attaching future one-shots to full-length features not on video but in the theaters becomes an idea that Marvel Studios allow to happen.

Have you seen The Iceman?

Posted on July 6, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Iceman, a gangster biopic that stars the amazing Michael Shannon, came and went earlier this year. It got respectful, if not rave, reviews but it certainly didn’t get the attention that it deserved. That’s a shame because The Iceman is one of the best films of 2013.

Directed by Ariel Vromen, The Iceman tells the true story of Richard Kuklinski (Shannon), a Mafia contract killer who claimed to have killed anywhere from 100 to 250 people over the course of his three decade long career. At the same time that Kuklinski was murdering the equivalent of the population of a small rural community, he was also living a double life as a suburban family man. When he was finally arrested in 1986, neither his wife nor his daughters had any idea that he was a killer. After being sentence to spend the rest of his life in prison, Kuklinski gave countless interviews (and was the subject of a creepy documentary that still shows up on HBO occasionally) until he finally died, under mysterious circumstances, in 2006.

When Kuklinski is first seen in the Iceman, it’s the 50s and he’s flirting with Deborah (Winona Ryder). When another man speaks to Deborah, Kuklinski reacts by casually following the man outside and killing him. Kuklisnki goes on to marry Deborah before he eventually meets crime boss Roy DeMeo (Ray Liotta) and is recruited to kill for a living. It’s a good arrangement for Kuklinski because it turns out that killing is the only thing he’s good at and his marriage to Deborah allows him to tell himself that he’s just a blue collar family man doing his job.

As opposed to other cinematic sociopaths, Kuklinski is no glib charmer. Instead, as the film repeatedly demonstrates, he is a remorseless killer who feels neither shame nor joy as a result of his actions. Much like the character played by Michael Rooker in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Kuklinski is not defined by what hides behind his blank expression but by the fact that there’s nothing to hide because nothing’s there.

Even Kuklinski’s love for his family is, in one particularly harrowing sequence, revealed to be hollow and false. As becomes apparent, the only thing that keeps Kuklinski from taking out his homicidal impulses on his family is the fact that there’s a never-ending supply of Mafia lowlifes who need to be executed. Kuklinski and his associates exist in a moral vacuum and friendship and family life are ultimately a disguise as opposed to a reality.

If this makes The Iceman sound like a rather dark film, that’s because it is. And yet, the film is never less than watchable. It helps that Ariel Vromen gets excellent performances from his entire cast. Both Winona Ryder and Ray Liotta are perfectly cast. Robert Davi shows up as a mobster and James Franco has a very effective cameo as one of Kuklinski’s victims. Stephen Dorff plays Kuklinski’s brother, who is serving a life sentence because, unlike his brother, he never figured out a way to turn his dark impulses into a business. Best of all, Chris Evans plays an especially sleazy hitman who drives an ice cream truck in his spare time. When Evans first shows up, he seems almost like a comical character but, as the film progresses, Evans’ performance becomes more and more sinister until eventually, he’s calmly talking about killing his own children. For those of us who have been conditioned to associate Chris Evans with the clean-cut Capt. America, it’s a revelation of a performance.

However, the film is truly dominated by Michael Shannon. It’s not easy to make an empty character compelling but Shannon does so. Shannon is such a charismatic performer that you want to like him when he first appears on screen. As The Iceman plays out, you keep finding yourself hoping that Kuklinski will reveal some shred of human decency. You find yourself studying Shannon’s rigid stance and cold eyes and hoping to find some evidence of compassion. The genius of Shannon’s performance is that he makes Richard Kuklinski a fascinating character even as he slowly reveals just how hollow he actually is.

Is Michael Shannon the best American actor working today? That was a question that filmgoers were forced to ask after seeing Shannon’s performance in 2011’s Take Shelter. It’s a question that they should ask again after seeing his performance in The Iceman. Without Shannon’s performance, The Iceman would be just another gangster film. However, thanks to Shannon, it’s one of the best films of the year so far.

Okay, So I Saw “The Avengers”

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Or should that be “Okay, so I saw Marvel’s The Avengers ?”

In any case, I wasn’t going to. I was determined not to participate in the so-called “biggest event of the summer” because I’m flat-out tired of seeing Marvel (and, by extension, Disney) rake in hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars off the fruits of Jack Kirby’s imagination while “The King’s” estate gets more or less nothing (although in fairness — or should that be unfairness — they do get some sort of pittance for anything featuring Captain America in it, since he’s officially recognized as Cap’s co-creator along with Joe Simon). Stan Lee’s recent comments about Jack didn’t do much to up my enthusiasm level for this latest blockbuster either, and basically reaffirmed my opinion that he’s a major-league asshole who was lucky enough to glom onto the works a true creative genius that now he doesn’t even have the decency to acknowledge, much less thank, so yeah — it’s fair to say I was pretty cool to this whole thing and found most of the absolute gushing over it that’s been infecting the internet, Twitter in particular, to be annoying in the extreme.

But then the folks who are trying to put together The Jack Kirby Museum came up with a novel idea — donate the price of your ticket to their brick-and-mortar fund, so that future generations can have an actual, physical place to go and experience first-hand the power of the unfettered creative genius that everyone else but his family has gotten rich off. That sounded good to me, so for the price of a $7.50 admission and a matching $7.50 donation, my conscience was suitably assuaged — hey, I guess I always knew there was some price at which my principles could be sold out, but it’s rather depressing to think that it could be so cheap. Still, best not to spend too much time dwelling on that —

Anyway, before I kick over the hornet’s nest of fan opinion, let me state for the record that I found The Avengers to be a perfectly fun, generally-well-executed, thoroughly entertaining superhero romp. But (and you knew there was a “but” coming, didn’t you?) — that’s all it is.

Sorry, assembled hordes of fandom, but it’s not “groundbreaking,” it’s far from “the best superhero movie ever,” (hello? The Dark Knight? Batman Begins? Spider-Man 2? Superman : The Movie?) much less “the best comic book adaptation ever,” (hello again? American Splendor? Ghost World? Sin City? A History Of Violence?) and it doesn’t “prove” that co-writer/director Joss Whedon is a “visionary,” or the “new master of the superhero genre.”

And all those quotes I pulled are, frankly, just a sampling of some of the less effusive praise I’ve seen bandied about online in regard to this flick. I’ve also seen it called “the new benchmark by which all others will be judged,” “the summer blockbuster to end them all,” “a singular work of astonishing breadth and scope,” and “the defining cinematic statement from the undisputed master of the craft.”

In this armchair critic’s opinion, unpopular as saying so is bound to make me, it’s none of those things. Not even close. Whedon has concocted a nice little script and brought it to life in an appealing and pleasant manner, but this isn’t a movie that bears any authorial signature whatsoever — if the credits were blank and someone told you it was directed by, say, Jon Favreau, you’d believe it, because it plays out pretty much exactly the same, in tone and style, as either of the two Iron Man films, and it doesn’t have anything like the individualistic flair of Kenneth Branagh’s Thor or Joe Johnson’s Captain America : The First Avenger. Hell, it even completely overuses the tedious inside-the-helmet perspective shots of Robert Downey Jr.’s head that Favreau is so annoyingly fond of.

In addition, our guy Joss shows no particularly deft touch with his cast. The acting ranges from surprisingly good (Mark Ruffalo positively nails it as Bruce Banner) to completely lethargic (Scarlett Johansson is completely listless as the Black Widow and is the least-convincing Russian superspy in movie history). Downey plays himself, as always, and the talented Jeremy Renner is criminally underutilized as Hawkeye, while both Chris Hemsworth’s Thor and Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, the central villain of the piece, came off much better in Branagh’s flick. Samuel L. Jackson pretty much owns every scene he’s in as Nick Fury, but I don’t think there was ever really any doubt that he would. All told, the whole thing has the feeling of a director who just told his cast “okay — have at it” and then let the cameras roll.

In his favor, fandom’s newest and biggest crush does do a nice, pacy job with the action sequences, of which there are many (although even he can’t make the bog-standard CGI alien invaders that attack the Earth at the end and, yawn, double-cross Loki seem interesting), and doesn’t overplay his hand in the pathos department — he gives each and every character a nice little individual “story arc” that never taxes the imagination too much and remains dimly interesting without seeming intrusive vis-a-vis the “bigger picture” — which is, of course, to show all these folks coming together and fighting a menace big enough to require their assembled talents and abilities. And while Whedon has an annoying habit of defusing every potentially tense situation with a pithy little quip of some sort, on the whole the interplay between the various characters is reasonably well-handled and plausible (as far as these things so).

So The Avengers has some pluses in its favor, as well as some minuses working against it. It’s good, solid, mindless summer entertainment with a nifty, if thoroughly uninspired, visual sensibility; it plays to what the fans want in a generally competent manner; and it keeps you at least modestly interested in the proceedings throughout. It doesn’t have the mythic scope of Donner’s Superman, nor does it redefine the possibilities inherent in the superhero genre in the way Nolan’s Batman films do. It doesn’t take the time to examine the gap between what these characters symbolize and who they actually are in the way that Marvel’s two far superior summer blockbusters of last year (again, Thor and Captain America : The First Avenger) did — hell, it doesn’t even have much of anything to say about the human condition, much less the superhuman condition. And while it’s all pretty fun to look at by and large, it doesn’t have the inventive, groundbreaking, downright operatic visual flair of Burton’s forays into Gotham City. So it’s fair to say that even the things this movie does well have been done a lot better in other films of this same genre.

But it is fun. Not as fun, or as immediate, or as dramatic, or as dynamic, as the classic Avengers stories brought to life by Jack Kirby that it’s essentially a modernized (and, frankly, watered-down — proof that “The King” could do more with a pencil than Whedon can with a couple hundred million bucks) rehash of, but a good time nonetheless — and in a society as desperate for diversion and spectacle as the one we live in, I can certainly understand why it’s such a big hit. But please. Let’s stop pretending it’s anything more than what it is — modestly-well-realized, lively, big-budget summer fun that doesn’t demand anything from its audience apart from kicking back and enjoying the ride. And let’s stop venerating Joss Whedon for what’s essentially a director-for-hire project executed in what’s basically become Marvel’s “house style.” Sure, there’s a good possibility that the financial success of The Avengers means he might be able to write his own ticket in Hollywood from here on out — and more power to him if that’s the case since other projects he’s helmed (most notably the excellent sci-fi TV series Firefly) do indeed show that he’s capable of distinctive, highly imaginative drama — but it’s just as likely that Marvel will replace him on this film’s inevitable sequel with some youthful up-and-comer who can deliver essentially the same product and will work for half the price.

Once the novelty of having all these superheroes on screen together wears off, I predict that we’re going to realize we’ve been had a little bit here — but seeing as how we had a pretty good time in the process, there’s no real harm done.

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Viktor VonGlum

Avengers did what I previously thought was impossible… it Leonidas-kicked Iron Man 1 off its throne and now reigns on my all-time favorite comic inspired movie. Nolan has a tough act to follow. The gauntlet has been dropped. I attribute this remarkable feat to Joss Whedon’s screenplay and the cast for the most part. I will not spoil the film and simply state what I enjoyed in a vague manner.

What I loved:

The cast embodied the characters that I grew up reading, especially Downey and Pines
The incorporation elements of Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s version of Avengers (in my opinion at least) in the film
The revelation of the Other’s Master
The Other’s design and connection of the comic version of Fantastic Four
The nod to the classic Thor and Hulk relationship
Clark Gregg’s Phil Coulson
Tom Hiddleston captured all the resentment, sense of entitlement and bitterness that represents Marvel’s iteration of Loki
The more humane and decent version of Ultimate Nick Fury (he’s a rotten & ruthless so & so on Millar’s book)

Minor quibbles:

The Black Widow’s lack of a Russian Accent (but it didn’t take away from Scarlett’s performance
The lack of a Loki betrayal, he’s the god of evil after all

Movie Review: The Avengers (dir. by Joss Whedon)

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Leonard Wilson

I’m almost certain that this won’t be the only review for Marvel’s The Avengers here on the Shattered Lens. Arleigh is watching it as we speak, and while I can give my thoughts on the film, they won’t be from a comic insider’s point of view. It’s not my strong point. You see, I grew up on Spider-Man comics, and totally shunned the Marvel Team Up / Group stories. Never read an X-Men comic until after that film came out and The Avengers overall are new to me. I know who they are, but I can’t tell you if the movie gives you everything the comics were. Keep your eyes open for the other reviews to help build a better picture of things.

What I can say is that the movie easily touches on everything that Disney / Marvel has built upon with the movies before it. Starting in 2008, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger were all pieces of a larger puzzle. After 4 years, The Avengers does its best to utilize all of it, to a great success. That’s the amazing element of this movie. You aren’t essentially required to watch the other movies to enjoy The Avengers. In 2 hours, you’re given a film that stands completely on it’s own if you’ve never seen the other films, yet is an added bonus if you have. Even better, the characters that didn’t have a chance to get their own films still have moments where we can learn about them and where they get to shine. One could maybe say the same about The X-Men in that you have a group of heroes that have to work together, but you’ve never really had a set up to display all of their abilities and background the way Disney/Marvel did this.

Warner Brothers and DC should be crying right now at the missed opportunity here. All of their comic creations were already under one roof, and they really should have been able to have had a Justice League film by now if they wanted to. I wouldn’t be shocked at all if they tried to mimic Marvel Studios right now.

When I first heard that Joss Whedon was doing the directing, I groaned. I have a love / hate relationship with Whedon’s work. I was never a big Buffy: The Vampire Slayer fan, but I really enjoyed Angel when it went into syndication, seeing all of it’s seasons more than once. Of course, everyone loves Firefly, but the film based on that, Serenity, tanked at the box office (I was there at the first Friday to support it, though). I wrote off the Avengers as something that was destined to fail, because Whedon loves to inject pop culture references at every given and small bits of humor into things that are usually serious. I felt the only saving grace would be that Whedon is something of a master when it comes to ensembles, which is why I figured Marvel Studios went with him. It may work for something like Cabin in the Woods (“When did you start reading science books?!” / “You! I learned it by watching you!”), but for a superhero movie, come on.

And yet, here I sit, feeling I owe Whedon the biggest of apologies. The Avengers has equal parts humor and action and it comes together so well that I’m not sure I know who else could pull this off. Let’s put it this way. The only true lull in the whole movie is at the beginning of the film, because it still needs to set up the big problem for the Avengers to handle. Other than that, the movie moves very well for a film with so many characters.

Previously on The Avengers…

Without giving much away, The Avengers is basically the story of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), who has to bring a group of heroes together to face a foe that’s too powerful for one good guy to handle on their own (or so that’s how they sell it). However, before they can take on the battle they’re supposed to, they have to find a way to get along with each other and that’s the building point of this tale. The action, when it happens is fresh and fast and there isn’t a slow moment that passes without pushing the story forward. For as long as the movie is, it moves very well.

The Character Study…

Like I said, One of the marvels of The Avengers is that all of the characters are given their time to shine. Since this is the big story we’ve all been waiting for, the film does take it’s time to give the characters brief explanations of where they’re from and how they fit into the entire scheme of things. These summaries give the audience just enough to be satisfied without turning the movie into a set of background dossiers like Watchmen. Of particular note is Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner / Hulk, who may have had the hardest duty here, playing a character that most people associated with Edward Norton in The Incredible Hulk. He makes the role his own, and just like with Bana in Ang Lee’s version of the green guy’s story, Norton’s quickly forgotten (or was for me, anyway). Ruffalo’s version of Banner is very hesitant, almost scared of what he can unleash. Norton pulled this off as well, but I have to admit that I felt a little sad for Ruffalo’s Banner at the start. He keeps his distance because of how dangerous he can be, and I can’t imagine how rough that would be. Still, he and his alter ego get their spotlight moments, too.

None of the characters veer off from how they were established in their own films. Robert Downey, Jr’s Tony Stark is just as much of a wise cracking ass as he was in his movies, and Captain America is just as noble. Chris Hemsworth carries Thor without a problem. If there’s any one character that has a tough time fitting in, it would have to be Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye. Though he had a blip of a cameo in Kenneth Branaugh’s Thor, and manages to have some presence here, but if he wasn’t in the story I don’t think he’d be terribly missed. The story manages to cushion this by having the Black Widow (Scarlett Johannson) be something of a fighting partner with him. For a character without anything super about her, she holds her own amongst the team, even better in some occasions.

Most superhero movies have gone the route of adding villains as the number of films increase. Superman had Lex Luthor in the first film and then the three Kryptonians. Spider-Man 3 had both Venom and the New Green Goblin to deal with. Even the Dark Knight had Joker and Two-Face. One would think that given the number of superheroes on board, you’d have just about the same number of Arch villains to deal with. The Avengers spins this notion on it’s ear by just giving you one main enemy in Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, and as a demigod, he’s as formidable as one could expect. I thought that was a great touch, considering what we usually get in superhero movies.

One thing about The Avengers that helps it move along is the humor that’s injected throughout the film. It’s not so heavy that you can’t take the film seriously, but there’s just enough to find yourself accidentally chuckling or downright applauding at scenes. Of course, this is classic Whedon. Even his Astonishing X-Men comic line had the same elements. Just when you think everything’s becoming a little too dramatic, the film throws a comedic curveball that breaks the tension. What felt like overuse in Buffy The Vampire Slayer turns out to be really fun here. This doesn’t mean that the film avoids being serious. There are moments where it’s incredibly so. It’s just that the story knows when to laugh at itself. I applauded and laughed out loud too many times during this movie. Were it not for the audience laughing with me, I’m pretty sure I’d be that guy getting shushed down in front. Wow, it was just fun!

…But What about the Kids?

Can kids go see The Avengers? Of course. It may get a little scary for the littlest of viewers, but overall, it should be a fun ride for anyone who enjoyed the other films in Marvel’s arsenal. There’s no time for anything steamy (unless you want to count a little flirting between two characters anything), but maybe the violence may be something to be wary off. Then again, it may not really be that bad. It’s up to the Parental Guidance and all that. They will probably love the 3D version, which is actually used well in the aerial sequences but can tend to fade as one watches it. It definitely has a great look to it, but the 3D isn’t exactly required here. That’s up to the viewer to choose.

Overall, The Avengers is a wild ride and a great triumph when looking at what was built to reach that point. It’s easily the Inception for me this year, that film that I know I’m going to be running back to a few times before it’s had it’s run, and as of right now, I’m far less excited about Prometheus and The Dark Knight Rises at this point. My movie year’s pretty complete at the moment and the Summer officially starts with this film, the way I see it. I wouldn’t mind seeing another Marvel team up like this.

Oh, one more thing. Stay when the credits roll. There are 2 tidbits that need to be viewed. One just after the credits start and one at the very end.

TV Spot: The Avengers “Head Count”

Posted on March 31, 2012 by Arleigh

We’re just a month away from the release of Marvel Studios’ long-awaited superhero team action film The Avengers. It’s a film that’s been many years in the making with five other Marvel Studio films released prior to it introducing the many characters who will form the ensemble for this project.

It’s not going to be much of a surprise to see many tv spots and on-line releases of 30-second clips to help hype a film that needs no more hyping. While it seems all these incoming tv spots just rehash the same scenes from the several trailers already released once in awhile we see a quick new scene that should help excite the fan-base even more. This time around that new scene is one of the Hulk himself taking on a couple of Loki’s alien army. All that is missing is the Hulk saying “Hulk Smash!” as he simply smashes one of these alien bastards.

The Avengers (retitled Avengers Assemble to differentiate itself from the awful The Avengers film adaptation of the British spy tv series of the same name) will have it’s world premiere on April 11, 2012 in Hollywood with a general wide release on May 4, 2012 starting in the US.

Trailer: The Avengers (2nd Official)

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Arleigh

We’re just a little over two months away from the release one of this summer’s most-anticipated films. It’s a film that’s been 4 years in the making. The first pieces that set it up were 2008’s Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk. This was followed up by 2010’s Iron Man 2 then finished up by the double-shot of 2011’s Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger.

It’s now 2012 and those five films will finally see it’s culmination with Joss Whedon’s The Avengers. It’s a superhero ensemble film starring each lead from all the aforementioned films with only Mark Ruffalo replacing Edward Norton in the role of Dr. Bruce Banner and his Hulk persona.

This latest official trailer from Marvel Studios gives a bit more insight as to the meat of The Avengers story. Where the previous teasers and trailer just showed the Avengers team in action with explosions happening around them this new one shows some of the initial dysfunctions which will plague the team when it first goes into action against a resurgent Loki and his invading alien army. We also get more scenes with Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk not to mention some action sequences involving Captain America, Iron Man and Thor.

To say that the release of this trailer elicited a global geekgasm would be an understatement. Even now the interwebz is rife with theories as to what is the huge serpent-looking machine that chases Iron Man before the trailer ends.

The Avengers is set for a release date of May 4, 2012.

Trailer: The Avengers (Super Bowl Extended Spot)

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Arleigh

This summer has a couple of films that many would consider must-see. One of them is Marvel Studios’ superhero team-up, The Avengers. It’s a film that’s been 4-5 years in the making which saw it’s first foundation brick laid down with Iron Man in 2008. Each year saw another film from Marvel Studios which laid down more characters that will make up the roster for the Avengers. 2011’s Thor and Captain America completed that roster and this 2012 we see all that foundation building culminate in The Avengers.

The Super Bowl spot shown on tv is only a 30-second spot, but a much longer version has been released by Marvel on it’s Facebook page and with the video available on it’s own Youtube page it’s the extended version that will be shown here. It’s a version that shows all members of the roster in action with the nature of the danger to the planet looking to be alien in nature. What we see in this trailer spot that hasn’t been shown in past trailer releases for this film is the final member of the roster and ultimately it’s most powerful one.

Loki confidently tells Tony Stark that he has an army. Well, what’s an army when you got a Hulk on your side. Nuff said!

The Avengers is still set for a May 4, 2012 release both in regular and 3D.

Quick News: The Avengers Trailer Released

Posted on October 11, 2011 by Leonard Wilson

Marvel has just released the trailer for The Avengers, which is viewable on Apple’s Quicktime Site. The trailer showcases what looks like a big battle within a major city. It also seems like some of the focus in the film is the team having to deal with each other’s issues to work together as a unit. So far, it’s looking pretty good, but I’m noticing they’re really keeping The Hulk under wraps. There’s also a nice use of Nine Inch Nails “We’re in this Together” off The Fragile album.