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

...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

Gotta say, my city looks pretty good on the screen!

So, yes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGt-saFvkNk

ok fine

Stuff, it blows up.

and they have a Hulk. It's like having a cow, only more.

well
it sort makes me feel better about having spent time watching Thor and Captain America

no Skrulls though it would seem...

Maybe that's what those bad-guy ships are full of. Yeah, I'll go see this.

I don't want no Skrulls/a Skrull is a guy who can't get no love from me

http://backlashmag.com/backlashblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/tlc-noscrubs-1.jpg

Definitely looked better than Battleship or that G.I. Joe sequel, but low bars both.

This lays out the baddies probable identity pretty convincingly. SPOILERS obv
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/02/05/lokis-army-revealed-avengers-superbowl-trailer-know-who-they-ish/

how old is Gandalf in this one?

it's the skrulls guys. cosmic cube is also involved somehow

this whole thing is really just a "how-long-can-we-milk-this" franchise experiment, so of course they went with something that would have a multi-movie story arc

So Loki and friends teaming up with the Skrulls then? Seems a bit much

slocki and friends teaming up with the skrulls then?

You know what I never got about comics? I get that folks like Thor ain't human, or that Spider-Man, say, is a mutation, or that Iron Man is wearing armor and Hulk is Hulk and stuff, and that's why they don't get hurt, or heal fast. Even Batman has a masochistic streak; he seems to get off on injury. But Hawkeye and Black Widow are humans who wear no armor. How do they throw down without getting broken in two?

kinda laughed at the epic reveal of these goobers in their halloween costumes

michael fassbender is. in. everything.

not that the trailer is ever any good predictor of a superhero flick, but this looks like it might be rather swell.

wait IS that michael fassbender?

no

which dude do you think is fassbender. wtf mate

Fassbender IS...Black Widow.

which dude do you think is fassbender. wtf mate

― RudolfHitlerFtw (Hungry4Ass), Monday, February 6, 2012 7:06 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the bad guy talking to tony stark. c'mon, it looks a lot like michael fassbender.

or, what ned said.

*blink*

Fassbender is so much better looking than the dude who plays Loki that it is not even funny.

oh, tom hiddleston. yeah i can kinda see that actually.

This lays out the baddies probable identity pretty convincingly. SPOILERS obv
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/02/05/lokis-army-revealed-avengers-superbowl-trailer-know-who-they-ish/

Have those Simonson pages been recoloured or something? That's not how I remember them looking like...

But Hawkeye and Black Widow are humans who wear no armor. How do they throw down without getting broken in two?

Geek explanation: Hawkeye uses ranged weapons and rarely does hand-to-hand combat (at least not with superpowered beings). Black Widow has been given some kind of chemical treatment that makes her heal faster and age slower (in the comics, she was born in the 1930s).

Non-geek explanation: readers/viewers like to have a badass normal character or two among the superpowered ones, it's easier to root for them.

We endorse Iron Man's use of technology to enhance the capabilities of the human body. However, his capitalist individualism is inexcusable. A collectivist army of Iron Men would be of greater use.

Yeah Tuomas, there was a recent omnibus of Simonson's Thor work that was recoloured.

I was kinda wondering, is this the first time any movie has done the shared universe thing so common in comics, i.e. have characters from different franchises appear in the same movie? Because the only other examples I can think of that are even close are parodies like "Abbott & Costello Meet Dracula", in which the parody character is clearly not the same as the original character.

Hmm, now that I think of it, I guess Aliens vs Predator and Freddy vs Jason are shared universe movies. I haven't seen the former, but in the latter it's certainly implied these are the same Freddy and Jason as in their respective franchises. And Kevin Smith has featured his own shared universe in most of his movies, with Jay and Silent Bob tying them together.

Any other examples like this?

According to TVTropes Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction are supposed to be in the same universe, with characters named Vega apparently being brothers. That sounds like a pretty weak link though, and it doesn't explain why this universe has pairs of charactes (Mr. Blonde/Pumpkin, Mr. White/Winston, Mr. Brown/Jimmie) who look exactly like each other.

Lots of John Hughes films set in the fictional Shermer, Illinois. I'm sure he's not the only director to do this?

Lots of John Hughes films set in the fictional Shermer, Illinois. I'm sure he's not the only director to do this?

Well yeah, many directors include small winks like this in their movies, but what I was thinking was a bit stronger shared universe, i.e. one where actual characters are shared.

Whit Stillman did this a bit

Do you want to elaborate on that? I'm not familiar with his movies.

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