The Avengers are here. Have no fear. Scroll down for the extended Super Bowl Avengers trailer, and feel free to start laughing. For to call the Avengers trailer silly would be quite an understatement. Robert Downey Jr’s deadpan delivery is supposed to be funny, but what had me cracking up instead were Scarlett Johansson as a dead serious Black Widow and Samuel L. Jackson telling us he still believes in heroes.
Fans of video games and Marvel comics and cartoons will surely not be disappointed with The Avengers. Tom Hiddleston fans likely won’t be disappointed, either. In their brief scene together, Hiddleston makes Downey Jr look like an amateur. Now, why is it that villains are always so much more interesting than heroes in mainstream American movies? But having said that, I gotta admit that Jeremy Renner looks good as Hawkeye.
Directed by Joss Whedon, The Avengers features Chris Evans as Captain America, Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/The Incredible Hulk, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Stellan Skarsgård, Samuel L. Jackson, and veteran Jenny Agutter (Walkabout, Logan’s Run).
Tom Hiddleston Loki rules The Avengers
April 12
My two favorite parts in this The Avengers TV spot – “Roll Call” (please scroll down), featuring Tom Hiddleston and Robert Downey Jr. – are the following:
- New York City cops firing their guns at alien invaders. That’s sort of like a bunch of five-year-olds firing their water pistols at an approaching tank about to turn them into human pulp.
- Tom Hiddleston’s Loki telling Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark/Iron Man: “We have an army.” How can you not root for that guy? It helps that Hiddleston, unlike Downey Jr, is taking his role quite seriously – i.e., he’s not begging the audience for a response, he’s truly bringing a character to life.
Directed by Joss Whedon (who produced and wrote the upcoming The Cabin in the Woods), The Avengers opens May 4. In addition to Tom Hiddleston and Robert Downey Jr, The Avengers features Chris Evans as the Captain, Mark Ruffalo as the Incredible Hulk, Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, and Chris Hemsworth as Thor.
Also: Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Stellan Skarsgård, Jenny Agutter, Cobie Smulders, and the voices of Paul Bettany and Lou Ferrigno.
Tom Hiddleston The Avengers image: Zade Rosenthal | Walt Disney Studios.
Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, whose trailers make it look like Michael Bay’s Transformers movies – but with even more juvenile humor – has an earth-shattering 96 percent approval rating among Rotten Tomatoes’ critics. For comparison’s sake, this year’s Best Picture Oscar winner, Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist, has a 98 percent approval rating. (Well, okay, with many more votes tallied.)
So, here’s wondering if Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises will be as well received as The Avengers, despite a lack of Michael Bayish explosions and bad jokes. Heck, if the critical love keeps up, here’s wondering if The Avengers will be shortlisted among the year’s Best Picture Oscar nominees next awards season.
Either way, check out a The Avengers clip below featuring Tom Hiddleston’s Loki and Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury debating on the meaning of power and desperation. How can one not root for Loki to come out on top? And how can one not crack up when Nick Fury indignantly tells The Mad Asgardian, “You threatened my world with war.”
Doesn’t Nick Fury have access to world news? And how about Tom Hiddleston for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar? Please scroll down.
The Avengers opens May 4. In addition to Tom Hiddleston and Samuel L. Jackson, The Avengers features Chris Evans as the red-white-and-blue Captain, Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man, Mark Ruffalo as the Incredible Hulk, Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow, and Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye.
Also: Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill, Stellan Skarsgård, Jenny Agutter, and the voices of Paul Bettany and Lou Ferrigno.
Among the television spots promoting The Avengers, we get…
“Every team needs a captain.” The Earth is in apocalyptic danger and needs to be saved. From global warming? Nah. Psycho humans with too much power and too little sense of ethics? Nah. The right answer: From Loki and his invading alien army, as per the latest The Avengers TV spot. Evans deserves an Oscar for not cracking up while delivering his lines.
A group of “isolated, unbalanced,” highly dysfunctional characters – one, for instance, turns green when angry; another is a grown man who walks around in a red-white-and-blue mardi gras costume – must band together to fight a common enemy. Or rather, enemies. And thus save the Earth. But is the Earth worth saving? Who cares? The special effects are cool, and Mark Ruffalo looks good in green while Chris Evans looks good in red, white, etc., as can be attested by this latest The Avengers TV spot, “Isolated.”
Scarlett Johansson gets an important call in this latest The Avengers TV spot. No, it’s not Woody Allen at the end of the line offering a real character for her to play. Anyhow, before taking care of her caller, Johansson has more pressing matters at hand. Once she gets done – i.e., lots of men (but no women) lying either dead or comatose on the floor – Johansson blithely sashays away. Shortly thereafter, she’ll be joining forces with an elite team of superheroes (all Marvel, of course) to save the planet from a bunch of unruly supervillains.
As for The Avengers, a particularly curious one has The Incredible Hulk looking pensive/concerned. Possibly a case of friendly smashing … Perhaps he stepped on the Black Widow by accident?
Mark Ruffalo plays the Hulk in Joss Whedon’s The Avengers. Edward Norton played the big green guy in the 2008 movie, but was – publicly – not invited back for the superhero reunion, much to his dismay.
The official plot:
When an unexpected enemy emerges that threatens global safety and security, Nick Fury, Director of the international peacekeeping agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D., finds himself in need of a team to pull the world back from the brink of disaster. Spanning the globe, a daring recruitment effort begins.
Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, The Avengers
April 10 update: Chris Evans will return as Marvel’s Captain America in the inevitable sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger. According to Walt Disney Studios, the upcoming Captain America movie will hit theaters in April 2014. Perhaps by 2016, Hollywood’s summer season will begin in mid-February. It’s unclear if global warming is responsible.
The first Captain America performed well enough at the North American box office – $176 million – and ended up taking in $368 million at the worldwide box office. It cost a reported $140 million. Disney is surely hoping that the sequel will outperform the original, which is usually the case – Clash of the Titans and Wrath of the Titans notwithstanding.
Directed by Joe Johnston, Captain America: The First Avenger features Hayley Atwell, Tommy Lee Jones, Richard Armitage, Hugo Weaving, Dominic Cooper, Sebastian Stan, Samuel L. Jackson, and Stanley Tucci in supporting roles. Paramount distributed the action film.
March 16
Paramount is celebrating its centenary in 2012. Minor detail: Paramount didn’t exist as a distribution entity until the mid-1910s and as a de facto studio (named Paramount) until the late 1920s, but never mind. The point is that as part of Paramount’s celebration, the Hollywood major is offering audiences bigger and better movies. Well, scratch the “better” half. But bigger, definitely.
But how can that be possible? Haven’t movies gotten as big as they can get? Well, yes and no. There will come a time, for instance, when mean alien invaders will not only kill millions on screen, but also millions sitting in movie theaters – thus doing their bit for population control.
Technology, of course, hasn’t reached that high level of sophistication yet; so, since we can’t get louder sound effects and bigger visual effects, we get instead a smorgasbord of superheroes in one single movie. Sort of like MGM’s 1932 Best Picture Oscar winner Grand Hotel – Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, and Lionel Barrymore in one movie – but in Marvel 2012 style.
And that’s where Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, a Paramount release, does its bit for the studio’s (faux) centenary. “More superheroes than there are in comic-book heaven” should have been the film’s tagline.