Archive for the ‘The Avengers’ Category
It is being rumored that the upcoming Joss Whedon directed film, “The Avengers” has found their villains – The Skrulls and The Kree. For those not familiar with either, www.marvel.com has provided a short summary of both, see below:
The Skrulls:
The Skrulls are an extraterrestrial humanoid race who have created a vast interstellar empire, the oldest known empire still in existence, within the Andromeda Galaxy. A Skrull can mentally cause the unstable molecules that comprise his or her body to become pliant, enabling him or her to assume other forms through muscular expansion and contraction. Once a new shape has been assumed (human, animal, alien), it takes a conscious act of will to assume another form or revert to natural.. Although the Skrulls became aware of Earth (due to its nearness to a natural warp-space access point) eons ago, it was not until recent times that they considered Earth’s threat. Their first regular surveillances of Earth began in the 1930s. To date most of the Skrulls’ excursions to Earth have been extremely small-scale, with no more than a handful of soldier-infiltrators being dispatched at any given time. It is not yet known how the death of the current ruling family will affect official policy toward Earth or the government of the empire in general.The Kree:
The Kree is an extraterrestrial humanoid race who have created a vast empire in the Greater Magellanic Cloud and have, on certain occasions, trafficked with the beings of Earth. The Kree race began on the planet Hala in the Pama system long before the first mammals appeared on Earth. The original Kree had blue-colored skin (later generations interbred with genetically-compatible aliens to produce the pink-skinned second race). Outwardly humanoid to a large degree, Kree bodies are adapted to environmental characteristics on Hala that are un-Earth-like: notably, higher gravity and higher nitrogen content in the atmosphere. Although the Kree cannot breathe Earth’s atmosphere without special apparatus, their denser bodies afford them about twice the average human being’s strength and endurance. Despite their physical superiority and relatively advanced technology, the Kree race has reached the pinnacle of their evolutionary development.
The Avengers stars Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth and many more with an expected 2012 release date.
As a Christmas gift to Marvel fans and moviegoers in general, Marvel Studios and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson jointly announced that The Avengers film will be primarily shot throughout the state of New Mexico beginning in April, 2011.
New Mexico was used to shoot the post-credits shot for Iron Man 2 as well as a portion of Thor. For The Avengers, Marvel is setting up shop at Albuquerque Studios and will occupy the space for the better part of 2011. Pre-production is already underway and the shoot in New Mexico will last 6 months through September 2011.
Additional shooting for The Avengers will take place in New York and Michigan. Previous assumptions that The Avengers would shoot primarily on Long Island and then in Los Angeles are effectively now squashed.
The Avengers, set for release in the summer of 2012, stars Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Jeremy Renner, Scarlett Johansson, Clark Gregg and Samuel L. Jackson. Story details are being kept under wraps by Marvel and the film’s director/mastermind, Joss Whedon. Next summer’s Thor (May) and Captain America: The First Avenger (July) will serve as the last two springboards into the ensemble superhero project. (Source)
Listen up, comic-lovers! We’ve got an Avengers update for ya. We all know that Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo and many more stars are set to team up for the much-anticipated Marvel action hero flick. And although the film is set for a 2012 release, one of the film’s stars says he hasn’t even seen a script yet…
“I met with Joss Whedon, the director, a few times and discussed a rough outline of it,” Chris Hemsworth, a.k.a. Thor in the flick, recently told us. “I haven’t seen a hard copy yet so I’m looking forward to it… Just working with that cast and Joss. Every step of this has been exciting. I’m looking forward to the rest of it.”
Gwyneth Paltrow (Pepper Potts) has confirmed that she will not be in the upcoming “The Avengers” film, despite being a major supporting character in the Iron Man franchise.
Paltrow, who was doing a press junket for the film Country Strong, was asked by Steve Weintraub from Collider.com if she was involved in the superhero team-up film and she replied with the following:
“No. No Pepper,” said Paltrow, who was then asked with a follow up if this was a ‘for sure’ or ‘maybe.’ “I think it’s a for sure. I think they’re starting shooting soon and they probably would have asked me by now,” she said.
The Avengers, directed by Joss Whedon, stars Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Clark Gregg, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo and Jeremy Renner, and has a scheduled May 4, 2012 release date.
Mark Ruffalo is adjusting well to the grueling training he is undergoing for his shirt-ripping new role as The Hulk – because he was once a high-school wrestling champ. The 42-year-old actor is set to replace Edward Norton as Dr. Bruce Banner and his monstrous alter-ego in upcoming superhero movie “The Avengers,” and is already eating plenty and working out to get in shape.
But Ruffalo has been through the pain of toning up his body before – he followed in his dad’s footsteps and won medals as a student wrestler. He tells E! Online:
“They (film bosses) want me mean and lean, but they don’t want me big and buff. I gotta keep building and building and building. You have to eat to build muscle. I was a wrestler. I’m used to starving myself. It’s easy for me. The last two weeks you just walk around spitting into a cup.”
Bruce Banner is mastering The Hulk. Well, he’s trying to, at least. When actor Mark Ruffalo takes over for Edward Norton as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s new Jade Giant in “The Avengers,” he’s hoping that the easily enraged scientist starts to get a firmer grasp on his angry persona — especially considering that Bruce’s mastery was teased at the end of “The Incredible Hulk.”
“We ended the last Hulk with him smiling and you feel like he’s getting control of it,” Ruffalo told IGN in an interview about his work as Bruce Banner. “And I don’t know how deep we’re gonna get into that, but my general feeling is for Bruce Banner/the Hulk and what I hope we talk about is that Bruce Banner is slowly but surely — it’s like riding a wild mustang. At some point, you do start to get it a little bit under control.”
“I don’t know what the final script’s gonna be,” he added, “but we’ve talked a lot about him at some point being able to penetrate his consciousness with the consciousness of the goliath.”
Ruffalo himself feels like he has a good grasp on how to control one’s rage, saying: “I’ve heard some of the fans and I totally respect them and I hear their concern about Mark Ruffalo being a nice guy. But I assure you, just like everybody else, I have my very dark side. Maybe more because I’m an actor. That’s not what I’m really worried about.”
“What I’m worried about is bringing some spark of originality and spontaneity to that character,” he continued. “He’s the only one who doesn’t want to be there [in the Avengers] really. Everyone else is sort of digging on their superpowers and he’s the only one who doesn’t want to be there, which could be an incredibly uninteresting person to spend two hours with.”
Next year, Mark takes his first step into the bizarro world of franchise film-making, when he takes over the role of The Hulk from Edward Norton in Joss Whedon’s The Avengers. It’s not the kind of part he would never have taken on before, but Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man performances have helped change the perception of such roles.
“You’re taking a flying fuck at a rolling donut in these movies,” he says, “because you don’t exactly have a finished script. The only thing that you have any understanding of is the people you’re going to work with, that’s the only quantifiable factor. But Robert calls me, and he’s like, ‘This is gonna be fun.’ Because we worked together on Zodiac, and I grew up with The Hulk, especially the Lou Ferrigno Hulk.”
After the cast of “The Avengers” assembled for the first at Comic-Con in July — Marvel vets like Robert Downey Jr. standing with newbies such as Mark Ruffalo — a former superhero might have been thinking, “Man, that could’ve been me…”
Before Ruffalo was tapped to play the Hulk — and before Ed Norton played the green-skinned Goliath in 2008 — Eric Bana owned the role. But the Ang Lee-directed film in which Bana starred never took off at the box office in 2003, the part was recast, and years later the actor admits he could end up being envious of what Ruffalo and his cast mates will get to enjoy.
“Only if they have a lot of fun,” he explained while at New York Comic Con promoting the thriller, ‘Hanna.’ “The obvious potential there is those movies can be a lot of fun to make. But then sometimes they’re not. I would be jealous if it turns out they just go off and have a good time.”
Far removed from the Marvel universe at this point, Bana is not privy to behind-the-scenes gossip of exactly how and why Ruffalo replaced Norton, but he said there was nothing acrimonious about his departure from the franchise and that he relishes that idea that different actors are getting the chance to play the Hulk.
“I don’t know the details of how it went from Ed to Mark, but there was certainly nothing weird about the process for me going from me to Ed,” Bana told us. “Personally I think it’s really exciting that the Hulk seems to be mutating into different actors as it goes along. It keeps it fresh, it keeps it interesting. And just the caliber of those two guys is awesome. I’m a huge fan of both of them. I think it’s fantastic and I look forward to seeing the movie. I hope fans feel the same way about that kind of freshness.”
