The Avengers is an upcoming superhero mash-up movie from Marvel Studios, that’s due to place the best loved film characters from the studio together for the first time; including Chris Evans (The Fantastic Four) as Captain America, Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction) as Nick Fury, Robert Downey Jr. (Sherlock Holmes) as Iron Man, Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) as Hawkeye, Chris Hemsworth (Star Trek) as Thor, Scarlett Johansson (Iron Man 2) as Black Widow, Don Cheadle (Ocean’s 11) as War Machine, and Mark Ruffalo (Shutter Island) as The Hulk (after Marvel publicly dropped American History X star Edward Norton from the picture).
The Avengers is basically a superhero club, where the brightest and best superheroes around come together in order to bounce ideas off each other and form plans of attack when a threat arises that is too big for any single one of them to handle, and while we’ve no official word on who the bad guy(s) will be, the massive ensemble cast suggest its got to be someone pretty powerful.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Joss Whedon is attached to direct, but has publicly stated that he is “very nervous” and may “blow it” ahead of the 2012 release date (a date that will put it at odds with Christopher Nolan’s next Batman picture); although it’s clear that fans of the comics, and Marvel movies in general, are behind him, as the Marvel panel at which The Avengers was discussed (and Mark Ruffalo was confirmed as The Hulk) was clearly the most well received at this year’s Comic-Con, and received more than one standing ovation.
For fans who can’t wait until 2012 for their next dose of Marvel superhero action, both Captain America: The First Avenger, and Thor, will be released next year, and the teaser trailer for The Avengers (that was first shown at Comic-Con) can be seen below (although it is extremely brief, and really lives up to it’s name as a teaser).
