Re: The Avengers: Discussion Thread
SDCC: Live Bloggin' the Marvel Studios Hall H Panel
Source: Edward Douglas July 24, 2010
ComingSoon.net/SuperHeroHype is back in Hall H at Comic-Con for the Marvel Studios presentation for Kenneth Branagh's Thor, Joe Johnston's Captain America: The First Avenger and the just-announced Joss Whedon-helmed The Avengers. We'll be live blogging the event so stay tuned and keep refreshing as we add more information.
The panel is set to start in a few minutes. While you're waiting, Marvel Studios just launched Assemble.Marvel.com, the official site for The Avengers which features the new logo.
Although the focus of the panel will clearly be on Thor, we hear that there may be some teaser footage of Captain America. We were handed 3D glasses which makes us think that some or all of the footage will in fact be in 3D.
The crowd is starting to get impatient... the earlier delay due to the stabbing didn't help. They're starting!!
Kevin Feige, Marvel's President of Production, has come out first to introduce the two Marvel films for next summer.
We're staring with Captain America and they showed a great teaser for the movie which started with an air raid siren, which led to archival footage of World War II with famous quotes voiced over the top. We can see that there's an alternating red, white and blue background as we see different scenes from World War II.
The titles say... "In the world's greatest (something), Our Courage and Strength Led Us Into Battle. Stories Emerged of Heroes, But One Story Has Never Been Told."
The red, white and blue background slowly pulls back to show us that it is indeed Captain America's shield.
There's a voiceover of Teddy Roosevelt saying "Today we must create the finest army in history, and every army starts with one man."
And we see Captain America in shadow. (The crowd goes wild.)
"Next summer, meet the world's first Avenger."
And we see our first look as Chris Evans as Captain America. (Crowd goes wilder.)
Then we see the "Captain America" logo and the next shot has Captain America throwing his shield at the camera.
Geoff Boucher then brought out Joe Johnston, Chris Evans, and Hugo Weaving to talk about the movie and their characters.
Kevin Feige told the crowd that the shots we saw was footage from the costume test.
They've only been shooting Captain America for eight days, so Hugo Weaving says that he's only spent one day in the Red Skull mask, but he didn't want to do his German accent, but they then decided to show us the first footage that they shot last week, which looked fantastic. Description to come.
We're having technical problems and we'll have to update this story soon. We were just shown some amazing footage from Thor which really gives us a great idea of the story.
It starts with lightning and then it shows a SHIELD base where Clark Gregg's Agent Coulson is interrogating someone chained to a chair. It's Chris Hemsworth's Thor, and Coulson gives a long monologue asking him where he got his training. We see a bit of footage of Thor in action sans hammer taking down the SHIELD soldiers who are trying to stop him.
"Who are you?" asks Coulson and Thor looks up.
We then see what looks like a constellation system and we hear a voiceover by Anthony Hopkins as Odin as we see the golden buildings of Asgard and the camera goes into the throne room where he's giving a big speech to his son, who is kneeling at the base of the throne. We see glimpses of each of the Asgardian Gods including Sif, Balder and the Warriors Three, and Idris Elba's Heimdall. Odin is obviously mad at Thor and he says the he's going to take his power and banish him for his actions, sending a bolt that sends Thor down through the constellation where he lands in the desert and is found by Natalie Portman's Jane Foster. We then see Hemsworth walking around shirtless and impressing Foster and her assistant Darcy (played by Kat Dennings).
Gotta stop with the description for now to say that they just showed a teaser for Avengers with a voiceover by Samuel L. Jackson and then Jackson was introduced and he brings out Clark Gregg, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Chris Evans as Captain America... and then Robert Downey Jr. came out as Tony Stark and the crowd went crazy. Downey Jr. then talked about how people were saying how Inception was the most ambitious movie ever made, but Downey said that bringing together all of these heroes for The Avengers was the most ambitious movie. He then introduced and confirmed that playing Clint Barton is.... Jeremy Renner... and "reprising his role as Bruce Banner.... Mark Ruffalo!" He then brought out director Joss Whedon, who said that he had always had a dream, presumably about directing The Avengers, "but my dream was never this good!"
We have a lot more to write up from this panel which literally had so much happening so fast that we really want to do it justice.
Just to quickly recap, we got the first teaser for Captain America as well as some of the footage they shot in the first week (we'll have that description soon), an extended bit of footage from Thor, a teaser for The Avengers, essentially just the logo with a Samuel L. Jackson voiceover, and then they brought out the entire cast and director of The Avengers, including all of the actors already introduced and adding Jeremy Renner and Mark Ruffalo as Clint Barton/Hawkeye and the new Bruce Banner/The Hulk.
We'll have to add the rest of this in a little while, because we want to make sure we get all of the great stuff said by Anthony Hopkins and Samuel L. Jackson correct.
