Avengers Assemble! Trailer Thoughts

It is pretty safe to say that The Avengers will be this year’s leading superhero movie – despite the efforts of The Dark Knight Rises. Nothing confirms this more than the latest trailer of Joss Whedon’s Marvel masterpiece, which was released slightly over 2 hours ago all over the Internet. If you haven’t seen it yet, here it is.

Simply breathtaking, no? Watched it a few times, and here’s what I thought.

Unlike the antagonists they’ve tangled with in the past, our Marvel heroes find themselves unprepared and unable to face this latest threat alone. Despite being referred to as “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” (which was mentioned in the Super Bowl TV Spot), it is clear that they cannot hope to succeed unless they come together under one banner.

S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Avengers Initiative.

I particularly liked this sequence of scenes because it is the first time that we see just how tight the continuity is to the previous movies. References are made to the post-credits scene of Captain America: The First Avenger, we find Steve Rogers is still trying to wrap his mind around the fact the he is a man out of time. Despite the change in actor, Bruce Banner is still hiding away in presumably the same Canadian log cabin where The Incredible Hulk ended. We are also reminded from a scene in Iron Man 2 where it is revealed that while they wanted Iron Man for the Avengers, they did not want Tony Stark. It is clear that great pains have been taken to ensure that all the films under the Marvel Studios banner appear as pieces of the larger Avengers franchise, and I am totally down with that.

What this trailer also revealed is that the Avengers do not gel immediately as a team – Bruce Banner refers to them as a “time bomb – which is a defining characteristic of this decades-old group. S.H.I.E.L.D. finds its hands full when the ‘Big Three’ – Cap, Thor and Iron Man start to fight among themselves, which leads us to Agent Coulson’s line “They need a time out” to Maria Hill. This was the first time I saw Cobie Smulders in the role and while I’m not impressed, I will admit her appearance was for less than a second – the movie had better give her a bigger part.

Lastly, what in the world was that chasing Iron Man at the end of the trailer?!? Fin Fang Foom? I can’t even begin to figure it out.

All in all, definitely a defining two minutes. May 3rd won’t get here fast enough.