Will Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, which opens May 4th, provide Hollywood with its next boffo debut?  Just as The Hunger Games was setting all sorts of records over the weekend, Marvel Studios released a bunch of new images featuring the cast of Whedon’s superhero team-up movie including a shot of Tom Hiddleston as Loki, who is apparently the movie’s major villain.  In a sense Whedon’s The Avengers, as the first superhero team-up movie, is potentially more of a ground-breaking event (the establishment of a new superhero movie subgenre) than just the launching of a successful new franchise like The Hunger Games, since a successful Avengers movie will undoubtedly insure not just sequels from Marvel, but that DC and Warners will want to get in on the action with a Justice League film.

 

Also out is a three-and-one-half minute short feature (sponsored by Norton) that provides a short history of the Marvel movies that led up to this spring’s debut of The Avengers.  Filled with behind-the-scenes footage, this short, which will undoubtedly serve as an “extra” on various DVD and BD releases, contains an admission by Whedon that the movie didn’t really start coming together for him until he realized that the key to the movie was not just The Avengers versus the villains, but also the dynamic between the Avengers themselves, powerful autonomous individuals who aren’t always ready to sublimate their egos and become perfect team players.

 

Here is Chris Hemsworth (Thor) & Cobie Smulders (Maria Hill).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Downey as Iron Man sans armor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sam Jackson as Nick Fury.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chris Evans as Captain America.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye.