Marvel Studios: Assembling a Universe Page #4

---

which is what takes us into

modern day with the Avengers.

You here with a mission, sir?

- I am.

- Trying to get me back in the world?

Trying to save it.

The stage was set.

Even after seeing

several early successes,

the creative team still hadn't

played their biggest card.

Marvel Studios is going to take

all of their top superheroes

and they're gonna put them

all together in "the Avengers"?

That's the most ambitious

movie I've ever seen.

I think what resonates

with these characters

in popular culture is the humanity.

And you see yourselves

in our characters.

A Marvel comic that was one of

my favorite was "the Avengers"

because it took some of

my favorites from "Thor"

and "Iron Man" and it put

them all together in one comic.

Like, you get them all for 25 cents!

I very much followed the Marvel universe

and took it very

seriously, and when I heard

that all this was kind of

leading up to an Avengers movie,

I have to admit that

I was pretty excited.

I just really enjoy

when they create a world

that you could kind of

escape into for a little bit.

"Avengers," the movie

itself, changed everything.

What they had

done in the movies before

was obviously extremely

informative and useful and fun,

but there's also the element of,

"okay, you have all these parts,

but how can you possibly

bring them together?"

S.H.I.E.L.D. popped up in other movies.

Sam Jackson has come in and been cool

for about two minutes and then disappeared.

Well, this is really the

movie where we get to see

why he would ever think this was

a good idea to form this team.

What a massive challenge...

impossible, really, in so many ways

to really assemble all these characters.

Nick Fury seems to trust you.

But now we need you to come in.

- What if I say no?

- I'll persuade you.

Banner is a complex character,

and he's a tough character.

As Mark Ruffalo said

when he first got cast,

"it's like this generation's 'Hamlet'...

everyone takes a shot at it."

And I thought it was a

funny way of looking at it.

They enlist him as a scientist

to help them track down

this energy source that

the Tesseract is giving off.

If there's any tampering,

sir, it wasn't at this end.

- "At this end"?

- Yeah, the cube is a doorway

to the other end of space, right?

Doors open from both sides.

In order to need the

Avengers, in order to need to

assemble this group, it has

to be a day unlike any other

when a threat appears that

no single hero could defeat.

And in our film, that villain is Loki.

The Chitauri are coming.

Nothing will change that.

What have I to fear?

The Avengers.

It's what we call ourselves.

It's sort of like a team...

"Earth's mightiest heroes" type thing.

So we've made this movie

called "the Avengers,"

and the question burning

on everybody's lips

when we started is...

"What are they avenging?"

I got this call from Kevin Feige

and Lou d'Esposito saying,

"listen, you have a really

big part in 'the Avengers.'"

And I said, "that's awesome!"

'Cause I figured, "well, come on,

all those big movie stars?

"Agent Coulson's gonna kind of pop in

and give somebody, you know, a slurpee."

And they said, "no, you have a

really important part. It's integral."

I said, "that's great, guys. That's great."

And then Kevin said...

"Yep. What happens to you is what

brings the Avengers together."

And I said "Yeah, tot...

Kevin?

Is this my last Marvel movie?"

You like this?

Even I don't know what it does.

You want to find out?

No!

Agent Phil Coulson

has been, in his own words,

the glue of the Marvel universe.

I think suddenly, Loki's power

and his malevolence strikes home

and they realize that they have

to overcome their differences

and save the world.

- How do we do this?

- As a team.

Billions of people in this country

and around the world were watching

an alliance of superheroes

finally marshal forces

to demolish the bad guys.

And the result...

the biggest weekend box-office

haul here at home ever.

Fans have been wondering and imagining

if something like "the Avengers"

would ever happen. You know,

they get their wish this year.

That people have responded

to what comic fans

have known for decades,

that this kind of shared,

ongoing saga in mythology

is of interest to them, that

is incredibly gratifying.

I love comic-book movies,

especially Marvel comic-book movies.

I grew up with Marvel comics,

and I never really matured.

Jeremy Renner was hosting "SNL,"

and I was very excited

because anytime someone from

that Marvel world comes in,

the costume department looks at me like,

"all right, what are you

gonna write this week?"

- Hulk!

- Yeah, Hulk smash. I know. I know.

Aah!

I won't lie... I pretty much wrote it

so that they would

make me a Hulk costume.

Marvel was one of the deciding

factors in how nerd culture

started to spill over and

begin to eclipse pop culture.

I'm here to announce that

we're building Iron Man.

Yes, that's the sound

of indestructible Wakandan vibranium.

For me, as a reader and a fan,

this was the stuff that

made me love Marvel comics.

If "Iron Man 1" was the first

in a giant Avengers assemble,

phase one, leading up

to "Avengers" itself,

"Iron Man 3" is the start of

that new road into phase two.

How do you up the stakes from "Avengers"

when you take the characters

that made up the Avengers

and put them back into

their own franchise?

Well, I think you have

to up the personal stakes.

We can go deeper into their

characters in phase two,

and I think we did that with Tony Stark.

Things get more grounded in

everything that we've set up

but also more complicated

and more challenging for Tony.

There's an

immense power about him,

but he comes around and he says,

"no, I still have responsibility

to do the right thing."

Nothing's been the same since New York.

You experience things,

and then they're over,

and you still can't explain them.

We've seen now what

they go through in "Avengers"

and how they're returning

to their own worlds,

to their own story lines,

changed from that adventure

but now ready to

proceed to the next step.

Phase two is all about

being true to a film

being a direct link to its first

film but also to "the Avengers."

And Thor, more than any

of the other characters,

went through a lot in "the Avengers."

The entire film was about

him having to come to Earth

to get his rogue brother back.

And what's great when you

have continuity like we do

and when we can make another film

and the audience is telling us,

"show us what happens next,"

is that, in "the Dark World,"

you get see what happens next.

In the immediate wake of "Avengers,"

sitting down with Kevin and him

saying, "where do we go now?"

That was really exciting.

That brother relationship

is one of the main engines

of the "Thor" movies.

You must be truly desperate

to come to me for help.

- You betray me, and I will kill you.

- When do we start?

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes