Seven Things We Want From The Avengers Movie
by Tom Burns

The Seven Things That Any Good Avengers Movie Must Have:

1. It needs to be part Avengers, part Ultimates.

To give the non-comic book fans out there a little background, the Avengers were founded by Marvel Comics back in 1963, and the super-team consisted of Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, Ant-Man, and Wasp (Captain America joined the group several issues later). Back in 2002, Marvel rebooted the Avengers in their Ultimate imprint under the name The Ultimates, offering a 21st-century take on the superhero team, complete with greater moral ambiguity, character flaws, and some fairly awesome globe-spanning action. There's definitely a cinematic scope to The Ultimates and even the series' artist Bryan Hitch admitted that the one of the central ideas behind the relaunch was "What would we do if we had to make The Avengers as a movie?" With that in mind, there's a tendency among comic fans now, when they're thinking of an Avengers movie, to automatically envision The Ultimates. (Marvel bolstered this image by casting Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury in Iron Man - the Ultimates version of Fury is unabashedly drawn to resemble Jackson - and there's a scene from the Hulk trailer involving a helicopter that's lifted right out of The Ultimates, Volume 1.) And, while we're big, big Ultimates fans (well, not of the Ultimates 3, which kind of sucks), we're hoping that Marvel knows to pick and chose aspects from the Ultimates for the Avengers movie and not just do a straight adaptation.

There's so much stuff we love about the Ultimates - the way SHIELD organizes the team, the internal conflicts, the action, the bad guys - but there are definitely some goofier aspects that we could do without (the Hulk accidentally killing 800 people because he's mad that his ex-girlfriend is dating Freddie Prinze Jr. for one). The Ultimates has some extremely clever and smartly-conceived ways to update the Avengers for modern audiences, but let's not forget - this is an AVENGERS movie, not an Ultimates movie. Use the Ultimates as a style reference only, and keep the story and tone true to the tone of the original Avengers.

2. Don't make all of the superheroes super-heroic.

We'll admit. We love that Marvel is trying to get most of the individual Avengers to appear in their own stand-alone films before the big group-focused Avengers movie goes into production. It's risky (What if the Thor or Hulk movies flop? Are they cut from the team?), it's a massive undertaking, and, by bringing together the protagonists from so many other movies, it gives the eventual Avengers film an epic scope, turning it into the Ocean's Eleven of superhero movies. And while that's cool in concept, it's going to be a gigantic juggling act for whoever has to write and direct the movie. You'll have all of these heroes who have been the sole stars of their own arcs before, and suddenly they'll have to share the spotlight and go from lone hero to super supporting cast. That means that not all of the heroes can be heroic and likable and leading man-ish for the entirely of the film.

The filmmakers need to embrace the group dynamic and show how working together brings out both the best and worst in Marvel's flagship superheroes. Captain America can be an aloof jerk, Iron Man can be irresponsible, Thor can have a weakness for wenches and grog - it's easy to look like a superhero when you're the only weirdo with powers in your damn movie, but let's see how the Hulk acts when he's just a small part of a larger superhero fraternity. The first 2/3 of the movie should be about our heroes floundering and acting more and more human while they're surrounded by their peers, and the last 1/3 should show how the Avengers eventually become the greater superhero sum of their parts.

3. Please, please no origins!

Continuing where #2 left off, one of the other awesome things about Marvel's apparent plans for The Avengers is that the stand-alone movies (hopefully) mean that 70% of the final Avengers movie won't be taken up with flashbacks and moments like "How did I become the Hulk? Well, it's a funny story..." The Avengers needs to be about modern-day gods having to interact with each other, both positively and negatively, for the greater good, and that interaction is the most appealing aspect of the project. If every character is given a 20-minute aside to give the audience a recap of their origin, we'll barely have any time to see Iron Man rub Captain America the wrong way or Thor and Hulk going at it in a colossal-sized smackdown. So, please, Marvel, trust in your audience's ability to read short-hand. If you can't get the Ant-Man film off the ground before you begin production on The Avengers, that's cool. Just show us what the character can do, make him funny and engaging, have him say "They call me Ant-Man", and we're set. No need to go deeper into his background. Just make him a three-dimensional character, concentrate on his interactions with the other heroes, and we'll fill in the gaps for ourselves.

4. Captain America has to be the quarterback.

This might go without saying - Cap is one of the traditionally core members of The Avengers - but we really feel that his presence is going to be THE key unifying element in any Avengers movie. To diverge into some story speculation for a moment, here's how we see the relationship between the Captain America movie and The Avengers movie playing out. Obviously, Marvel plans to link the movies since they're only being released two months apart, and the Cap movie is subtitled "First Avenger." We'll guess that the Cap stand-alone movie will be a period piece set in World War II. Why? Because (to put this delicately), with America's current less-than-glowing reputation in the global community, any "Rah-Rah, Captain America" flick would HAVE to be set in the relatively morally black-and-white WWII era to ensure that Cap comes off as less of a Bush Administration jingoistic propaganda icon and more of the classic John Wayne-era hero that he's supposed to be.

We'll further guess that "First Avenger" ends with the Captain being frozen in ice (which is true to the character), and he'll wake up two months later (and 60 years later in movie time) in The Avengers, with SHIELD and the scientific minds of Tony Stark and Bruce Banner reviving the American hero to fight some world-endangering threat. Granted, that's all speculation, but it'd be a nice way to structure the film - SHIELD revives this hero of yester-year, who must come to terms with the modern world (hopefully, avoiding the almost inevitable Austin Powers jokes) and teach our era's more dysfunctional heroes how to suck up their neuroses and come together when they're called on to go to war. It makes sense story-wise plus it gives Captain America some great character beats to play - the man out-of-time - because, more than any other Avenger, he has the most potential to lapse into caricature or fade into the background as a symbol more than a human being.

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