Avengers Assemble

[filkertom]

Iron Man, (Gi)Ant Man, The Hulk, Thor. Captain America, after they fish him out of the ice. Marvel Studios seems to be setting up an Ultimate universe version of the team. I'm still not sure about casting (except the obvious ones already in place, Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark, Edward Norton as Bruce Banner, and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury). But there's one big, important question to be asked.

Who should be the villain(s)?

I suspect it'll be Ultron. Or maybe Kang. I think Thanos is too big a gun to pull out at the beginning. Or maybe it'll be a set-up from the previous movies -- perhaps the Leader, who's obviously being put together for the second Hulk film, teams with the Red Skull, who would have to be the villain in any Cap flick.

Thoughts?

Comments

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

1. Yeah, probably Ultron -- who'll end up being a Stark Industries AI that Pym manages to mess up in some catastrophic way.

2. I understand that Skrulls are hot this year. :)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

... Skrulls. I hate those guys.

[denali1.livejournal.com]

I'd like to see Galan of Taa be the next villain... Otherwise known as Galactus, Destroyer of Worlds.

[jss]

Galactus goes "Chomp."

[saganth.livejournal.com]

"My baby is the destroyer of worlds! (my baby is the destroyer of worrrrlllds!)"

[fmh.livejournal.com]

It'd have to be a big threat to warrant putting the whole team into action. Like an evil Illuminati maybe. But who to include? I think Red Skull would be a great choice if they could write a decent background story to explain him still being alive.

[markbernstein.livejournal.com]

I just hope the producers learned some sort of lesson from the damage they did to Spider-Man 3 by forcing Venom in, and will trust the writers and directors to know what will work.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I blame the second Tim Burton Batman movie. The notion that you had to have multiple villains caught on, and it just makes things too damn busy unless you've got multiple movies or a longer movie.

[rook543.livejournal.com]

How about THE BEYONDER??? And you could cast David Hasslehoff to play him!!!!
(Hey! That movie would do KILLER biz in Germany!)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Why, you.... [smak poke BONK smak grab twist twist twist SMAK]

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

If its the Avengers, Its got to be Ultron. It also makes good marketing sense.

also "Dark Horizons" reports: "Desperate Housewives" star Eva Longoria was seen leaving Marvel Comics head offices on Friday carrying a copy of "The Avengers" comic which has led to speculation that she'll play Janet Van Dyne (aka. The Wasp) a founding member and eventual wife of 'Ant-Man' Hank Pym.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... Eva Longoria. Yeah, she could do it. Unless they go with the Ultiverse Asian Wasp. Or WASP. Or... [head go 'splodey]

[ratbastrd.livejournal.com]

Ultron would be cool, but I don't know. I don't know if any of those make sense, from a marketing perspective, which is the only perspective that the studios will use. They don't just want to appeal to the hard core, old school comic geeks, they want a broader appeal. They need a villain that only those who are very casually familiar with the Avengers will be familiar with. Dr. Doom? Red Skull? Loki?

[alverant.livejournal.com]

If they use Ultron, I expect at least one Transformers reference. Something along the lines of "What does he fold up into?" Actually, I don't think I'd be surprised if Ultron was a Transformer of sorts.

On the other hand, Ultron may be TOO powerful as a single villain for the first movie. I'd go with Red Skull if they can find a way to link his survival along with Captain America (the two were caught in a Nazi time-space bubble/prison) or whatnot. Red Skull could hire some minor league villains like Whirlwind, Titanium Man, and the Living Loser er Laser. It would be too much for one hero to fight on their own so they activate the Avengers Initiave.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Definitely the Red Skull. If they decide to go with two villains (a la the Batman series), they could add in Baron Zemo for a team, or have a second thread with either Ultron (who really deserves his own Lead Villain shot) or even Klaw. I suppose Loki is also a possibility -- and what a tangled web would result if both Loki and the Red Skull thought he was merely using the other! But who could write that story? Peter David?

This could be fun.

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

The problem is, "Red Skull" is really a Cap villain and doesn't hold up against the collected "Avengers"

No, Ultron is your story. The power and dynamic are too good to pass up.

[joshbrown.livejournal.com]

Either Ultron or Kang would be cool. As would some variant of the Masters of Evil. After all, that would pit the Avengers against their traditional team of enemies, as opposed being against a single enemy.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

The only problem with the MoE is that the matchup requires a LOT of super-powered folks, only a few of whom are already known to the public. Sure, you can omit the origin stories, but it takes pretty slick writing -- or horrible exposition or monologuing -- to get across who's who. I don't know if it would stand being crammed into even three hours.

[umbran.livejournal.com]

The basic problem with Ultron is setup - he's Pym's creation, and thus Pym's nemesis. It's hard to justify such a personal villain to be the BBEG for such a group of heroes in just one movie. Too rushed.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Similarly, the Red Skull is Cap's nemesis, etc. The Avengers have often taken on the really powerful villains who opposed one of them. (Remember, they were formed to fight Loki.)

[unclekage.livejournal.com]

ooooohhh! Let it be the Red Skull!

Acid in the face...tape recorder playing Chopin's Funeral March...that guy had *class*!

[amazingadrian.livejournal.com]

OMG, is Thor really going to be in it? I would love to see them try to make a Thor movie. Could be really cool! Epic guy in the modern world!

Ahem. Call me a pessimist if you must, but I personally don't think this will work. My guess is that the Avengers movie will fall apart during production. You have too many seperate franchises coming together, and everyone will want a peice of the pie. It will become a gigantic money pit for the studio and breed a licensing nightmare. The only edge Marvel studios has is that they own the copyrights to all of the franchises coming together here. But that does not count the auxiliaries, such as Sony, which you mentioned resulted in Spider-Man's absence.

It's the same reason why some anime and video games can never come to American shores. Other countries are freer with their creative licensing laws.

[j-e-richards.livejournal.com]

As an vintage Marvel fan (don't use the word "old") it would be classic to have the Avengers fight The Fantastic Four over the usual misunderstanding of misuse of powers. Then at the end after alot of "punch-em-in-the-face" etc, find out the true villain who has been manipulating both sides...leading to a sequel. After all, it worked well in the day before the readers got to anticipating..
I hope that the movie would have a good ole Stan Lee sub title ie "This Man, this monster" etc.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Hydra perhaps?

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

What I'm more interested in is how they can get anyone but jingo-happy nationalists interested in a Captain American movie unless Obama wins.

I want Cap to belong to ALL of us!

[aulayan.livejournal.com]

Before I issue the link. Ultron'd be a good sequel. Unless Ant-Man gets his own movie first. You want the character established before he screws up bad.

And, before I saw Iron Man (And so before I knew what the after-credits ending to the movie was), I wrote a teaser Trailer for Avengers. The idea I had was "Take a few people with movies, and take a villain the movie-going audience would know."

My Avengers Teaser Trailer (http://aulayan.livejournal.com/322530.html). It'd be a bit long to post here.

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

Loki. Definitely Loki.

[blake-reitz.livejournal.com]

I could see Hulk as the villain, actually, similar to his use in the first Ultimates arc (but not quite as...milleriffic). My rational? Ed Norton has already gone on to say that he's not going to play Bruce Banner anymore, and if the Avengers are facing the Hulk, they'll hardly need to show Bruce.

Alternately, I could see Loki as the villain (again in Ultimates-inspired form), possibly using the villains (or their means and weapons) from the other Marvel movies (an Iron Monger suit here, a hoard of Abominations there).

It would be interesting if the real villain turned out to be Nick Fury himself, masterminding the team infighting from behind the scenes. I kind of doubt that one.

[salkryn.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this yet...but didn't (spoilers ahead, if you haven't watched Iron Man, stop reading) Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury explicitly mention the "Avenger Initiative" to Stark at the end of Iron Man? Plus, I've already heard a few people saying that an Avengers movie is in ther works.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Ummm... yes. Actually, that's what this entire thread is about. The movie's been announced, both movies this summer put those tags in to set it up, and Marvel's trying to set up several franchises to support it so it'll be "with all your favorites". Unlike, for instance, whatever Justice League movie (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0974015/) comes out, which may or may not have Christian Bale as Batman and almost certainly will not have Brandon Routh as Superman.

[woyro.livejournal.com]

i was a BIG Avengers fan back when Roger Stern was writing the series.

if you are going to have that many heroes together, you've GOT to have a big honking nasty-ass villain. Ultron or Kang.

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

Mandroids, AIM, the SubMariner and Atlantis, Modok the giant floating head (with those little arms and legs screaming for some CGI.) Skrulls would be a good choice for "the enemy is among us," war on terror allegory.

Although both SubMariner and Skrulls might work better for a Fantastic Four movie.