Just last week, we brought you two new character banners for director Joss Whedon’s forthcoming Marvel Studios film The Avengers, featuring Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans), The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Loki (Tom Hiddleston).
In a recent interview with Yahoo!, director Joss Whedon spoke a bit about the difference between working with and ensemble cast he created and the ensemble cast of veteran actors on The Avengers:
“Well, in some ways it’s the same, because if you are ever working with a group you have created from ground-up, they feel they have been created already and they exist and the actors have already researched the roles. So it has a great similarity to working on anything, like a show you run.
But the difference, obviously, is not just that they played the parts before, but they are all super famous. And so you have the question of whether or not you are going to earn their trust. Whether or not they are going to bother to give you that. But ultimately, once you establish that fairly early on, that you have a real collaboration going, it really isn’t that different.”
“Well, first of all, because they’ve played parts and because in some way we were creating a new vision of the part, I sat down with every one of them to talk about my ideas and their desires before I wrote the script, and that’s very useful too.
So they knew from the ground-up that they were collaborating on it. And the things that didn’t make sense to them or didn’t work to them, they were like, “Well, I don’t want to stress that part of my character. We have done that before.” All of that stuff I could honor.
And then it’s a question of making them heard, and then ultimately making them understand that there are things you are not going to budge on that are your vision. And once they know they are part of it, but you actually have a vision, and you are not just trying to tell them what they want to hear — that it’s all working towards one purpose, one story, one idea — then I feel, yeah, you are doing fine.”
Whedon also spoke about Mark Ruffalo, the newest addition to the Marvel Studios film universe, and the direction they took while crafting his character:
“Yeah, he and I did the most character work of anyone, because we really were starting fresh, but we were starting with something that had been embodied several times. And both of us agreed upfront that the template for who we wanted this guy to be in his life was Bill Bixby, the TV [show character] who was busy helping other people. That was more interesting to us than the Banner in the first two movies who was always fixated on curing himself. We spent a lot of time talking about what makes us Hulk out, the nature of anger, how it feels. We even fought some. I mean literally we actually got some pads out and did some tussling. Just to talk about the physicality, and also the physicality of somebody who has to control this thing, and the way he moves in space and the way he relates to the people and the objects around him. It was extremely fun. What we found was that he could be very bumbling and kind of awkward, but at the same time very graceful and in this almost transcendent control of himself.”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuR3wSKeNOc[/youtube]
Synopsis:
Marvel Studios presents in association with Paramount Pictures “Marvel’s The Avengers”–the Super Hero team up of a lifetime, featuring iconic Marvel Super Heroes Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Widow. When an unexpected enemy emerges that threatens global safety and security, Nick Fury, Director of the international peacekeeping agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D., finds himself in need of a team to pull the world back from the brink of disaster. Spanning the globe, a daring recruitment effort begins. Starring Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner and Samuel L. Jackson, and directed by Joss Whedon, “Marvel’s The Avengers” is based on the ever-popular Marvel comic book series “The Avengers,” first published in 1963 and a comics institution ever since. Prepare yourself for an exciting event movie, packed with action and spectacular special effects, when “Marvel’s The Avengers” assemble in summer 2012. In “Marvel’s The Avengers,” superheroes team up to pull the world back from the brink of disaster when an unexpected enemy threatens global security.
The Avengers starring Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Renner, Clark Gregg and Tom Hiddleston is slated to hit theaters on May 4th, 2012.
