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| Chris Evans as Captain America aka Steve Rogers |
With the successful launching of the
“Iron Man” franchise in 2008, the first hints for what would be Marvel’s most
ambitious new franchise to date began to surface— bringing together its beloved
characters in one film for “Marvel's The Avengers,” the holy grail of the
Marvel Universe.
The idea for “Marvel's The Avengers”
first surfaced during the production of “Iron Man” when producer Kevin Feige
had a notion that S.H.I.E.L.D. could be part of both “Iron Man” and “The
Incredible Hulk.”
“We started looking at the list of
characters in the Marvel Universe that hadn’t been taken by other studios: Iron
Man, Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Hawkeye and Black Widow,” says Feige. “And I
thought, ‘Isn’t that interesting; all of these characters happen to form one of
the most popular comic book series—‘The Avengers.’
“When the idea of a Nick Fury cameo
started coming up, we called Sam Jackson and he thought it was a cool idea,”
continues Feige. “It was his enthusiasm about it that led us to shoot that end
credit scene and what he says to Tony Stark in the scene, ‘You’re part of a
bigger universe, you just don’t know it yet.’ The line was also Marvel telling that
to the audience as well.”
The producer adds, “Audiences loved
the cameo and the buzz about Nick Fury began. We did it again two months later
on the ‘Incredible Hulk’ and the reaction once again told us ‘The Avengers’ is
going to work. Our plan then became to build it one Super Hero at a time
because it was really important that we introduced all of the characters first
in their own franchises before putting them together in ‘The Avengers.’ We also
hired filmmakers on ‘Thor’ and ‘Captain America’ who were open to the idea that
they were playing in a shared sandbox.”
“The Avengers” was created by Stan
Lee and Jack Kirby and first published in September 1963. “The Avengers” team
originally consisted of Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk, Ant-Man and Wasp. Captain America
joined the team in Issue #4 after being revived from being trapped in a block
of ice. For Stan Lee, seeing so many of his characters continue to grow in
popularity is a testament to the Marvel Universe he helped create over the last
50 years. “I’d like to think that one of the reasons that Marvel characters
have been so successful is when we created them, we tried to give them
interesting personalities and personal problems so people would still be
interested in them even if they didn’t have superpowers,” explains Stan Lee.
“In other words we tried to make our heroes and heroines three-dimensional,
interesting people.”
Lee continues, “Sometimes people
make the mistake of just concentrating on the super power while the real person
beneath the costume gets ignored. That’s when those particular stories don’t do
as well. Every character in ‘The Avengers,’ is flawed in some way and has a
dynamic, interesting, personal story in addition to them saving the world.”
While Lee’s and Jack Kirby’s
colorful characters have thrilled Marvel readers for decades, one challenge for
filmmakers was that they would still be editing and releasing both “Thor” and
“Captain America: The First Avenger” during the pre-production and production
schedule of “The Avengers.”
“We had to have a lot of confidence
in the direction we were heading, but two of the four characters had not been
introduced to audiences yet and it was a bit of a leap of faith,” says Kevin
Feige. “A big part of the puzzle was introducing both ‘Thor’ and ‘Captain America’
in self-contained origin stories with very distinctive beginnings and endings
that segued nicely into the storyline for ‘The Avengers.’”
The plan worked to perfection for
the filmmakers as both “Thor” and “Captain America: The First Avenger” were summer
box office hits and fueled the fire for bringing “The Avengers” to the big
screen.
(The film is distributed by Walt
Disney Studios Motion Pictures International through Columbia Pictures.
Marvel's “Spider-Man” and “The Incredible Hulk”
animated series are now aired over ABS CBN, comprising an hour of early
programming on Sunday mornings from 8:30-9:30am. ABS-CBN previously aired
Marvel's “The Avengers” and “X-Men” animated series.)
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