Marvel's The Avengers |OT| (Dir. Joss Whedon) [Spoilers unmarked]

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.GqueB. said:
This week on BLH, we have a rather heated discussion about whether or not Batman could take on the Avengers.
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how the fuck does nolans batman have even a chance against one of the avengers? maybe he got a chance against black widow but agains almost immortal beings like the hulk or thor? lol.
 
1. Mask of the Phantasm (doesnt count)
2. Return of the Joker (doesnt count)


1. Batman Begins (better SH movie)
1.5 The Dark Knight (better film)
2. The Avengers (though most 'fun' movie ever)
3. Batman Returns
4. Iron Man
5. Batman
6. Captain America
7. Spiderman
8. X-Men first class
9. Iron Man 2
10. Spiderman 2

Iron Man and Returns switch alot.
 
Diprosalic said:
how the fuck does nolans batman have even a chance against one of the avengers? maybe he got a chance against black widow but agains almost immortal beings like the hulk or thor? lol.
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Batman has a chance against anyone with prep. At least this is the argument always given.
 
Animation World Network has an article up with ILM talking Hulk and Weta talking Iron Man:

Indeed, the animators got the mass right along with his facial expression. "You're working in Maya in very low-res and he's got a huge brow and bushy eyebrows," White continues. "But his expressions were lost when we rendered it because the brow would cast a lot of shadow over the eyes. Just a few pixels up or down of the eyelid made such a difference if he felt angry or surprised. There were many rounds making sure the performance came through during rendering and compositing."

"The Hulk was built with our first procedural shading project in which the TDs had control of the skin qualities in different areas and we had the ability to dial up or down dust or scorch levels per shot to alter the look depending on the [mayhem]. Also, when we first started lighting him we took a traditional approach for us with a lot of rim lighting and contrast, especially in New York City. But he stood out above the other Avengers too much, so he wound up flattening out his lighting. We worked with the shadowed, top-lit look and added lots of kicks and rims on him. One of the trickiest aspects was dialing in the sweat level. We wanted him to feel sweaty but not plastic. We utilized beaded sweat (with a lot of breakup) rather than the broader sheens to stay away from the plastic look. The jumping and crashing and environment interaction needed to be believable."
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Weta Digital got to play with Iron Man, too, especially for the mountain top fight with Thor. "We shared assets back and forth with ILM, but our pipelines are unique and it's hard for other assets to plug into it," explains Weta's VFX supervisor, Guy Williams. "But in this case, we got their models and we had to redo the texture spaces because the way we texture maps is different. We use a system called Udim and instead of putting all of our texture spaces from zero to one we lay them out in this very large grid so there are individual zero to one spaces. It allows us to have thousands of maps on a model and not have to do any arbitrary system for defining which spaces go to which maps."

"To migrate ILM's texture spaces to ours, we use ray tracing. We look at their turntables and just try to mimic it. In this case, we also had the beautiful suit from Legacy and we were both trying to up our game. We really got into the multi-layered car paint with the clear cut polish on top for Iron Man's finish."

Weta not only created a lot of destruction during the mountain top fight but also during the preceding Museum Square sequence (filmed in Cleveland but refashioned to look like Stuttgart) and then during the later Helicarrier attack. Weta uses Maya's particle solver for dirt, dust particulates and sparks. When large quantities of debris were simulated, they were also in Maya's regular particle solver and instanced as geometry at render time.
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Another article covering some more Hulk stuff:

"We really wanted to utilize everything we've developed the last 10 years and make it a pretty spectacular Hulk," White suggests. "One of the great design decisions was to incorporate Mark Ruffalo into the look of him. So much of Hulk is based on Ruffalo and his performance, not only in motion capture and on set but down to his eyes, his teeth, and his tongue. We collected a huge amount of data and, thankfully, Mark is just the most agreeable person for the series of trials we put him through. We did many different types of image capture and he did a life cast of his head, hands and feet for us."

This Hulk not only looks good around the eyes but has body hair, arm pit hair, and nose hair. He had to be more than just CG skin. And he couldn't look like plastic. ILM desaturated the green so he fit in better with the other Avengers, and they added beard stubble and salt and pepper graying around the temples to match Ruffalo.
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Diprosalic said:
yeah but US only.
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I wonder if the international theaters would have the new final cut now.
 
I think it's pretty funny that the Whedon haters are praising the movie for everything the Whedon fans like about all his past work.
 
Matrix said:
lmao Spawn

No mention of Superman the movie, but Superman Returns is on your list haha

I laugh my ass off when people do lists.
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It really is just a terrible idea.

I think especially regarding the "top-tier" where people are sticking Nolan's Batman movies and the Avengers in whatever order.

Really, are these movies that easy for you guys to compare? Beyond both being based on comics, holy crap are they different films to their cores. I like The Dark Knight substantially more than Batman Begins, but I really can't compare either of those two movies to the Avengers- I love them both, but they are setting out to achieve completely, ludicrously different goals.
Razgriz-Specter said:
1. Mask of the Phantasm (doesnt count)
2. Return of the Joker (doesnt count)


1. Batman Begins (better SH movie)
1.5 The Dark Knight (better film)
2. The Avengers (though most 'fun' movie ever)
3. Batman Returns
4. Iron Man
5. Batman
6. Captain America
7. Spiderman
8. X-Men first class
9. Iron Man 2
10. Spiderman 2

Iron Man and Returns switch alot.
Click to expand...
Hilariously even though you made a numbered list, your caveats in parentheses for your top three are making the exact same point I just did.
 
BruceLeeRoy said:
Solos list is great but get Spider Man 2 the hell out of there. That movie was still benefiting from the collective belief that superhero movies were crap. So every competent contradiction was venerated.
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This makes me sad and couldn't disagree with you more. I mean tell me this trailer doesn't remind you of how awesome this movie was!
duckroll said:
I haven't seen Spidey 2 in years, but the train fight is pretty cool, and I think what makes it stand out is that Doctor Octopus is a really ironic and cool villain, and they pulled him off really well.
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dmshaposv said:
Spiderman 2 is awesome, and the best marvel movie to date.

It is - dare I say - the first superhero movie where the villain wasn't corny and well developed.

...and so many awesome scenes (doc ock hospital, bank fight, train scene, spidey stuck in elevator and most importantly rain drops keep falling on my head!)

Edit: damn you duckroll, for beating me to say the exact same!
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Happy to hear voices of reason! =) One of my favorite scenes was when Doc Ock and Spider-Man fight from the building to the train.
 
I'm going to see it again this week, and I already know i'm going to feel like an idiot waiting for the post-credits scene of
of them eating shawarma
even though i'm not sure if it even exists in non-US theaters. :lol
 
duckroll said:
Well I just don't think his resume is good because I don't enjoy the stuff he usually directs and writes. YMMV obviously.
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I agree, it boils down to how much you like the three things he's most well known for I guess - Buffy, Firefly, and now the Avengers. He also helped pen Toy Story, so there's that too.
 
Since we are comparing superhero movies, I watched Batman Begins and TDK back to back a few months ago for the first time since 2009, and I still think TDK blows the first movie out of the water. Batman training with the League of Shadows was cool, as was Ra's al Ghul in general, but after Wayne becomes Batman if felt like the movie couldn't decide if it wanted to be completely serious or a little cheesy like the past bat-flicks. The Dark Knight didn't feel as conflicted, and was a stronger film in my eyes.
 
dmshaposv said:
ahhh..ok. So good I didn't bother waiting for the credits.

BTW (regarding the post end-titles)
who is the monkey looking CG alien guy?
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Thanos, master of the reality-bending Infinity Gauntlet and capable of truly comprehending the capabilities of the Cosmic Cube.

Yep. Shit hasn't even begun to get real yet.
 
kswiston said:
Since we are comparing superhero movies, I watched Batman Begins and TDK back to back a few months ago for the first time since 2009, and I still think TDK blows the first movie out of the water. Batman training with the League of Shadows was cool, as was Ra's al Ghul in general, but after Wayne becomes Batman if felt like the movie couldn't decide if it wanted to be completely serious or a little cheesy like the past bat-flicks. The Dark Knight didn't feel as conflicted, and was a stronger film in my eyes.
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i like TDK way better but almost solely because of the joker, this is why i'm not nearly as hyped for TDKR as i was for TDK.
 
Diprosalic said:
someone should make a list of all the pre-movie "lol whedon" comments and then them eating crow in this thread.
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My specific comments were mostly that I believe Marvel had such a tight leash on Avengers that even Whedon wouldn't be able to fuck it up. But I'll happily concede that after watching it, I fully agree that Whedon's personal touch on writing and directing the film, definitely made the difference between it being good and it being GREAT. So... om nom nom nom. Tasty!
 
going through Whedon's filmography, I just noticed that Serenity came out in 2005. It's been almost ten years since Firefly was canceled

:-/
 
kswiston said:
Since we are comparing superhero movies, I watched Batman Begins and TDK back to back a few months ago for the first time since 2009, and I still think TDK blows the first movie out of the water. Batman training with the League of Shadows was cool, as was Ra's al Ghul in general, but after Wayne becomes Batman if felt like the movie couldn't decide if it wanted to be completely serious or a little cheesy like the past bat-flicks. The Dark Knight didn't feel as conflicted, and was a stronger film in my eyes.
Click to expand...
In my eyes, the movies are comparably good with arguments that could be made in favor of either until you factor in Ledger's Joker, at which point TDK takes the "better film" crown and runs with it, laughing chaotically, into the sunset.
 
*shrug* Always liked him myself. Never really dug Buffy or Dollhouse but I love every other property he's touched.
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Buffy was the shit when it was first on TV. After a couple seasons it got stale for me though. I can see how people don't like it though, but dumbfounded when I see people comment that they don't like how "cheesy" it can be. It's about a high school cheerleader who kills vampires....what the fuck did you expect?

I also really liked Angel up until the last season when I felt it also lost its legs too.

Firefly and Serenity I fucking love.

I didn't care for Dollhouse at all.
 
Sentry said:
I'm going to see it again this week, and I already know i'm going to feel like an idiot waiting for the post-credits scene of
of them eating shawarma
even though i'm not sure if it even exists in non-US theaters. :lol
Click to expand...
I go tomorrow (4th time!)... Dunno if I should dare to wait.
 
How can anyone say that there exists a better super hero movie than Avengers, when Avengers is the only one which has 6 (SIX!) comic book heroes in onscreen action at once. Come on.

There might be better films, more realistic, etc, but to argue that there's a better movie of comic book super heroes, is a hard thing to do.
 
XiaNaphryz said:
Animation World Network has an article up with ILM talking Hulk and Weta talking Iron Man:





Another article covering some more Hulk stuff:




I wonder if the international theaters would have the new final cut now.
Click to expand...

I know you guys shared some effects work with Weta on Avatar and that a movie might have a myriad of other effects houses for all kinds of random stuff but is it that common for two big studios to share responsibility? How do you guys even figure that out? Do you look at the scope of the film and decide what is feasible for your studio to take on and the producers have to find another effects house for the rest of the shots?
 
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304743704577384082401673186.html

Another article about the Avengers midnight grosses. The final sentence is very intriguing:

The president of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, is considered a leading candidate for the job of chairman of Disney Studios, a position that was vacated with the April departure of Rich Ross.
Click to expand...

If the Avengers breaks the billion mark, this could be a real possibility.

I'm gonna watch the film tonight. This will be the longest 4 hours of my life.
 
Sentry said:
I'm going to see it again this week, and I already know i'm going to feel like an idiot waiting for the post-credits scene of
of them eating shawarma
even though i'm not sure if it even exists in non-US theaters. :lol
Click to expand...

The Anti-Monitor said:
I go tomorrow (4th time!)... Dunno if I should dare to wait.
Click to expand...

You likely have a better chance of seeing it if you go to a digital screening, since they'd just have to download an updated film.
 
Hawkian said:
It really is just a terrible idea.

I think especially regarding the "top-tier" where people are sticking Nolan's Batman movies and the Avengers in whatever order.

Really, are these movies that easy for you guys to compare? Beyond both being based on comics, holy crap are they different films to their cores. I like The Dark Knight substantially more than Batman Begins, but I really can't compare either of those two movies to the Avengers- I love them both, but they are setting out to achieve completely, ludicrously different goals.

Hilariously even though you made a numbered list, your caveats in parentheses for your top three are making the exact same point I just did.
Click to expand...

My top 3 are based on what the movies are trying to be, after that they are based on each ones enjoyment level.
 
Solo said:
I just got in from the movie and have to turn right round and go back out for a few hours, but I just had to comment on The Avengers first.

My god, these are strange days. How in the fuck did Joss fucking Whedon of all people write and direct a movie that is so, soooooooooooo much better than the first 5 movies? It was like, completely amazing. The dialogue, character banter/interaction and the chemistry between the actors was absolutely fantastic and a joy to watch from start to finish. Without a doubt it carried the film. Hulk absolutely stole the movie, but every character had a bevy of great scenes and "fuck yeah!" moments, and it all felt so natural to me. It was fucking hilarious too, perhaps the funniest superhero movie ever. The crowd was absolutely howling at a few key moments. On top of that, Whedon actually did an absolutely incredible job of conceiving and directing the action sequences, of which there were several standout ones. Throw in some incredible CG work and breathless pacing, and I was a very happy camper.

Better than the previous 5 movies combined and the first great movie out of Marvel Studios.

Spider-Man 2 > Batman Begins > The Avengers > The Dark Knight > the rest
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Ah, knew it.
 
Sentry said:
How can anyone say that there exists a better super hero movie than Avengers, when Avengers is the only one which has 6 (SIX!) comic book heroes in onscreen action at once. Come on.

There might be better films, more realistic, etc, but to argue that there's a better movie of comic book super heroes, is a hard thing to do.
Click to expand...
That is a point well-made. That the movie doesn't collapse into nonsense from the weight of so many on-screen presences is impressive enough, but that it's actually good...

I will state that if nothing else, it certainly is a contender for "most fun I have ever had watching a movie." Especially in the atmosphere I first witnessed it. Just cascading cheers from previews to the last beat of the extra special post post credits scene.
 
So we all can agree. DINNER'S READY!!!!!!

JVVyr.jpg
 

Xia,

Quick question can you tell me who did the work on the
Shield base destruction
and the
aircraft carrier



COMIC QUESTION FOR EVERYONE:
Is the Avengers comic I'm supposed to read titled Ultimate Comics Avengers on Comixology, just want to make sure I buy the right one.
 
richiek said:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304743704577384082401673186.html

Another article about the Avengers midnight grosses. The final sentence is very intriguing:



If the Avengers breaks the billion mark, this could be a real possibility.

I'm gonna watch the film tonight. This will be the longest 4 hours of my life.
Click to expand...

Feige is a fanboy himself and knows his comic lore. I don't think he would want added responsibility but time will tell. Iger is having a tough time dealing with Ike Perlmutter though.
 
richiek said:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304743704577384082401673186.html

Another article about the Avengers midnight grosses. The final sentence is very intriguing:



If the Avengers breaks the billion mark, this could be a real possibility.

I'm gonna watch the film tonight. This will be the longest 4 hours of my life.
Click to expand...

I think a billion is a foregone conclusion. This movie is set two reach 600 million within two weeks of release.

A billion is not what it used to be. 2B is the new benchmark!
 
I need to find the post where someone predicted this would open on Thor/Captain America level. The "it won't break $300 million" posts were also funny.
 
Manos: The Hans of Fate said:
COMIC QUESTION FOR EVERYONE:
Is the Avengers comic I'm supposed to read titled Ultimate Comics Avengers on Comixology, just want to make sure I buy the right one.
Click to expand...
I think you mean "The Ultimates" volume 1 (13 or so issues) and volume 2 (also around 13 iirc). "Ultimate Comics: Avengers" comes along way further and is 3 volumes of 6 issues each, iirc, and isn't that great imo.

Stick the "The Ultimates".

3N16MA said:
I need to find the post where someone predicted this would open on Thor/Captain America level. The "it won't break $300 million" posts were also funny.
Click to expand...
Dai101 said:
So we all can agree. DINNER'S READY!!!!!!

JVVyr.jpg
Click to expand...
Win.
 
richiek said:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304743704577384082401673186.html

Another article about the Avengers midnight grosses. The final sentence is very intriguing:

The president of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, is considered a leading candidate for the job of chairman of Disney Studios, a position that was vacated with the April departure of Rich Ross.
Click to expand...


If the Avengers breaks the billion mark, this could be a real possibility.

I'm gonna watch the film tonight. This will be the longest 4 hours of my life.
Click to expand...

I read that is Rick Ross lol
 
keltickennedy said:
Buffy was the shit when it was first on TV. After a couple seasons it got stale for me though. I can see how people don't like it though, but dumbfounded when I see people comment that they don't like how "cheesy" it can be. It's about a high school cheerleader who kills vampires....what the fuck did you expect?

I also really liked Angel up until the last season when I felt it also lost its legs too.

Firefly and Serenity I fucking love.

I didn't care for Dollhouse at all.
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Brofist, I basically agree with all of this word for word with special emphasis on the "fucking love" part. Good Buffy is pretty solid stuff. It's hilarious at what a huge disparity there is in episode quality when you go back and watch them now. Some episodes (The Wish) hold up miraculously well. Others (whatever the fuck with the Techno-demon) are one line away from becoming a supernatural Power Rangers.
 
Diprosalic said:
how the fuck does nolans batman have even a chance against one of the avengers? maybe he got a chance against black widow but agains almost immortal beings like the hulk or thor? lol.
Click to expand...

Lol. That's why I was kind of pissed listening to it. Really wish I was there to shut that down because Nolan's Batman is so inadequate.
 
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