‘Avengers’ Concept Art Does Nothing to Reassure Us About ‘Avengers’ Movie

Tim Grierson
·Editor
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One of the big final surprises of this year's Comic-Con was Marvel's reveal of concept art for "The Avengers," which comes out May 2012. We've always been a little dubious about "exclusive first images" -- look, it's an actor dressed up as a character you know! -- but we really don't understand the idea behind concept art. It's an illustration of people who won't look that way in the actual movie because it's live-action. But, you know, get excited anyway.

But it's not just the concept art that put us off today about "The Avengers." This could still be a great movie, but we're just ... well, we're worried.

First of all, we've always known that "The Avengers" was gonna feature a ton of characters, but looking at them all lined up like this, it actually causes a bit of superhero eyestrain. Especially after watching "Iron Man," "Thor" and "Captain America," it just seems all the more impossible to imagine how you fit all those folks -- not to mention Mark Ruffalo's Hulk and Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye and Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow -- into one movie without feeling like you're shortchanging more than a few of them. It reminds us of Pauline Kael's great comment about Lando Calrissian in "Return of the Jedi" being promoted to general as compensation for the fact that he's got nothing to do in the movie. By that logic, there's gonna be a ton of generals in "The Avengers."

Also, we have to laugh at the fact that Clark Gregg is on this poster. Clark Gregg. It's as if Marvel is covering all its bases so that absolutely nobody who loves these movies will be annoyed because their favorite character isn't included in "The Avengers." Don't worry, Phil Coulson fanatics: Stan Lee has not forsaken you.

Again, "The Avengers" could be great. It'll be directed by Joss Whedon, so it's not like Marvel hasn't entrusted this film to a man who doesn't truly, deeply love comic book films. But while the Iron Man movies were good -- yeah, we even liked the sequel -- "Captain America" and "Thor" were a lot more iffy. And as we've had to sit through the credits for all these movies to wait for "Avengers" teasers, we've started to accumulate a sense of "OK, this movie had better be worth it." Concept art does little to convince us that it will be.



'The Avengers' Concept Art Reveals Mark Ruffalo's Hulk [/film]