So, what better way to start off G&C than with a little recap on The Avengers?
Building up the The Avengers, I had extremely high expectations. From the beginning, I thought it was ingenious that Marvel was able to bring S.H.I.E.L.D. into each of the movies. With such a large cast of heroes, the movie also needed an impressive story in order to hold viewer attention.
I will not go into any details of the actual plot in case any of you have not seen it [but really, you should go to the movie theatre right now and go see it]. But, I will say that I thought the movie was phenomenal. There was a perfect balance of action, a quality story, incredible special effects, and enough fun comic-related geekiness and jokes to keep everyone happy and entertained. The movie run-time is about 140 minutes, but I thought Marvel did a fantastic job of not dragging the movie on too long. There was even a cameo from the one-and-only Stan Lee, who is always a pleasure to see on the big screen.
Rule #1 of Marvel Movies: No matter what, always stay until you see the very last credit scroll up the screen. Those who waited for the first set of credits to end were elated to see a scene with Thanos, who is expected to be the next villain in The Avengers movie. Very observant fans also went back to Thor to spy the Infinity Gauntlet, which contains 6 gems that Thanos uses to control Time, Space, Mind, Soul, Reality, and Power. As seen in these screenshots from Thor, the Infinity Gauntlet is in the Trophy Room. It will be interesting to see how/if the Infinity Gauntlet ends up in the hands of Thanos and in which movie that will occur. Fans that stayed true to the end of the credits were rewarded with a very comical scene of The Avengers eating at the shawarma restaurant that Tony Stark (Iron Man) talks about during the movie.
According to Wikipedia’s list of highest grossing films, The Avengers quickly secured the 4th highest grossing movie position bringing in around $1,305,807,202. The next highest superhero movie on that list is The Dark Knight, which is in the 12th position. Hopefully The Avengers will be the start of a successful superhero movie season for Summer 2012.
I guess you can say that The Avengers was a [Hulk] smash at the box office.
Till next time,
Ian
Gamenomics & Comicology 