The Avengers Trailer Analysis Part 2

With just 57 days until Marvel's The Avengers hits UK screens, they have given us another trailer; the third so far. And while I neglected to analyse the second one, the third one is the biggest yet, and worthy of dissection. And it reuses a lot of footage from that one anyway.

Here it is:

And here's my analysis:

The Avengers Trailer Analysis

The Avengers are coming! The Avengers are coming!

In what could perhaps be the greatest moment in Earth history, Marvel Studios will realise their 4-year-old ambition in The Avengers, combining comic book superheroes from four different movies. It will either be monumentally awesome or monumentally terrible.

However it turns out, the trailer was recently released online, causing world peace to break out momentarily, and having only just finished continuously watching it, I thought I'd use my vast intellect to break it down for analysis and share some of my more verbose thoughts (i.e. the ones that don't sound like high-pitched shrieking).

A Fantastic Four Movie -- How I'd Do It

I think enough time has passed since the last Fantastic Four movies came out. They were average at best, and weren't at their best much. I'm a huge fan of the comic book series, and this was actually really difficult to cast. Coming up with the concept, on the other hand, was very easy, since I wrote half a screenplay of my own when I was 18. Ask me nicely to show you it and I might tell you to fuck off. Then show you it.

I'm sure you all know who the FF are, and if not you can look it up on Wikipedia because I can't be bothered giving you a summary.

A Jonah Hex Movie -- How I'd Do It

The 2010 Jonah Hex movie was a bust. Tonally confused, with ridiculous plot elements and some poor casting decisions (other than Josh Brolin as Hex), it was damned to Terrible Film Hell for all eternity and may have been the bullet in the head for lesser-known DC Comics adaptations, as well as non-superhero comic book movies. Maybe I'm overreacting on that last one.

Just like last time, I am driven to mania by this, asking myself how anyone could miss the oh-so-obvious path to bringing a character I really like to the big screen.

I went to get a drink between paragraphs and can't remember if I had any more set-up, but the hell with it: ON TO THE IDEAS!

By the way, Jonah Hex is a scarfaced, western-era bounty hunter who was raised by the Apache and who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War and continued to wear his uniform afterwards, as a badge of shame. In case you didn't know.

A Green Arrow Movie -- How I'd Do It

Inevitably, every superhero is going to get their own movie at some point. Inevitably, some of them are gonna be bad. Sometimes, I'm so big a fan of the character that I have no idea how anybody could compress everything great about them into a two-hour movie, and I just sit back and wait for the results (Batman, The Flash). Sometimes, I don't really care at all about the character and am just looking for a good movie (Iron Man, Spider-Man).

And then there's characters where I like them just enough to see how they could be broken up into tiny pieces and reassembled into digestible chunks for a larger audience. When I read about the in-progress film ideas for some of these characters, I feel like the lonely genius in all those Oscar-winning movies who doesn't understand why nobody can see what he sees.

So I present to you what might become a recurring feature: My ideas for a film adaptation of some of my mid-favourite superheroes before Hollywood destroys them forever. Starting with Green Arrow.

Pirate Eye 3: Chapter V

"Battle for the World"

"I am become Pirate God!" bellowed Anicetus from the top of his gigantic robo-suit, so large it could use the Kraken as a fancy hat. He started stomping on the various ships anchored near Shadow Island.

Blackbeard turned to me as the others feared their impending crushination. "Coughlan, there is a way for you, and only you, to end this. Hurry!"

He put his sword between his teeth, for no reason I could fathom, and swung on a rope towards the island. I followed, of course.

"How can we possibly stop such a mechanical man!?" I asked, in uncharacteristic desperation.

Pirate Eye 3: Chapter IV

"Pirates vs. Ninjas"

Like a great big pair of balls on the face of a sleeping partygoer, Shields' ninja army descended humiliatingly upon the fleet of pirate vessels, seizing them easily since their captains, the greatest pirates in history, were held hostage along with me on Shields' blimp.

We were all restrained by shackles made from anti-pirate metals and surrounded by ninjas as Shields himself paced before us in the airship's control room. For some reason, Shields was now wearing an over-the-top naval uniform, complete with medals, giant epaulets and cape.

"You'll never get away with this, Shields," I said.