More Avengers Character Posters Reveal Thor, Hawkeye, Hulk, and Nick Fury; Joss Whedon on Cutting the Movie Down from 3 Hours
Posted 03.13.12 by Ryan
After the release of three limited edition posters of Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Captain America (Chris Evans), and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), there are now more posters for the upcoming comic book adaptation The Avengers. Conceived as a gift to those who attend the 12-hour marathon of the movies that comprise the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" and all lead up to The Avengers, the new posters show the other characters from the movie — Thor (Chris Hemsworth); Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo); S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders).
For those keeping track, there's no poster yet of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) or the team's adversarial target, Loki (Tom Hiddleston).
Written and directed by Joss Whedon (Serenity, Buffy the Vampire Slayer), The Avengers will be the longest of Marvel's movies so far, totaling a running time of 135 minutes. Whedon told Collider at the South By Southwest Festival that his original cut was even longer.
My first cut was three hours long and it’s now down to 2 hours and 15 minutes, and I’m extremely proud of that. I had always intended to go over two, under two and a half. There was no way a movie with this many great actors and this much epic scope was gonna clock in under two and not feel a little anemic, somebody wasn’t gonna get their moment if that happened. But at the same time, I get very angry that romantic comedies run over two hours long, it’s like "Guys, that’s not okay." More isn’t more. I don’t want anything in the movie that shouldn’t be.
There’s a lot of me that got cut out, but I think part of the process in a situation like this is you make the movie, you make your movie, then you remove yourself out of the equation. At some point you stop looking beyond The Avengers movie at your own stuff, you don’t look at that horizon you look at this movie and you go, "You know what, The Avengers are more important than I am so these things that I’m obsessed with aren’t necessarily moving the story forward, and therefore they are baggage." You can do that in a TV show, you can bring your baggage and sort of lay it out because you have a season to do it, but in a movie you actually have to remove yourself from the equation a bit and when I was finally able to do that, I saw a much clearer road to how to get the best experience for the audience.
However, don't expect Whedon to eventually put together a "director's cut" of The Avengers.
No [there won’t be a director’s cut on the DVD]. I... believe very strongly in putting the director’s cut into the theaters. I believe that the director’s cut is the best movie for the studio and the best version of the movie for the audience. I’ve never really been in a situation where I had to pull the beating heart out of something that I did. I think people get to see a lot of extraordinary extras because I did shoot a bunch of stuff that I love, but the movie is the movie I want it to be.
Next Showing: The Avengers opens May 4th