Wednesday
26Nov2008
Robert Downey Jr. Worries About 'The Avengers'
Wednesday, November 26, 2008 at 1:50AM
I'm glad
Robert Downey Jr. said this about
The Avengers. It is, as you know, the
culmination of years of preparation for Marvel, and the entertainment titan will
be combining several of their best known comic book heroes, all of whom have
bolted for the big screen. Thor, Iron Man, The Hulk, Captain America - That's a lot to put together and keep straight.
And he's exactly right. There are so many things to consider, and I look to the X-Men films for a few pointers. Remember how there was never enough for all the characters to do? Like Halle Berry was barely in the first movie, James Marsden had maybe five or six lines in each movie, and Famke Janssen was essentially a third-string quarterback until the third film. I'm generalizing, but it was not an equal distribution of duties in that trilogy, and The Avengers has much bigger characters and possibly actors that need to be given their moments in the sun.
And Downey rationalizes that there are other problems the movie could face, as well:
“I think its important that I do what I’m supposed to do which is keep my side of the street clean. The danger you run with colliding all these worlds is [director] Jon [Favreau] was very certain that Iron Man should be set in a very realistic world. Nothing that happened in ‘Iron Man’ is really outside the realm of possibility. Once you start talking about Valhalla and supersized super soldiers and jolly green giants it warrants much further discussion.”
Exactly. As big a project as this is, it has an incredibly high risk-low reward scenario built into it. Watchmen works as a story because those characters don't have separate lives and adventures the way The Avengers do. The X-Men members are known primarily as a group rather than individual parts. It's just going to be a big balancing act, and it could be Marvel's biggest success or biggest failure.
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