Written by Cheng Hui Jie

I would really love to keep this review short and sweet but that’s almost impos­si­ble because AVENGERS was just too awesome!

That’s right! MARVEL’S AVENGERS was a huge suc­cess, earn­ing over $1 Billion world­wide and also the title of the FIRST MOVIE EVER to make a 9-digit sum in just 2 weeks after its première!

I must admit that AVENGERS was a movie that I ini­tially thought would turn out bad because of the say­ing, “too many chefs will spoil the soup”, but I was proven wrong. All it needed was a sure-to-succeed recipe that they could fol­low and in this case, the mighty amaz­ing Director Joss Wheden (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) was their ulti­mate cookbook.

I’d have to admit that the open­ing sequence for this highly antic­i­pated movie was rather dull but the remark­able flow of the movie sal­vaged it. Thankfully, the ori­gin of each mem­ber was not looked into for this movie that was meant to be a sequel for sev­eral other movies. We were brought right-smack into the mid­dle of a sit­u­a­tion and all the char­ac­ters were intro­duced with just the right amount of infor­ma­tion for first com­ers to under­stand it and for long-time fans to not find it too repetitive.

It started off with the usual cheesy “galac­tic scene” where aliens are putting earth­lings down but cooler, with the pres­ence of an immor­tal who is also a super vil­lain with rav­ish­ing looks– Loki (Tom Hiddleston).

Planning to retrieve their pow­er­ful glow­ing cube known as tesser­act from Earth, Loki paid a visit to S.H.I.E.L.D with a grand entrance nonethe­less. That was where every­thing started to hap­pen really quickly after the cau­tiously cal­cu­la­tive Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) called for the AVENGERS to be assem­bled in the nick of time (no pun intended) to save the world together.

Another rea­son why I loved this movie is because Director Joss Wheden clev­erly addressed each and every sin­gle superhero’s ego and per­son­al­ity into the film using spe­cific scenes of them fight­ing each other. Among them was the long awaited fight between Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and Captain America (Chris Evans). The lines were gen­uinely epic and the cast did a fan­tas­tic job in their por­trayal of their roles. The flow of the film was per­fect, the sequences were great and there was almost no dead time through­out the whole film.

Bringing your atten­tion back to our fab­u­lous cast, a char­ac­ter you need to look out for would be the Incredible Hulk (Mark Ruffalo). This is prob­a­bly one of the best on-screen Hulk per­for­mance and I really liked how Joss Wheden man­aged to divert our focus from one char­ac­ter to another, espe­cially with the pres­ence of a char­ac­ter that have always been in the spot­light through­out the whole film, like Hulk. I was never once a Hulk fan but I’d have to admit that Bruce Banner stole the show with his green bum, no wait, it’s Mark Ruffalo’s notice­able chem­istry with Robert Downey Jr. in their comedic scenes. This just might be your only chance to catch the sexy green giant with ‘anger man­age­ment issues’ work­ing as part of an amaz­ing team.

Another char­ac­ter to look out for would be the noble but bossy Captain America, who also hap­pened to be ridicu­lously cute in his old-fashioned way. Being awak­ened from a nap too long, the cap­tain was still as brave and upright as he was before he was genet­i­cally mod­i­fied. It was no sur­prise for the stub­born and prac­ti­cal cap­tain to be in bad terms with the snarky and snob­bish owner of Stark Industries. Remember when I told you their lines were gen­uinely funny? Check this scene out!

Iron Man told Captain America, “No offense, but I don’t play well with others”

And so the cap­tain posed him a ques­tion,“ Big man and a suit armour, take that away, what are you?”

Being witty and self-obsessed as usual, Tony replied “ Uh… Genius, bil­lion­aire, play­boy, philanthropist?”

Two insanely adorable and pow­er­ful super­heroes bat­tling it out with their words of wis­dom was just too much to resist! My advice? Take note when­ever the self-proclaimed phil­an­thropist (Iron Man) is around, it’s either going to be some cool kick-ass scenes or super duper hilar­i­ous lines com­ing up! Need we say more about the man whom most of us are so famil­iar and in love with?

Of course, we can­not for­get about the almighty Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and his super vil­lain brother, Loki, who pretty much con­tin­ued from where they left off in their last Thor movie. I must say that the duo made a heav­enly cou­ple, look­ing so per­fect as immor­tal broth­ers but sadly, Loki had to play the role of the adopted younger brother who has lived through dis­ap­point­ment in his brother’s shadow. Hiddleston looked more like a high-fashion model than an actor with his exclu­sive super vil­lain out­fit while Hemsworth looked like he could eas­ily close an adver­tise­ment deal for a hair prod­uct with his lus­ciously golden locks.

To bring a whole team of extra­or­di­nary super heroes can be tough but leave it to Nicky Fury to make them set­tle all their dif­fer­ences or should I say, put all their crap away and join forces to kick some ass, in this case, alien asses. It could not have been done with­out the sac­ri­fice of one of his beloved S.H.I.E.L.D Agent, Coulson (played by Clark Gregg), who turned out to be Captain America’s num­ber one fan, or should I say, a HARDCORE FAN OF CAPTAIN AMERICA!!! Who knew Clark Gregg would make such a cute fan boy?!

I per­son­ally felt that Agent Maria Hill (played by How-I-Met-Your-Mother star Cobie Smulders) did not leave much of an impres­sion on me, per­haps because she did not appear much in the movie. Another famous actor who had too lit­tle screen time in the film would be Hawkeye (played by Mission Impossible 5 star Jeremy Renner).

Did I men­tion how Hawkeye and Black Widow’s (Scarlett Johansson) romance was just right for the block­buster movie? It was not too lovey-dovey but there were enough sparks to see their pas­sion for each other in a pro­fes­sional man­ner as top-notch S.H.I.E.L.D agents. In this very much male-dominated team cast, Scarlett Johansson some­how man­aged to cap­ture our atten­tion with her smart and slick fight­ing tech­niques. Apart from her strik­ing resem­blance with the comic book char­ac­ter, Johansson also showed that the Black Widow is not some­one you can mess with.



Despite the absence of my favourite MARVEL charc­ter Wolverine, the movie sur­passed my expec­ta­tions with­out a doubt. Discard the overused unsteady shots from the scene where aliens were tak­ing over Manhattan city plus the overly cheesy open­ing sequence and this movie would be a per­fect ten!

Be sure to catch the AVENGERS in cin­e­mas before it’s too late! It is not every­day that you see a movie receive a 93% rat­ing from Rotten Tomatoes and that is really how MARVEL-lous the film was! On a last note, remem­ber to stay through the credits!

Written by Nishanthini Ganesan

The long-awaited film Dark Shadows was finally released in Singapore on the 10^th of May, 2012. Based on the 1967 American gothic cult series, Dark Shadows, cre­ated by Dan Curtis, this film is another Tim Burton-Johnny Depp col­lab­o­ra­tion, also star­ring Helena Bonham Carter. Sadly though, unlike many oth­ers, Dark Shadows does not do too well.

Many fans of clas­sic Tim Burton films might be unset­tled by the time era the story is set in, the 1970s. It also dif­fers in terms of how the story is told. When Barnabus Collin’s back­story is told at the begin­ning, we assume that he will be the main char­ac­ter, if we had not already from the place­ment of the char­ac­ters in the pro­mo­tional posters, and we believe the story will be told through his eyes. As the movie tran­si­tions to present day how­ever, we begin to watch the plot unfold through the expe­ri­ences of the new gov­erness to the Collins chil­dren, Victoria. When Barnabus Collins gets dug up again, we return to telling the story in an objec­tive point of view through his expe­ri­ences. Victoria also dis­ap­pears for a large part of the remain­der of the film, and dur­ing the climax. 

Barnabus Collins him­self, as a char­ac­ter, is by no means a tragic hero. In fact, I must admit that I didn’t like him much for break­ing Angelique’s heart in the first place. The fail­ure of the main char­ac­ter to draw feel­ings from the audi­ence is one rea­son why the movie as a whole, failed to impress. Why we do not sym­pa­thize enough with Barnabus is due to the fact that we do not see his char­ac­ter respond to the tribu­la­tions he was thrown under by the witch Angelique. We adore him, love him even for his awk­ward­ness, but we fail to under­stand his pain because we are not brought deep enough into his psy­che and that I feel, is the great­est fault in this film. There was no char­ac­ter who went on a jour­ney and found the answer to their trou­bles, or an end­ing to their pain. There was only a vam­pire with a strong set of val­ues that were empha­sized time and time again in the film. It is a noble act to make a film to show­case the impor­tance of a fil­ial piety, but I felt that many ele­ments that should have been present in the film to were miss­ing. Many a time, spo­ken dia­logue took the place of what should have been por­trayed by action instead.

The cli­max of the movie, the fight scene between the Collins and Angelique, was noth­ing more than a con­fus­ing bat­tle of strange crea­tures. There was a strange twist at the end that felt more like a joke thrown in for humor’s sake. Overall, the end­ing failed to pro­duce any sense of Karthasis. The uplift­ing sense of drama and emo­tional spec­ta­cle that we have come to love, and unfor­tu­nately expect, from Tim Burton was present, but it came across on screen as a mere mess. I would even go as far as to say that the sex scene between Angelique and Barnabus pro­cured more excite­ment from the audi­ence that the sup­posed cli­max itself.

There were also sev­eral cre­ative deci­sions made with regard to the sto­ry­line that did not work well with me.

There will be impor­tant infor­ma­tion on the plot of Dark Shadows in the fol­low­ing para­graph and there­fore I advise reader discretion.

I will use the mur­der of Helena Bonham Carter’s char­ac­ter, Dr. Julia Hoffman, by Barnabus Collins as an exam­ple. The mur­der did noth­ing for the plot, besides giv­ing a rea­son for Angelique to hand Barnabus over to the police. Even then, she could have done it as eas­ily with his con­fes­sion regard­ing his killing of the con­struc­tion work­ers. The mur­der of Dr. Hoffman had lit­tle to no effect on the other mem­bers of the Collins fam­ily that I would rather it had never hap­pened at all. That being said, the char­ac­ter of Dr. Hoffman in the film did not come off strongly either. I trust Helena Bonham Carter’s act­ing skills, and there­fore I will not spec­u­late as to the cause, whether it be the script itself, or the por­trayal of the character.

However, it can­not be said that this film isn’t visu­ally stun­ning. It show­cases the clas­sic dark, gloomy, German Expressionist style that many have come to asso­ciate with the mas­ter direc­tor him­self. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy and light­ing were spot on and the scene of Barnabus Collins and Victoria tak­ing a walk by the sea is a per­fect exam­ple of the strange­ness yet pro­pri­ety of Tim Burton’s use of the mobile cam­era in track­ing odd movements.

The cos­tumes, done by acclaimed cos­tume designer Colleen Atwood, must be given spe­cial men­tion to. It would take a long time for an audi­ence mem­ber to for­get the neck­lace Barnabus wore for a large part of the film. However, one could not help but to notice how droopy Angelique’s breasts looked in the famed red dress she wore to the hap­pen­ing, in con­trast to how they looked in the pro­mo­tional posters and in her other ensembles.

The makeup in the film, specif­i­cally on Barnabus Collins, felt care­lessly done to me. We are accus­tomed to see­ing Johnny Depp’s cheeks made hol­low with the use of makeup. It has been done in many Tim Burton films, includ­ing Edward Scissorhands, to give him the skele­tal look that many, specif­i­cally women, have come to love. However the dif­fer­ence between their pres­ence in Edward Scissorhands and Dark Shadows, is how obvi­ous the attempted exag­ger­a­tion of Johnny Depp’s fea­tures appear on screen. Even the use of hair prod­uct on his hair was painfully appar­ent in some shots, mak­ing it look arti­fi­cial and I sim­ply can­not pass this off as a cre­ative decision.

As a Tim Burton fan, it does pain me ter­ri­bly to write this review as Tim Burton is by no means a bad direc­tor, but one must, iron­i­cally, look at the bright side. If Tim Burton goes past the dis­mal Dark Shadows and goes on to make another good film, I feel that it would strengthen his posi­tion as one of the reign­ing direc­tors in Hollywood. Even great direc­tors like Stanley Kubrick had films that were by no means, crit­i­cal suc­cesses. They were by no means proud of them, and nei­ther were their fans. What I will be proud of how­ever, is the tiny legion of Tim Burton fans who will stand by their hero even after watch­ing this film.

-

If you have been hid­ing under a Dark Shadow, you may find the trailer to the film here.

Written by Angela Tan

“Last year I basi­cally com­pletely dis­banded my pro­duc­tion company’s devel­op­ment arm,” said Cameron. “So I’m not inter­ested in devel­op­ing any­thing. I’m in the Avatar busi­ness. Period. That’s it. I’m mak­ing Avatar,Avatar 2, Avatar 3, maybe Avatar 4.”

It may as well be that the uni­verse James Cameron has visioned in the first film is going to leave him with more room for cre­ative imag­i­na­tion as he updates us on his Avatar sequels.

Avatar 2 could pos­si­bly wel­come a more dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ment of Pandora as direc­tor Cameron will explore more land­scapes for the film, espe­cially the world’s oceans. Moreover, he hopes to go beyond the world of Pandora for a new uni­verse which could, per­haps, be the back­drop of a third sequel.

And as he dis­cusses, Cameron empha­sized that script­ing is not his cup of tea, adding on that a script will only nar­row the story plot. He prefers to immerse him­self into the uni­verse so that he has the free­dom to say any­thing and do every­thing in an enter­tain­ing manner.

- Total Film

Written by Parveen Maghera

For over 70 years, Marvel Studios has undoubt­edly pro­duced and devel­oped its char­ac­ters with great enthu­si­asm and dis­tinc­tive­ness, of which I must say, should take pride and dig­nity of its work and show­cases. With over 5000 char­ac­ters in its library, Marvel has never failed to bring to us a com­plete pack­age of ulti­mate super­heroes, which have made it to the big screens since 1944.

The Avengers super­heroes, in par­tic­u­lar, have exhib­ited their spell-binding per­son­al­i­ties on-screen for decades, some of which have relived the comic series while oth­ers brought in a brand new plot.

Take Captain America for a start. In his first appear­ance as a film char­ac­ter in the 1944 black and white film series, which com­prised of 15 chap­ters worth of 244 min­utes, the world began to antic­i­pate the real action they have always been imag­in­ing through his col­lec­tion of comics. However, the por­trayal of Captain America in the series was a far cry from that. As the audi­ence expected a real life Army Private Steve Rogers, blast­ing through World War II with his mighty physique against the “Axis Agents, 5^th Column Sabateurs and sol­diers from Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan”, what they received was a District Attorney Grant Gardner, with a .38 cal­i­bre pistol.

Nevertheless, it received a 6.7 star rat­ing which is indeed, not bad at all. Dirk Purcell, who starred as Captain America, man­aged to pull it off well despite being average-sized. The role brought a whole lot of fame to him; after all, he pio­neered the first visual char­ac­ter of Captain America. Shortly after the com­ple­tion of the film, Purcell died of heart attack, due to the strain of film­ing Captain America, accord­ing to his­to­rian Raymond Stedman.

In 1979 came the tele­vi­sion film ver­sion of Rod Holcomb’s Captain America, played by Red Brown.The story, yet again resem­bled noth­ing from the orig­i­nal comics except for the name Steve Rogers and his American-superhero apparel. Plenty of reviews claimed the film was unex­pect­edly enter­tain­ing, despite receiv­ing a lower rating.

The film pro­gressed with another sequel, Captain America II: Death Too Soon, directed by Ivan Nagy, which adapted the least of the comic plot as well and brought in the equiv­a­lent response from that of the first instalment.

Yet, Captain America did not stop here. In 1990, a new film hit the the­atres, which cred­ited the comics to a decent extent. Albert Pyun’s Captain America had a won­der­ful start, with Matt Salinger (Captain America) putting him­self against the Nazi’s Red Skull in World War II, end­ing up frozen until the 1990s and wak­ing up to a whole new mis­sion of sav­ing the President of America from the Red Skulls once again.

The film received a lower rat­ing from that of the pre­vi­ous films, sup­pos­edly due to the awk­ward and abrupt jump from the past to the present.

It was not till 2011 that another Captain America film was pro­duced, Captain America: The First Avenger, which drew a much greater scale of pos­i­tive responses and of course, what was por­trayed was worth a watch.

Chris Evans, who played Captain America, exem­pli­fied what the real-life comic char­ac­ter ulti­mately was and was cred­itably acclaimed by a large seg­ment of the audi­ence. Joe Johnston man­aged to give his audi­ences what they have always been wait­ing for – a per­fect col­lec­tion of visu­als that made the comics, come to life.

Captain America 2 is due to hit the­atres in 2014.

Iron Man, one of the many admired and adored super­hero after Captain America, made his debut in 2007 as an ani­mated char­ac­ter in The Invincible Iron Man, directed by Patrick Archibald, Jay Oliva and Frank D. Paur (super­vis­ing direc­tor). Mark Worden lent his vocals for Iron Man’s character.

This ani­mated film had the least adap­ta­tion of the comic but it sure did show­case a decent dis­play of effects for an animation.

In 2008, Iron Man: Armored Adventures was released as an ani­mated tele­vi­sion series which is cur­rently at its sec­ond sea­son. Adrian Petriw has been voic­ing for Iron Man since the series began and has worked with direc­tors Philippe Guyenne from 2008 to 2009 and Stephane Juffé from 2009 to present.

Well, it was not until the release of the first live-action film of Iron Man that awed the Marvel audience.

Iron Man the­o­ret­i­cally made his first live-action debut in Jon Favreau’s 2008 film of the same name, Iron Man, and the man behind the mask is none other than the charm­ing and charis­matic Robert Downey Jr.

One of the best adap­ta­tions of the Marvel comics, this film scored a whoop­ing 86.5% of rat­ings on aver­age, with over 250 reviews on mul­ti­ple film sites such as Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. Creditably acclaimed for its superb spe­cial effects and cin­e­matog­ra­phy, Iron Man ‘mar­velized’ our comic char­ac­ters and made them more believ­able. A per­fect super­hero adven­ture, I’d say.

Following the huge suc­cess of the first instal­ment, it is not to our sur­prise that a sec­ond instal­ment of Iron Man made its way to the big screens within two years. Favreau pro­duced yet another fan­tas­tic super­hero film, Iron Man 2, with Downey liv­ing up to his title through another Marvel adven­ture. Of course it couldn’t have been as great as how Iron man was seen pre­vi­ously but with a sequel as such, com­pris­ing of an action-packed, effects-laden cli­max, Iron Man 2 main­tained the image and iden­tity of what a Marvel movie can ever portray.

Accompanying its huge suc­cess at the box office, the film won the Hollywood Film Award for the best Visual Effects of the year as well as the People’s Choice Award for Best Action Movie. Apart from that, Iron Man 2 was also nom­i­nated for sev­eral other awards such as Best Special Effects at the 37^th Saturn Awards and Favourite Action Star (Robert Downey Jr.) at the People’s Choice Awards.

Iron Man is still short of one sequel to com­plete the tril­ogy as planned with Downey still uphold­ing the title of the film. However, it would be Shane Black this time direct­ing the third instal­ment, which is due mid 2013.

Hulk, like Captain America, was first seen on screen in two stand-alone movies, The Incredible Hulk and The Return of the Incredible Hulk (also known as The Incredible Hulk: Death in the Family), in 1977.

These films were directed by Kenneth Johnson and Alan J. Levi, respec­tively. They were then re-edited into one-hour episodes to fit into the tele­vi­sion series of the name The Incredible Hulk, which was aired in 1978 onwards, expand­ing to five sea­sons over the period of five years with a team of 17 direc­tors.

After which, Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno reprised their roles from the pre­vi­ous TV series in three tele­vi­sion movies: The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988); The Trial of the Incredible Hulk (1989); The Death of the Incredible Hulk (1990). All of which received accept­able audi­ence responses and aver­age rat­ings, which was not of a bad start after all.

In 2003, a new Hulk movie emerged in the cin­e­mas with Eric Bana tak­ing on the role of the incred­i­ble Hulk.

Although Ang Lee’s Hulk received aver­age rat­ings, view­ers were pretty sat­is­fied with what was por­trayed, with some claim­ing to be the best adap­ta­tion of the comics so far with its bril­liant cin­e­matog­ra­phy, art direc­tion and spe­cial effects.

In 2008, another Hulk film landed in the the­atres. Louis Leterrier directed the film and Edward Nortan was brought in as our new green super­hero. The Incredible Hulk (2008) seemed to be more suc­cess­ful than the films before with an above aver­age rat­ing of 7.

This film seemed to be a mix­ture of what was shown in the pre­vi­ous films, more of which derived from the Ultimate Universe. It was well sought after, com­pared to the 2003 release.

In 2009, an ani­mated film was released, called Hulk Vs., in which Thor and Wolverine made their appear­ances as well. The film was a com­bi­na­tion of Hulk vs Thor, directed by Sam Liu, and Hulk vs Wolverine, directed by Frank Paur, neatly put together to bring to us a com­plete pack­age of mul­ti­ple super­hero action, which was indeed, worth a watch. Fred Tatasciore lent his vocal tal­ents to Hulk, Steve Blum’s to Wolverine and Matthew Wolf’s to Thor.

A year later, another ani­mated film was released, Planet Hulk which unfor­tu­nately did not gar­ner as much pop­u­lar­ity under Sam Liu’s direc­tion, as com­pared to the pre­vi­ous film. (Rick D. Wasserman voiced for Hulk.)

Mixed reviews revealed the film being one of the best Hulk ani­ma­tion movies while some claimed the film could have done more.

Thor made his first debut as an ani­mated char­ac­ter in Hulk Vs. and in 2011, he reap­peared in another ani­mated film directed by Sam Liu, Thor: Tales Of Asgard, which was Marvel Animation’s eighth film in a series of its ani­mated films. Matthew Wolf voiced for Thor once again, in this film along­side Loki, voiced by Rick Gomez.

The ani­ma­tion seemed to be a kid’s film, which many Marvel fans in gen­eral may not enjoy since the char­ac­ters were depicted merely in their younger years.

Thor, then appeared in a live-action move in the same year. With Kenneth Branagh’s excel­lent direc­tion, Thor (2011) made big money at the box office and Chris Hemsworth nailed the first live appear­ance of Thor on the big screen.

Although the sto­ry­line was appeal­ing to sev­eral audi­ences, some claimed the film had very lit­tle to excite. Nevertheless, Thor 2011 won the awards for Best Male Newcomer (Tom Hiddleston – Loki) and Best Science Fiction/Fantasy at the Empire Awards 2012.

No doubt, with the great suc­cess this film achieved, a new instal­ment will be hit­ting the the­atres in 2013.

Black Widow, one of Marvel’s sex­i­est and stun­ning female super­hero may not have had any solo movies of her own but her por­trayal in her sup­port­ing roles in a num­ber of films was, nev­er­the­less, a worth­while watch. Of course, her con­fi­dent and sexy demeanour in her roles exem­pli­fied what a female Marvel super­hero could pos­si­bly be.

In 2006, Black Widow appeared in the first ani­ma­tion edi­tion of the Ultimate Avengers, which also starred the other Marvel super­heroes like Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Hulk and Nick Fury to name a few. She was voiced by Olivia d’Abo.

This film was claimed to be a com­bi­na­tion of the sto­ries from the Ultimates and the old school Avengers. Brilliant story, action and sus­pense, the film was one com­plete pack of ‘Marvel-ous’ enter­tain­ment for super­hero enthu­si­asts. In the same year, the sec­ond edi­tion was released, Ultimate Avengers II which brought it almost the same response as the pre­vi­ous film.

Black Widow made her first live-action appear­ance in Iron Man 2 (2009), as an under­cover spy for S.H.I.E.L.D. Of course, it was impos­si­ble not to notice the sen­sual red-haired Scarlett Johansson in her seduc­tively armoured suit.

In 2010, Black Widow appeared in The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, an ani­mated TV series in five episodes so far, voiced by Vanessa Marshall. The film also com­prised of the many other Avengers super­heroes as well, such as Iron Man, Captain America and Hawkeye.

The series, por­tray­ing the old and new Marvel uni­verse as one, is on its sec­ond sea­son and has so far been rock­ing the TV sets in every home!

And there is good news! Black Widow gained much pop­u­lar­ity from most of her films, push­ing pro­duc­ers into the idea of a solo film for The Black Widow although no details of the film’s release has been confirmed.

Hawkeye appeared in a 1966 ani­mated TV series enti­tled The Marvel Super Heroes, which included yet again our promi­nent super­heroes: Captain America, Hulk, Thor and Iron Man, to name a few.

In 2008, Hawkeye appeared Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow, an ani­ma­tion film which also starred Iron Man, Thor and Hulk. The film had the least to do with the comics but a much inter­est­ing sto­ry­line, keep­ing the younger audi­ence enter­tained most of the time.

After appear­ing in The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Hawkeye appeared in Thor’s live-action movie in 2011 in a cameo role as a spy for S.H.I.E.L.D. which was por­trayed by Jeremy Renner.

Loki also appeared in The Marvel Superheroes, one of the minor roles equiv­a­lent to Hawkeye’s. After which he also appeared in the Hulk Vs. Thor por­tion of the full Hulk Vs. ani­mated film in 2009. In 2011, Loki made his appear­ance in Thor: Tales of the Asgard along­side Thor.

Nick Fury appeared first in his solo film, Nick Fury: Agent of Shield (1998), starred by David Hasselhoff. Despite the fact that the film received below aver­age rat­ings, it was an accept­able film throughout.

Much of the excite­ment derived from its sub-characters, leav­ing Nick over­looked sev­eral times. It could have been bet­ter, as sup­posed. Nick reap­peared in Iron Man’s first instal­ment of the tril­ogy in 2008. This time, he was por­trayed by Samuel L. Jackson. Samuel con­tin­ued to star for Nick in the sec­ond Iron Man instal­ment in 2010 as well as Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger in 2011.

Nevertheless, Nick could get another chance to shine on screen as news of a Nick Fury film have been reported. The film is still short of a con­firmed release date.

Very well, our Avenger super­heroes have won­drously por­trayed them­selves on-screen for many years and will never stop sur­pris­ing us as new films emerge as the years go by. Kudos to Marvel Studious for bring­ing to us an amaz­ing array of kick-ass films. We will never be tired of its ever-lasting enthu­si­asm for our mighty superheroes!

The Avengers 2012, com­pris­ing of all the super­heroes here, is cur­rently being screened in the cin­e­mas. Check out our Avengers review!

Written by Cheng Hui Jie

This time round, DISNEY & MARVEL assem­bled the leg­endary Director-Screenwriter Joss Whedon with part of the AVENGERS cast for an exclu­sive fea­turette on the film’s press day. Let’s hear what the cast mem­bers have to say!

In this fea­turette, Mark Ruffalo (The Incredible Hulk), Chris Hemsworth (Thor) and Tom Hiddleston (Loki) cer­tainly awed us with how pro­fes­sional and focused they were in the por­trayal of their roles. Did I men­tion how hum­ble our supervil­lian is in real life?

HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER star Cobie Smulders (Agent Maria Hill) and Clark Gregg (Agent Phil Coulson) shared lots of juicy insides light-heartedly from how Smulders got to hold a gun on set seri­ously for the first time to how she got smit­ten by her co-stars!

Click the play but­ton and find out who are Smulders’ eye can­dies now!
(Open in full screen)

“There’s a hun­dred rea­sons why this movie shouldn’t work and there’s one rea­son why it does, and it’s Joss Wheden’s Guidance.”
–Mark Ruffalo

“ He’s a kind of story-selling genius”
– Tom Hiddleston

AVENGERS is:

“Fun. Action. Humour, Satisfaction.”
– Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth

“ … infused with Joss Wheden’s incred­i­ble sense of humour.”
– Tom Hiddleston

With big names singing praises for Director Joss Whedon and the AVENGERS, need we say more?

Catch this clip to find out WHICH SUPERHERO YOUR FAVOURITE ACTORS WANT TO BE!
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As expected, The AVENGERS was a HUGE HIT! Breaking open­ing records world­wide with a gross­ing of US$ 17.1 mil­lion ear­lier this week, we are sure you won’t be dis­ap­pointed!

Be sure to catch the AVENGERS release on 1^st May 2012 in Singapore!

- Total Film

Written by Cheng Hui Jie

MARVEL just released yet another and prob­a­bly, last TV spot for the AVENGERS!

This time, the spot­light is on Tony Stark. With his usual snarky dis­po­si­tion and wits, Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) ques­tioned S.H.I.E.L.D for recruit­ing him as part of the AVENGERS, “ I thought I am volatile, self-obsessed, doesn’t play well with others? “

Catch this jaw-dropping clip before THE AVENGERS pre­mière in UK tomorrow!

- Total Film

Written by Angela Tan

Emma Thomas has revealed to Collider that the film could see a rise in a sup­pos­edly 40 min­utes of IMAX footage to 50 min­utes, and counting.

Christopher Nolan had made a con­sen­sus that only if he were allowed to pro­duce The Dark Knight in IMAX will he agree on direct­ing the film. With that, there’s a high pos­si­bil­ity that he might even­tu­ally lead the future IMAX film-making.

IMAX movies, if you may not know, con­sist of crys­tal clear images up to eight sto­ries high, accom­pa­nied per­fectly by high-quality dig­i­tal sur­round sound. It is said that IMAX the­atres world­wide have been spe­cially and specif­i­cally designed to cater to the “world’s most immer­sive movie experience.”

Nolan has lamented over the con­tra­dic­tion regard­ing the lim­i­ta­tion of shoot­ing a Hollywood movie on IMAX when they had with them huge cam­era depart­ment, grips and hun­dreds of peo­ple work­ing for them.

He added that despite hav­ing cam­eras that had been to “Mount Everest, bot­tom of the ocean and into outer space,” peo­ple still held some doubts over his capa­bil­ity to make a fea­ture film, end­ing off with claims that the entire issue was sim­ply absurd.

The Dark Knight Rises will be open­ing in the UK on 20 July 2012, together with the much antic­i­pated IMAX screening.

The final trailer of The Dark Knight Rises will also be shown with The Avengers, twice the enter­tain­ment for you!

- Total Film