Daily Archives: February 29, 2012

‘The Avengers’ trailer … and that giant snake thing

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Wow.

The new trailer for Marvel’s “The Avengers” was released today and looks amazing.

The trailer offered us the first real glimpse of the scope of the movie, which opens May 4.

Sure, it’s a big superhero movie, based on the classic Marvel comic book, and features the leads from “Iron Man,” “Thor,” “Captain America,” “The Hulk” and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury to boot, all directed by “Buffy” maestro Joss Whedon.

But some fans have complained that previous previews didn’t give a real sense of the scale of the action, of the menace facing the heroes. After all, Nick Fury was putting this team together to take on a challenge that was too big for any single hero to handle alone, right?

So, without revealing too much about the plot or even confirming the space-faring villains (Skrull? Kree? Asgardian monsters?), the trailer puts the menace, the scope, the scale of the threat out there.

And it did it with that giant flying snake thing at the end of the trailer. Is it a robot? Is it alive? Something in between? And whose WMD is it?

Other thoughts upon watching the trailer for, like, the tenth time:

“We’re not a team. We’re a time bomb,” scientist Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) says. Banner is the guy who Hulks out, of course.

Oh, and the Hulk. Not only do we see more Ruffalo but we see more of his big green alter ego. We see the Hulk smashing through a series of too-small doorways, as seen in an earlier spot. This time we see he’s following Black Widow. Has he wigged out and started chasing her? Or are the two making a hasty exit together?

Oh, and more about the Hulk. How cool is the moment when the Hulk comes out of nowhere to rescue Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) as he falls from the sky? And of course he does it in Hulk style, slowing his and Iron Man’s freefall by dragging the facade off several stories of a skyscraper.

Cap fights Thor. Iron Man fights Thor. Everybody knows that it’s a Marvel Comics standby to have heroes tussle before they get together and fight on the same side. So maybe that’s what’s going on here. Or maybe some of those heroes are controlled by … Skrulls?

Why are Hawkeye and Black Widow there? Some people can’t seem to get that a key to the Avengers team in the comics was that while some members were super-powered, others were not. The online bitching about the normal-powered Hawkeye and Black Widow being part of the team has been ridiculous. Ironically, the trailer addresses this, with Black Widow telling Hawkeye in effect, “We weren’t trained for this.”

Whedon and his team have, after months, really whetted our appetites for “The Avengers.” The trailer released today had me wishing May 4 was tomorrow.

‘Justified’ shows us ‘The Man Behind the Curtain’

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Tonight’s “Justified” episode on FX, “The Man Behind the Curtain,” felt like an intermediate episode, as if the show’s creators were setting the stage for the final episodes of this season.

And that’s okay, because few shows can be this entertaining in setting up a season climax.

The players in this Kentucky-set cops-and-drug-dealers series spent most of the episode marshaling their forces. Pun intended.

As U.S. Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens circled around the edges of out-of-town mobster Quarles’ new world, Quarles began leaning on people: He threatened the just-visiting son of his old patron back in Detroit. He brought a briefcase full of money to the office of the sheriff in the guise of a “campaign contribution.” Before the end of the episode, he tracked Gary, the hapless doofus who used to be married to Raylan’s ex, Winona, to his new stomping grounds.

I’m not feeling good about Gary’s future. And that’s not just based on the preview for next week’s episode, which looks like Quarles is angling to frame Raylan for something dire.

Tonight’s episode featured some good action from Boyd Crowder, Raylan’s frenemy. Boyd rejected an overture from Quarles in a previous episode and now Quarles has the sheriff lean on Boyd. Before things were over tonight, Boyd began his own career as a political kingmaker.

Even while Raylan seemed — in slightly haphazard fashion — to be getting on with his life and career, events and his own habits seemed to be conspiring against him. Fellow marshal Tim was more than a little hostile to Raylan tonight and Raylan — in a plot point drawn from Elmore Leonard’s recent book, “Raylan” — is living above a noisy bar and working part-time as a bouncer.

And — Bing! — how much fun was it to see Stephen Tobolowsky as an FBI agent who disapproves of Raylan’s tactics? The actor, best known for playing Ned Ryerson in “Groundhog Day,” plays this role very differently than his recurring part in “Glee.”