New Avengers Details Revealed

Marvel Boss tells all on heroes, villains and sequels!Marvel Movies' head honcho Kevin Feige has been talking to SFX in the midst of the promo campaign raising itself higher for next month's superhero ensemble film Avengers Assemble. In the intriguing interview, Feige reveals a few more exciting details on the flick, its storyline and its possible successors...

• Was there a risk of this being another Iron Man-focused movie? "I think that could easily have happened, perhaps somewhere else, right? If you're dealing with a traditional studio that's just looking at 'Wait a minute, that's the biggest movie and the biggest character, let's do that', but that's not what The Avengers is. The Avengers is not Iron Man 3, that film starts shooting in nine weeks. There is no real leader to the team in the comic books. They each serve their own purpose and it was important for us to do that. While Tony Stark is a massive character in the movie, we did not want to make The Tony Stark Show because that's not what the comics are."
• Is the film a conclusion to the Avengers plot arc or a jumping-off point for future sequels? "You know, everything we do, everything we’ve done over the years, is to try to emulate the experience of reading a comic. Of reading and experiencing and anticipating that Wednesday when a new comic is going to be released. And part of that are these events, these big crossover events that happen once a year or once every few years, where all the characters would come together for some universe-shaking thing. And then they would go back into their own books changed slightly from whatever that crossover event was. So ideally that’s the model that we’re gonna follow. So all these movies led up to The Avengers and The Avengers will be the jumping-off point for the next phase. I found myself calling Iron Man through to The Avengers ‘Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase One’ and now from Iron Man 3 up to, knocking wood, maybe Avengers 2, ‘Phase Two’. Each of these big over-arching chapters of the Marvel Universe. So The Avengers is the culmination of what’s gone before and the jumping-off point of what’s to come."
• Will the film deal with personal character issues as well as the main battles? "They all do! All of them have problems, that’s what’s fun about them. Tony Stark is a great example – a man who’s selling weapons to the highest bidder and not thinking about the moral complications that came along with that, until one of his own weapons blew up in his face and started that redemption story. He’s always struggling between his own ego and his own personality and doing the right thing. Bruce Banner, of course, is always struggling with the creature inside him and losing his temper, and even Thor – who on the surface is literally a god from another planet, and would seemingly be the most unrelatable character – is full of flaws, and is a big pompous ass in the first half of his own movie! His father’s yelling at him and kicking him out of the house and dealing with his issues with his brother. And in this movie he’s got big family issues going on. The main bad guy in the movie is his brother! That’s what tears them apart. So all of them need to have those kind of flaws, these kind of relatable problems. That’s what makes them Marvel characters."

To catch the full interview, head to SFX via this link: http://www.sfx.co.uk/2012/03/31/avengers-and-the-future-of-marvel-movies-marvel-boss-speaks/. Avengers Assemble is out on April 26th.