If you were like me last night you unleashed a slew of food down your chin consisting of an entire chicken wing, three nachos and a bite of pizza out of pure shock. Hey don’t judge me, Super Bowl snacking is an art! That being said, around the second quarter it came, it saw, and it kicked your ass. The Avengers trailer dropped and every fellow nerd’s testicles quickly shriveled into their bodies. I’m not familiar with female nerd physiology so use your imagination when it comes to their reaction. If you haven’t seen it yet it’s 1 minute and 5 seconds. Partake:

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It’s a tricky thing putting together a trailer. You can’t give too much of the plot away, but you need to give the audience an essence of what the film is going to be like. Just enough to get 50 million tuckuses into cinema seats, but not so much people think they’ve already seen the movie. Strictly speaking, this trailer is a good barometer for just how action packed and exciting The Avengers is going to be.

The first words out of Nick Fury’s mouth, played by Samuel L. Jackson, is, “The world has changed.”

What exactly does he mean by this? There isn’t a whole lot to go on, but it probably means one of two things. Either he’s speaking to Captain America and consoling him about just waking up to a new world, or the invaders are taking over. Probably the former. Moving on.



[7 seconds]

There are two things to take note of in this image. One, the product placement of the Dr. Pepper truck and Beef Jerkey ad on the taxi. Right out of the gate director Joss Whedon is showing us this is a big time summer movie! Yahoo! And two, notice all the rubble in the shot on the right. Then a little further into the trailer in another shot of the streets there is rubble again on the right.



[11 seconds]

It’s clear the city has already been attacked. The attack we’re witnessing now is another strike. Dare I say the first attack confused everyone, the second attacks purpose is to kill all humans?

Next up is a gratuitous shot of the Shield helicarrier complete with Shield logo.



[13 seconds]

It does look like it’s sitting on water, so maybe this is a first generation Shield battleship. If the Avengers toys tell us anything though:

The ship is going to be flying at some point. Of course it could just be the toy companies fleecing kids with toys that aren’t even in the movie. Always a possibility, especially when you look at all the silly Batman vehicles toy companies make over the years.



No.

Then we get some confirmation of Loki being part of the battle.



[14 seconds]

If we look closely at the dude flying on the twisted metal killing machine you’ll notice he’s wearing what looks like a green cape and a horned helmet. I’d wager that’s Loki.

Next up Thor uses his hammer to create lightning, although you’ll notice there are trees behind him. Then the shot cuts to lightning hitting the rod on the top of a city skyscraper. These shots don’t seem to be related aside from the editing. Could this be the villains teleporting in?



[18 seconds]

Throughout the entire trailer Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr. is wearing a Black Sabbath t-shirt. It’s of course a nod to Iron Man and metal music, and of course the song by Black Sabbath that shares his name. It’s a curious thing. Are we to believe this version of Iron Man actually borrowed the name from the song?



[20 seconds]

I find it odd Tony never changes his shirt in the trailer. This could mean one of two things. One, this entire movie takes place over a single day, or we’re simply only seeing shots of Tony around one sequence in the film.

Nick Fury tells us it’s time. Tony shows respect to Captain America by calling him “captain” (remember in a previous trailer Captain America gives Tony trouble for only being human with no powers) which will probably be an important moment for the heroes accepting each other as teammates.

The next important shot shows Thor helping up a wounded Captain America.



[26 seconds]

Notice the blue blood on Thor’s chest. This is more confirmation the bad guys are aliens. Black Widow, played by Scarlett Johansson, gets some screen time kicking butt and looking all sexual in a Dutch angled shot.



[28 seconds]

If I’ve learned anything from studying film a dutch angle shot typically means trickery, confusion or at the very least bad things. I get the faint impression she’s not as straight laced as the other heroes. It’s a hunch, and clearly I’m grabbing at straws, but this may be a clue she’s going to double cross the Avengers. If you’re aware of her character in the comics, she does this very thing. It’s very much a possibility she’ll be outed as a spy in this film and will be a villain in Iron Man 3.

Thor does some flying and we finally reach the big reveal of the trailer. Who are these bad guys?













[30 seconds]

We can finally rule out Kree or Skrulls. These guys are grey in color, are wearing very little clothing save for some boots, loin cloth and some have helmets. They’re also jumping from what looks to be a giant spinal cord. Knowing that Loki is the main villain and what happened to him at the end of Thor, one can imagine these are a race of aliens relatively unknown. I definitely like this, as the movie should focus on the Avengers. If the villains were Skrulls it’d be easy to fall into the mistake superhero movies make with too many villains clogging up the plot. Loki is enough, and with an army of unknown baddies we’ll be able to focus on the Avengers.

The next cool shot shows an explosion going off in the heroes faces.







[31 seconds]

Notice Captain America is protecting Black Widow and himself from the ball of flame. Now look at Thor to the left, the guy is taking a full flame ball in the face. Now that’s awesome.

Hawkeye is shooting arrows while being shot at, whilst falling to his death!



[32 seconds]

Hopefully Iron Man, Hulk or Thor can catch him. Queue Captain America doing his thang which is pretty awesome. I get the impression Captain America’s role on the team is to be the leader, but also a sprinter of sorts.



[33 seconds]

Iron Man then flies directly at the enemy, which appears to be a portal. At the same time the ships we’ve seen earlier are flying down at him, from the direction of the portal.



[38 seconds]

I’m glad the obligatory team-up shot isn’t the cliched call back to The Right Stuff that so many films copy.

Instead we get a neat spin around shot, which not only shows off each hero but gives us the impression they are cornered. I have to point out though, Black Widow cocking her gun is a little hilarious. It really points out how much weaker she is than the other heroes.



[43 seconds]

The trailer then calms down before blasting us in the face with awesome. Tony Stark pours himself a drink and at this point we have to assume his drinking problems will become an issue. Most likely in Iron Man 3. They’ve teased this to the fans quite a few times over the last two Iron Man films. Doing it again here just strengthens their intentions with the story.



[50 seconds]

Loki then confirms the bad guys blowing up New York is his “army”. We can now safely say Loki is indeed the main villain. It’s interesting that Tony isn’t afraid of Loki in this scene. He must have a plan. Either that or he’s stalling. You have to love his line, “Earth’s mightiest heroes… type thing.” That brief pause shows Iron Man understands just how silly that sounds. Then we get the clearest shots of The Hulk yet.



[56 seconds]

Looks like they did a good job with his face. It resembles Mark Ruffalo quite a bit. It also looks like Bruce Banner will have some control over the the Hulk in this film. He definitely goes bonkers in this last scene screaming and running, but earlier we saw him standing with the heroes. One of my favorite things about Hulk is his ability to fling himself at tremendous speeds. We’re going to get a lot of that in Avengers it appears.



[58 seconds]

Overall a top notch action film will be upon us May 4 and it will contain many heroes we’ve all grown to love over the years. The trailer appears to be delivering mostly shots from the third act when the heroes fight the good fight. It’s a big action flick, but it will live and die by the small intimate character development scenes. Once we get a taste of those we’ll know if this will be as good as it gets when it comes to superheroes on screen.