"Guys! Guys! I brought weed and pizza rolls!"

Marvel.com just released a batch of five new stills from The Avengers, and if these are any indication, the film will surely satisfy those fans desperate to see the Avengers staring intently at things and/or each other. Sarcasm aside, these were all incredibly boring. Everyone looked all serious and dour, so I thought they needed a dose of Chris Evans as Captain America, our little ray of sunshine. He’s such a rascal! (more after the jump)

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This week, Disney announced that Marvel’s The Avengers will be screened in 3D as well as 2D when it opens this May. The announcement seemed oddly timed, given that the movie has been shooting since April, and it usually doesn’t take this long for a multi-national corporation to decide it wants to make more money. That means the movie will be converted to 3D in post (post-converted 3D), and everyone promises the post-converted 3D won’t be as crappy as it was in Clash of the Titans.  Slashfilm points out that Joss Whedon actually shot the end-credit scene for Thor in 3D, and decided he didn’t want to deal with all the 3D rig’s extra equipment. Whedon spoke to JoBlo about it, presumably while they tried not to stare at his enormous forehead:

“there definitely are movies that shouldn’t be in 3D” while assuring fanboys “THE AVENGERS isn’t obnoxiously 3D.”
“There’s no, ‘Oh look, we’re going to spend 20 minutes going through this tunnel because it’s in 3D!’ And no one is pointing at the screen the entire time. But it’s an action movie. Things tend to hurtle toward the screen anyway.”
Whedon says he was 100% behind the [3D] idea. “Yeah, it’s fun!…I’m not a big fan of extreme long lens, talky movies – I like to see the space I’m in and relate to it, so 3D kinda fits my aesthetic anyway. And the technology has advanced so far in the past couple years.”

Call me crazy, but it seems to me that if you’re still trying to get people to buy into this 3D upsell in the midst of obvious signs of decline, you’d want to put its best foot forward. In Slate’s report on the health of 3D back in September, for example, they reported that 3D screenings for Captain America (also post-converted) were making one-third of the money that 2D screenings earned. At least if you’re going to make it in 3D (Editor’s Note: please don’t make it in 3D), shoot it in 3D. But who knows, maybe the technology has come a long way, and this time it’s going to be different, and blah blah blah, maybe it won’t be as underwhelming as pretty much every other 3D movie I’ve ever seen. 3D! The Future is Meh!

Though as long as we’re post-converting to 3D, how bout doing those Scarlett Johansson cell phone pics? I’m tired of mashing my face against the screen to see inside of her butt crack.

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My goodness, there’s certainly no shortage of movie-film trailers coming out today. Now that The Dark Knight Rises is out of the way, after the jump, I’ve got The Avengers (in German), Wrath of the Titans, and the trailer for the Prometheus trailer. That’s right, Prometheus has a trailer advertising the impending release of its trailer. That’s a lot of balls for a guy whose last movie was about a fat Robin Hood writing the Magna Carta.

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(click to enlarge)

Marvel just released two new big character banners for The Avengers, aka The Great Joss Whedon Experiment, and they look great, though I wish they would’ve put the Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow) frame and the Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner) frame right next to each other. That way it’d look like he’s trying to listen to her ass with a stethoscope. Oh, Ruffles, you cheeky ass listener. Can you hear it now? The creak of its supple pert tautness? Oh you better believe he’d science you. He’d science you hard. (With his disheveled penis).

Meanwhile, I still can’t figure out what the hell Hawkeye’s job is going to be on this team. (Yes, I know, “Hawkeye is the surgeon,” hilarious MASH reference.) I’m already taking a pretty big leap of faith with the whole iron jetpack suit, magic shield, hot girl who beats up dudes, and mystical viking who can propel himself through the air by swinging a hammer, but a guy who shoots arrows? I don’t doubt that he’s very good at it, I just want to know one situation in which a bow and arrow would be preferable to a gun. Hmm, let’s see, so it holds half as many projectiles, which take twice as long to shoot, go half as fast, and are made of wood? Sorry, Hawkeye, we’re going to have to replace you. We had to go with “Redneck Man.” He owns two shotguns.

[Yahoo. Opens May 4th]

For Thor, Marvel made the somewhat inspired choice of Kenneth Branagh for director, a guy known mostly for making Shakespeare movies. I thought it mostly paid off, and Branagh ended up making a movie that didn’t blow anyone’s mind, but was well acted and mostly entertaining. It was… cute. Considering the Fantastic Four movies and Schumacher’s Batmen, a movie as watchable as Thor about a second-tier character like Thor is an achievement. With that in mind, Marvel’s choice for the director of Thor 2 is Patty Jenkins. …Wait, who? Is that Leroy’s daughter?

Jenkins is an interesting choice. The director’s 2003 drama “Monster,” which she also wrote, yielded the Academy Award for Best Actress for star Charlize Theron.
Of course, the movie, about serial killer Aileen Wournos, had a budget of $8 million. The first “Thor” picture had a budget about 19 times larger — $150 million.
Jenkins was nominated for an Emmy for directing the pilot of AMC’s “The Killing,” and has directed “Entourage” and “Arrested Development.”
More recently, she directed “Pearl,” one of five vignettes that make up Lifetime’s original film “Five.”
Jenkins’s take on [Thor] is scheduled for a November 13, 2013 release. [Yahoo]

Monster was about a prostitute-turned-serial killer, The Killing was about detectives investigating the murder of a teenage girl, and “Five” was a TV movie about the impact of breast cancer on a series of women (Jennifer Aniston directed one of the vignettes). If I was Natalie Portman’s character, I’d be investing in a rape whistle right about now.

Said Marvel chief Kevin Feige, “We wanted someone that the fans would be completely indifferent to.”

Probably.