Last summer saw a fairly major clash of the superheroes, with four movies featuring men in tights battling it out for box office supremacy. Marvel's duo of "Thor" and "Captain America: The First Avenger" won out over "X-Men First Class" and "Green Lantern," but as it turns out, it was all just a warm up for this summer's main event. July will see follow ups to the two biggest superhero movies in history arrive in the shape of "The Amazing Spider-Man" and "The Dark Knight Rises," but they won't have it all to themselves, as May doesn't just bring Thor and Captain America back, but also Iron Man, The Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye and Nick Fury for Joss Whedon's "The Avengers."
The climax of a bold four-year plan by the studio, marketing kicked off rather tepidly last year with the first teaser, but a Super Bowl spot was better received, and a full trailer has just debuted over at Apple, and it's the best look so far at Whedon's epic. Focusing on the basic set up and the conceit that the heroes will spend as much time fighting each other as their pesky alien foes, it's a solid, action-packed clip. And that action looks pretty good, with Whedon seemingly shooting with an admirable clarity and, while we wish some of the locations felt a little less anonymous (it doesn't necessarily display the global scope we were hoping for), there's more than a few money shots, most notably the closer, and of Johansson being pursued at close quarters by Mark Ruffalo's Hulk.
Are we totally sold? Not yet: this is one that we'll only believe really works when we see it, but it's certainly looking more impressive than "Iron Man 2," "Thor" or "Captain America" at this point. Will it be able to beat Spidey and Batman at the box-office? We suspect not, but that doesn't mean it's not going to make truckloads of money. The trailer on Apple is rolling out territory-by-territory (if you can't see it, hang on a moment), and the embed is below. "The Avengers" hits internationally on April 26th before coming to U.S. theaters on May 4th.