Marvel Avengers Movie To Use Motion Capture and CG?

Posted by on March 7th, 2008   Filed under: Action, Animation, Books/Comics, Rumours
Source: FirstShowing.net

avengerscg.jpg

Here’s a fun little tidbit that falls under pure speculation at this point, but seems worth considering nonetheless. Zak Penn, writer of X2, X-Men: The Last Stand and Elektra, was recently interviewed by Collider about his upcoming movie The Grand. Of course, the talk eventually came around to comic book movies, and specifically Marvel’s Avengers movie, which Penn has been hired to write. When asked for his thoughts on animated comic book movies, Penn replied with this statement:

“There’s been the discussion about The Avengers doing some sort of next level… whatever the next iteration of computer animation is after this, the next step after Beowulf, is something we would definitely conisder for that. And I actually think it’s worth considering for a lot of movies, I think it’s amazing. It has a tremendous amount of potential.”

Hmm, so an Avengers movie done with motion capture and CG? It could be interesting. It would be a smart way of getting around the budgetary issue of having so many stars in one movie (the same reason that the Justice League movie was originally rumoured to be animated). I would say the technology is almost there. The thing is, once people start to make all the big FX movies this way, will we ever see another blockbuster done in live action again?

On a related note, Jon Favreau has previously hinted that he could get to direct the Avengers movie if Iron Man does well. What do you think?



  • Yes! This is exactly the way to bring Marvel comics to the big screen.

    The costumes, stunts, impossible feats, etc can look great!

    COnsider this:

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=iztdM4a8bQ4

    Now who doesn’t want to see two hours of this? :)

  • …in IMAX!

  • I like a good CG film as much as the next guy, but when we’re dealing with human characters (albeit the Avengers are superhuman), I’d rather see real actors. To me that’s part of the majesty of seeing a superhero movie: real people doing amazing things. I want to see a real flesh and blood actor looking as though he’s shooting lightning bolts or transforming into a big green monster or chucking his shield at nazis. The Incredibles, for example, was great, but it was more of a cartoon than a superhero movie in my eyes. I want to see Toby Maguire under the Spiderman mask every now and then or the Hulk shrink into Eric Bana/Edward Norton, not a computer generated version of them. To me, Beowulf-style effects still aren’t good enough for me to take them entirely seriously. For comedy or light-hearted action lik The Incredibles, sure, but not for The Avengers. I know we’re talking about spandex-clad heroes, but give me real actors enhanced with effects over animated characters any day.