[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings

[Gary Thewlis]

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.

James Thurber

 

The only time to buy these is on a day with no 'y' in it.

Warren Buffett

 

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and
conscientious stupidity.

Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Fools rush in where fools have been before.

Unknown

 

I always admired atheists. I think it takes a lot of faith.

Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure

 

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.

Frank Lloyd Wright

 

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20 Facts About the MCU’s 'Avengers' Movies

 

The end-credits scene in Jon Favreau's Iron Man (2008) established a
now-beloved tradition in the MCU universe, while making a promise to both
comic book fans and everyone who loved the first true MCU movie that there
would be much more to come from the tin-can-suited Tony Stark (Robert Downey
Jr.). Yet instead of simply hinting that Stark would be back for a new
adventure, it promised that the entire Avengers team from the comic books
would assemble.

 

At the time, it was a pretty groundbreaking move. Up until that point, the
movie world had never seen an epic, superhero team-up movie where heroes
introduced in their own hugely successful movies would band together to
fight as one.

 

It's been 10 years since The Avengers first arrived in theaters on May 4,
2012 and changed the game. Here are 20 facts about the original film and the
Spandexed movies that followed. 

 

1. Robert Downey Jr. hid food all over the set.

 

Since Robert Downey Jr.'s role is so demanding, the Iron Man actor doesn't
have time for quick snack breaks—so he just eats onscreen. Downey reportedly
hides snacks everywhere, which is why Stark is often munching on something
when he delivers his biting quips. This is true not just of all the Avengers
movies, but anywhere else Stark shows up.

 

2. Chris Evans sent everyone a text that read "Assemble" so they could go
out drinking.

 

The main actors in the Avengers movies weren't together all that often. So
on the rare occasions when they were in town to shoot together, Chris Evans
would send up a Bat-Signal (sorry) for them to go party. The simple text
saying "Assemble" is one of Clark Gregg's personal favorites.

 

3. Captain America isn't eating shawarma because of an uncomfortable
prosthetic.

 

The end credits for The Avengers broke the mold by featuring a pair of
scenes. The first promises the arrival of Thanos as a major villain directly
involved in aggressions against Earth, and the second shows the battle-worn
Avengers making good on a throwaway joke about eating shawarma. This second
scene wasn't part of the original script, and wasn't even shot until the day
after the movie had its Los Angeles premiere on April 11, 2012, when the
actors were in the middle of their media blitz.

 

Because of the timing, continuity became a problem for Evans, whose Captain
America is the only one not eating in the scene. Instead, his hand is
covering his face in seeming exhaustion. The real reason we don't get a good
look at Evans is because he had grown a beard for Bong Joon-ho's Snowpiercer
(2013), and the prosthetic they to cover it up didn't look real enough for
him to chow down.

 

4. They got Hulk to smash Loki with a rope and a surprise.

 

One of the most memorable moments in The Avengers is when Hulk (Mark
Ruffalo) answers Loki's (Tom Hiddleston) erudite taunts by slamming him like
a rag doll. They pulled it off with a rope, several stunt actors, and by not
telling Hiddleston exactly when they'd tug the wire. "The experience of
being yanked out of frame was one I will not forget in a hurry," Hiddleston
told Entertainment Weekly.

 

5. Mark Ruffalo was almost The Hulk before he was The Hulk.

 

Ruffalo took over the role of Bruce Banner/The Hulk from Edward Norton after
Norton starred in 2008's The Incredible Hulk. But Ruffalo was actually
director Louis Letterier's first choice for the character; Marvel wanted
Norton because he was more famous at the time.

 

6. Stan Lee's cameo in Avengers: Age of Ultron is a nod to his military
service.

 

Lee's last cameo was in Avengers: Endgame as a hippie shouting "Make love,
not war!" But his appearance in Age of Ultron is as a WWII veteran who
claims to have fought at Omaha Beach. In real life, Lee didn't storm Omaha
Beach, but he did enlist in the Army in 1942 and went on to work in
conjunction with Dr. Seuss in the training film division.

 

7. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver's origins changed because of a rights
issue.

 

In the comic books, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver aid Magneto in his
villainy, but with the X-Men split off from other Marvel entities due to
movie studios rights, the production team behind Age of Ultron gave Wanda
and Pietro Maximoff a different origin story. With no Magneto in the
universe, the twins are test subjects for Hydra's Baron Wolfgang von
Strucker.

 

8. Elizabeth Olsen described Scarlet Witch the same way James Spader
described Ultron.

 

To illustrate how morally complex Scarlet Witch is as a hero, Olsen spoke of
her in the same way James Spader spoke of the A.I. villain of the film. "She
has such a vast amount of knowledge, that she's unable to learn how to
control it," Olsen said. "No one taught her how to control it properly, so
it gets the best of her. It's not that she's mentally insane, it's just that
she's overly stimulated, and she can connect to this world, and parallel
worlds, at the same time."

 

Paralleling that naive energy, Spader said of Ultron, "He sees the world
from a very strange, Biblical point of view, because he's brand-new, he's
very young. He's immature, and yet has knowledge of comprehensive, broad
history and precedent, and he has created in a very short period a rather
skewed worldview."

 

9. Small-town theaters in Germany boycotted Age of Ultron.

 

It wasn't because they disagreed with the portrayal of murderous A.I.
robots. It was a matter of Disney wanting 53 percent of the box office take
on all ticket sales versus the traditional 47.7 percent. While it might not
seem like a huge difference in numbers, it could have meant the difference
between turning a profit for some of Germany's smaller theaters, so they
simply refused to play it. Disney also reduced the amount of money it agreed
to contribute toward advertising and 3D glasses.

 

10. Age of Ultron has a sly reference to Archie Comics.

 

Iron Man has to fight Hulk in Age of Ultron, using a series of safety
protocols he has named "Veronica." It's an incredibly sly reference to
Archie Comics: As the love of Bruce Banner's life was named Betty Ross, Age
of Ultron writer/director Joss Whedon thought it would be fun to add a
Veronica into the mix because "Veronica is the opposite of [Betty]."

 

11. A focus group member got a line into Avengers: Infinity War.

 

Get this person a screen credit! This is extremely rare, but apparently a
person in one of the focus groups for Infinity War referred to the Outriders
as "Space Dogs." Directors Anthony and Joe Russo liked it so much, they gave
the line to Bradley Cooper to voice as Rocket Raccoon. 

 

12. Captain America's Infinity War look is a nod to his time as The Nomad.

 

There were times in the comic books when Captain America wasn't Captain
America. His first turn as The Nomad came when he lost faith in the United
States following the Watergate scandal, and his costume in Infinity War is
meant to reflect the same costume he wore as that character back in the
1970s. 

 

13. Arrested Development's Dr. Tobias Fünke has a cameo in Infinity War.

 

We were so, so, so close to seeing David Cross as Tobias Fünke in the MCU.
The Russos got their start in television, including directing a number of
episodes of Arrested Development, and they wanted Cross to show up as a
mustachioed, shirtless, blue guy. Unfortunately, Cross had scheduling
conflicts, but the directors still managed to put a look-alike as tribute in
one of the scenes.

 

14. Evangeline Lilly and Paul Rudd shot Endgame and Ant-Man and the Wasp at
the same time.

 

It wasn't easy on anyone. Marvel's release schedule is so bloated that they
have to film multiple projects at the same time, which also means
maintaining a sense of continuity between all the films while juggling
dozens of characters and multiple storylines. During Ant-Man and the Wasp,
Evangeline Lilly and Paul Rudd would frequently be pulled away to shoot
scenes for Endgame. Ant-Man director Peyton Reed said the process caused him
some headaches, but that the Avengers-focused film ultimately found ways to
ensure Rudd and Lilly were available to, you know, star in the movie they
were starring in.

 

15. Endgame is the only time Robert Redford has played the same character
twice.

 

Robert Redford has never played the same role twice, but Marvel somehow
managed to both coax him out of retirement and get him to reprise his role
as HYDRA leader Alexander Pierce, who he first played in Captain America:
The Winter Soldier (2014). Other than a very brief appearance as the voice
of a dolphin monster in the collage film Omniboat as a favor to his
grandson, 2019's Endgame is Redford's last film appearance. 

 

16. Tom Holland was not allowed to read the Endgame script.

 

During his earliest days in the MCU, Holland earned a reputation as someone
who happily gave away spoilers during interviews—like the time he spoiled
the ending to Infinity War to a packed theater. So the filmmakers decided
the best way to keep the plot lines to Endgame as quiet as possible was to
forbid the Spider-Man actor from reading the script. "Tom Holland gets his
lines and that’s it," Joe Russo explained in 2019. "He doesn’t even know who
he’s acting opposite of ... We use very vague terms to describe to him what
is happening in the scene, because he has a very difficult time keeping his
mouth shut.” Holland has joked that they wouldn't even tell him who he was
fighting against, so he just punched the air for 15 minutes.

 

When the cast promoted Endgame around the world, Holland was very
intentionally paired with Benedict Cumberbatch, who was asked to "babysit"
Holland and ensure that he didn't reveal any spoilers (as you can watch
above).

 

17. Endgame is the first movie to reach $1 billion at the box office in its
first weekend.

 

Following the promise of Avengers, and the fantastical expansion of a
filming style thought impossible back in 2012, Endgame closed the chapter on
several of the founding members of the superhero team while racking up $1
billion faster than any movie had ever done before it. After just five days
in theaters, Endgame had earned $1.2 billion. Today, Endgame sits just
behind James Cameron's Avatar as the second highest-grossing movie of all
time.

 

18. "Groot" is a learnable language.

 

If you've only seen Guardians of the Galaxy, it's possible that Groot only
saying "Groot" is merely a gag, and Rocket is pretending to understand as
much as is possible. In Infinity War, Thor jokes that he took "Groot" in
college, but it's also clear that he understands the sentient plant, meaning
that the language comprised solely of one word is indeed a language and is
learnable. 

 

19. A classic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode inspired Endgame.

 

The final episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation involves Captain Picard
(Patrick Stewart) split between multiple timelines that all lead to a
mysterious signal out in space. "All Good Things" gave the crew a solid
send-off, and it also inspired Marvel head Kevin Feige. Instead of digging
into the thorny particulars of time travel, the Avengers joke their way
through the adventure, leaning heavily on the nostalgia of moving through
the older films so that everything still lines up.

 

20. The writers thought time travel was the stupidest idea possible for
Endgame.

 

It's not just you. Even the writers of Endgame thought the time travel
element was profoundly silly. Co-writer Christopher Markus said that the
scene were the Avengers contemplate the ridiculousness of a time heist
"mirrors us sitting in a room trying to figure out how the hell to get out
of the corner we wrote ourselves in at the end of Infinity War and
entertaining the idea of a time machine and then feeling that it's the
stupidest idea you could possibly have."

 

The writers may have thought it was stupid, but audiences loved it. Plus, it
offered a clever way of honoring the previous films and reminding audiences
just how massive the scope of the Marvel Cinematic Universe really is.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

What popular baby device was inspired by something former Peace Corps member
Anne Moore saw while serving in West Africa?

A: The strap-on baby pouch known as the Snugli. Moore made the first one for
herself when she had a baby shortly after returning to the United States
from Africa in 1964.

 

Who invented the whistle for the railroad train?

A: George Washington Whistler--father of artist James Abbott McNeill
Whistler.

 

What was the source of billionaire recluse Howard Hughes' original fortune?

A: His father's invention of an oil drill bit capable of boring through
subterranean rock.

 

Who invented flexible greasepaint--the first natural-looking cosmetic used
in the movies?

A: Russian-born makeup expert Max Factor.

 

What was plastic first used for in America?

A: Billiard balls.  Brothers Isaiah and John Wesley Hyatt developed
celluloid in 1869 while competing for a $10,000 prize offered by a company
looking for a substitute for ivory in billiard balls.

 

Largelamb, an anagram pseudonym of a famous inventor, was one of the
founders of "National Geographic" magazine. Who was he?

A: Alexander Graham Bell.

 

How was Coca-Cola originally billed when it appeared on the market in 1886?

A: As an "Esteemed Brain Tonic and Intellectual Beverage."