Original subtitles

MAN: With the new studio set up, the way things work now,

is there more of an opportunity for a crossover

here and there with Marvel characters in the movies?

KEVIN FEIGE: I think if you listen to the characters

that we are working on currently

and you put them all together, there's no coincidence

that that may someday equal The Avengers.

I think just having

that possibility on the horizon is something that excites all of us.

JON FAVREAU: I'm sort of looking at this as more than just a movie,

but a group of films.

We drove down to Comic-Con to premiere footage from Iron Man,

and we open up the front page of a local newspaper

and basically it says, "Marvel rolls out the B-team."

Now later that day, the tide would start to turn.

All right, who's ready for Iron Man?

ROBERT DOWNEY JR: Wearing the suit is one of the great

joys of playing Tony Stark.

TONY STARK: My turn.

SCARLETT JOHANSSON: As soon as I heard that there was a possible part,

I was desperate to be a part of it.

I picked up a book one day,

and it's like, "Oh, wow. Hey, I'm Nick Fury."

I got my eye on you.

It all started here.

All these films are the road to The Avengers,

then it was very important that they connect.

Sir, we found it.

The question that we've been asked since we announced Thor was,

"How are you gonna fit this into the universe?"

(LIGHTNING CRACKLING)

MAN: I'm not sure we could've done

this interlinked Marvel Cinematic Universe

without Captain America.

I gotta put her in the water.

Please, don't do this.

The fact that we don't have to end the story

just opens the door to some really great evolutions

that the character can go through.

You've been asleep, Cap, for almost 70 years.

My dream team.

This is the Avengers.

Every time you put the suit back on, you get really excited.

Say my name!

We want something new and something unexpected.

And that's what led us last year to announce Guardians of the Galaxy.

Sometimes you gotta run before you can walk.

I am Iron Man.

NARRATOR: Tony Stark's declarative statement

set the groundwork for what would become a much larger story.

Marvel Studios had a vision.

A single universe inhabited by heroes and villains

across multiple feature film franchises.

When we started Marvel Studios, the self-produced films,

we got financing to make movies ourselves.

Avi Arad was the head of the studio at the time,

and did a tremendous job.

We wanted to control the destinies of our characters.

We wanted to decide

when, how, and which ways we would bring them to film entertainment.

Some of the biggest characters from Marvel comics

were already tied up, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, X-Men.

So the idea of Marvel Studios coming along

and launching itself, this sort of upstart mission,

but doing it without their biggest guns,

there was some skepticism.

There's a big library that we have.

All we had to do is take the best of it.

We were tasked with doing two movies right off the bat.

We chose Hulk because we believed

that there was more to be showcased out of the Hulk character.

And we chose Iron Man because we believed

in the content, and the concept, and the comic.

He's a complicated figure.

And I think he kind of represents the dark side in all of us,

and that hope that we all overcome our own demons.

I had my eyes opened.

I came to realize that I have more to offer this world

than just making things that blow up.

DAN BUCKLEY: It's a huge reflection of how Marvel tells stories.

People relate to Tony.

He's a billionaire, but they still relate to him

'cause he's laying out his personal problems, his relationships.

It's one of our most interesting characters,

and it's our burden to convince the rest of the movie-going public

that that's the case.

We went out to I think about 30 writers on the first film,

and they all passed. No one was interested in writing this movie.

So we just kept sending out this packet and a letter.

Iron Man's a character, 60 years of history,

one of the mainstays of Marvel.

Pass. Pass. Pass. Pass.

When it came to looking for a director on Iron Man,

Jon's name popped up and said, "We have to meet.

"There's something interesting there."

He deserves a lot of credit for signing up with this new studio

that, yes, we had producer credits

and we had involvement in those early Marvel movies,

but ultimately, we're an independent studio with a bond company

that had never made a movie before.

KEVIN FEIGE: David Maisel had come up with this whole financing idea

that we could put together a big slate,

doing it from the ground floor up, all in-house at Marvel,

and it was all slowly coming into focus during Iron Man 1.

They had a fund, and we had exactly that much money,

and you had exactly that much time, and we had a release date.

But nobody expected too much of it.

There was a sense that, if we didn't pull it off,

the studio wouldn't be around anymore.

And the fact that it's Marvel Studios' first film,

and it's not big Hollywood studio, so it's really a big independent movie.

You know, Marvel has shown that these types of movies

could be very successful at the box office

without having a big name driving it.

So, as a filmmaker, I was able to cast the movie

as I would for a movie I'd love to see,

whether it was a small independent movie or a big Hollywood movie.

I assure you, the day weapons are no longer needed

to keep the peace, I'll happily transition

to manufacturing bricks and beams for baby hospitals,

making hemp pants and the like, but until that time, can I get you a drink?

FAVREAU: Ever since Robert was announced

as being Iron Man and Tony Stark

people really dug the idea

at least in the fan world, who knew what Iron Man was.

And I think people who didn't know who Iron Man was,

was intrigued by anything Robert would be involved with.

The only time I've ever gone up to somebody at a restaurant

was when I saw Kevin Feige after they announced Robert Downey Jr.,

just to say, "Kevin, that was the dopest move ever."

It explained everything about the movie that needed to be explained.

It explained their intent,

the integrity they had about which actors they were going for,

and it was a real sea change once Kevin took over.

And he said, "That's the first decision

"I got to make as the head of the studio."

I really took note of it.

Playing someone who's conflicted, and conflicted for the right reasons,

and doesn't see the potential that they have,

and then starts living in accordance with a code,

is a great old-fashioned theme, but I hadn't ever imagined

that I could be involved in something that demonstrates it on this scale.

And you know, stock brokers coming up to me

and taking off their tie and going, "Tony Stark, man,

"let me tell you, in the issue 117,

"the guy..." You know? And I'm like, "Wow."

Robert knew what a big opportunity it was to be cast in this role.

I just finally know

what I have to do.

STEPHEN BROUSSARD: And it was a redemption for him

in the same way that Tony was in many ways.

I think there's a destiny to just about everything.

All the guys you see down this row

are pretty much the reason I'm here today.

So I'd like to thank them for giving me a great opportunity.

FAVREAU: Then the other cast fell into place very easily,

'cause people seemed to like the idea of working with him and I together.

Like that was interesting to them.

People who wouldn't normally do that kind of movie,

like Gwyneth, were reaching out.

I actually don't think that you could tie your shoes without me.

I'd make it a week.

Really? What's your social security number?

When she'd agreed to be in the movie and she came into Jon's office,

Jon started crying because he was so happy

that he knew he had the right central elements to his movie.

And then she was like, "Oh, baby."

And then she started crying about something else,

and then we're all sitting there, like, weeping.

You'd have thought we were getting ready

to do some really important, like, Merchant-Ivory movie.

The fact that Robert was playing Tony,

I thought, was so incredible,

and he's always been one of my favorite actors

and always been somebody that I wanted to work with.

I committed to the movie without ever reading anything.

It was just Jon explaining the character,

explaining how the relationships were gonna be,

and kind of asking for that trust, that leap of faith.

I'm glad I ended up doing it

'cause it was a great experience and it was a great movie.

-Miss Potts? -Yes?

Can I speak to you for a moment?

I'm not part of the press conference, but it's about to begin right now.

I'm not a reporter.

I am Agent Phil Coulson, with the

Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.

That's quite a mouthful.

FAVREAU: He had a government man, Agent Coulson,

and we were like, "Oh, he should be from S.H.I.E.L.D."

We were having fun with it.

So I was thrilled when I got a call.

And then, at that point in the script,

the role was just a couple of scenes, and I was nervous

because as a veteran of doing movies where you play in a couple scenes,

if anything's gonna get cut out, it's not gonna be Gwyneth or Robert,

it's gonna be you.

And yet, I just could not resist.

Luckily, that character seemed to really fill a need.

I think he helped lay the groundwork for this whole S.H.I.E.L.D. role.

You'll be hearing from us.

From the Strategic Homeland...

Just call us S.H.I.E.L.D.

FEIGE: As we were in production on the film,

the idea of a Nick Fury cameo started coming up.

And it frankly started with a cold call I got from Sam Jackson's agent

saying, "Hey, anything for Sam?"

"Actually, you think he'd wanna do a cameo?"

Sam loves comics, he's read comics, I think, his whole life,

and he was well aware that

he was the inspiration for the Nick Fury character in the Ultimates series.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: When I was a kid, Nick Fury was a white guy

running through the jungle with a whole bunch of other white guys.

And then he was David Hasselhoff.

And then I picked up a book one day and it's like, "Hey, that's me."

I was, you know, all in favor of it.

When we contacted his people we were like,

"We need him for half a day."

No one was supposed to know.

We didn't even let him walk from his trailer to the set.

We drove his car onto the stage, parked it next to the set.

He got out, went right onto the set, did this thing, got back in the car,

drove back to his trailer.

We were so convinced that no one's ever gonna find out,

it's gonna be such a secret.

But it was so cool and such big news

that by Monday, it was all over the place.

NICK: You think you're the only superhero in the world?

Mr. Stark, you've become part of a bigger universe.

You just don't know it yet.

And of course he was telling that to Tony Stark,

but that was also us telling that to the audience

to see how they'd react.

And the next week, after the film had come out,

there were stories everywhere about who Nick Fury was, what that meant,

does that mean that these characters exist within the same universe?

And that was what we intended.

They do exist in the same universe.

We started looking at the list of characters we had.

Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Thor,

and all of the characters in the Marvel Universe

that hadn't been taken yet by other studios.

FEIGE: And, listen, to be honest with you, the focus was

make a great Iron Man film.

Introduce Iron Man. Start Iron Man as a new franchise.

But in the back of my head I thought, "Isn't this unique,

"that all of these characters happen to form one of Marvel's

"most popular comic series, The Avengers?"

It told not only Hollywood, but I believe the world,

that we are serious about telling great stories

and we have great characters,

and we're going after the best actors for these roles.

Everything was coming together all at once

and it had helped to push the envelope a little further.

We had a group of talented people

and we did something that kind of was an unproven entity.

It wound up being interesting and entertaining to people.

And the audience has driven the success, you know?

That's what's been cool.

NARRATOR: Marvel Studios had taken flight.

More and more characters were being developed

to take their place in this brave new world.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe was about to arrive.

What if I told you we were putting a team together?

Who's "we"?

After you do a first film, and if you're lucky enough

that the audience is sort of clamoring for the next one,

that's half the work right there.

I mean it really is, "Okay, we've hit the tone."

And that gives you a lot of freedom

to jump into what story you wanna tell next.

As we were finishing the last couple of weeks on Iron Man,

maybe had one week breather,

and then went up to Toronto where we started filming The Incredible Hulk.

We wanted to go back to the broader sense from the comics,

and really the fugitive-type

manhunt structure of the television series,

which was just brilliant.

Bruce Banner learned that maybe that monster within him

is something that can do good.

What Marvel Studios has done is very similar

to what Marvel Comics did back in the day.

They built individual stories that stand on their own two feet,

then they found a way to take those stories

and weave them into a larger narrative.

That's something that we haven't been able to do in the movies

until the end of Incredible Hulk when Tony Stark walks in

to talk with General Ross.

That was the first time audiences started to go,

"Wait a minute, these worlds are connected."

Marvel had a sense that the Avengers were coming,

so we slowly introduced more characters.

I guess I didn't really know what the future would be for the Black Widow.

I didn't know whether she would reappear

in future Iron Man films.

So to be a part of it, it's pretty exciting.

Final fitting.

Doesn't she look great?

What do you think? Questions, comments, concerns? Compliments?

She weighed 170 pounds when I hired her,

-and then she got into shape. -(LAUGHS)

There was a lot of other things to take into consideration.

There was Nick Fury's involvement because he became

this cross-pollinating element.

Contrary to your belief, you are not the center of my universe.

-Yeah, I get it. -I have bigger problems than you

-in the southwest region to deal with. -Okay, okay.

My purpose is to come in and actually give more or less a history

of who Tony Stark's dad was

and what his position in the Marvel Universe should be.

Clearly you knew my dad better than I did.

As a matter of fact, I did.

He was one of the founding members of S.H.I.E.L.D.

What?

JEREMY LATCHAM: Howard Stark is an integral figure

in the Marvel Universe.

He's kind of the godfather of the whole thing.

He worked on Captain America's super soldier program.

He was associates with Nick Fury. He's an important figure.

You know, we had the idea of reaching out to John Slattery

and he only worked one day on Iron Man 2.

It's a pretty integral day

considering how much he's gonna have to tie this whole world together.

One day you'll figure this out.

And when you do, you will change the world.

The biggest challenge is acknowledging prior events

in the Marvel Universe,

and how can we be smart about planting seeds for future stories.

-I've been reassigned. -Huh.

Director Fury wants me in New Mexico.

-Fantastic. Land of Enchantment. -So I'm told.

-Secret stuff? -Something like that.

At the end of it, I think I turned to Kevin Feige

or Louis D'Esposito and just said,

"What's in New Mexico?" And they're like, "Oh, oh, Thor."

"You're in Thor. Did anyone tell you? You're in Thor."

And that was how I found out.

The Marvel Universe, it's called a universe for a reason.

It's a big place.

So we wanted to go to a cosmic level with Thor.

CHRIS HEMSWORTH: He's from a place called Asgard,

which is within the Nine Realms.

And he's the God of Thunder.

He has a weapon called Mjolnir, which is a big hammer.

His father banishes Thor out of Asgard down to Earth,

and he strips the hammer from him.

You can well imagine that if a hammer, apparently evidencing

extraordinary power and unliftable,

arrives on Earth, then S.H.I.E.L.D. is going to be interested.

Here I stand in New Mexico, where an anomaly has taken place.

Agent Coulson is summoned to investigate

and find out if there's anybody who's potentially worthy of recruiting.

I think the humor in all the Marvel films

allows people to buy into the fantastical kind of world.

Any chance you get to kind of laugh,

it takes the pressure off of having to believe that

there's a guy with a big hammer and a red cape flying around the place.

FEIGE: In Thor, you are introduced

to a character who you really won't meet until The Avengers.

But we do tease.

Clint Barton, Hawkeye.

I had shot a scene speaking to a then uncast Clint Barton in the crane,

and to see those scenes cut together, and suddenly I had a scene

with this actor whose work I like so much, was a real thrill.

All right, show's over.

You know, on the first film, as Thor rose to become the hero,

his brother, Loki, descended to become the villain.

Let me explain to Father.

Father is dead.

What?

The burden of the throne has fallen to me now.

VICTORIA ALONSO: Loki is the one character

that everyone loves to hate and they hate to love.

Loki is this lost, damaged prince

struggling to find a place within the family,

struggling to find a place within the universe.

What I did find exciting

was seeing the formative moments in this origin story

of a Loki who could then fire off into other Marvel movies

with the audience knowing from whence the potential for evil came.

For people that are familiar with the comics,

they know about some of the MacGuffins that people are after.

At the end of Thor, we introduced the Tesseract.

Legend tells us one thing, history, another.

But every now and then, we find something that belongs to both.

Well, I guess that's worth a look.

Well, I guess that's worth a look.

That is the Tesseract.

That is a source of a kind of super nuclear power

which will give the holder of that power a kind of unlimited capability.

It fit perfectly into sort of the structure that we were working on across films.

We knew that it had cosmic origins,

and the only cosmic element that we've introduced

this far into the Marvel Cinematic Universe is Thor,

is Asgard, is the Nine Realms.

So we started saying, "What if that's where it came from?"

HIDDLESTON: In Captain America, Red Skull tried

to become a kind of superpower with this Tesseract.

FEIGE: The origin of Steve Rogers, of Captain America,

is inherently in World War II.

I love the period, I love the designs,

and the clothes, and the technology and everything.

And I wanted to prove

that you could make a period action film

and have it be as exciting as a contemporary one.

So we decided,

we're gonna make a 1940s adventure superhero movie.

You know, in hindsight, it was a great decision.

But at the time, it was controversial internally.

But what was great about that is we got to spend

the entire first act with skinny Steve.

Steve Rogers was a product of something called Project Rebirth,

the search for the super soldier,

which was a secret government research program

designed to unlock the potential that we all have.

A lot of superheroes are either born with their abilities

or they get them by accidents.

This was a normal guy who lived the majority of his life as a normal guy,

and he's chosen because of his values

and his morals, and being noble and honorable.

FEIGE: Everything that the military does

in the Marvel Universe after that is an attempt to recreate the super soldier.

We've already seen in The Incredible Hulk,

Bruce Banner turning into the Hulk,

Emil Blonsky turning into the Abomination.

Those were all attempts at replicating what Steve Rogers was.

Mr. Stark.

Dominic Cooper playing Howard Stark

was one of the most crucial pieces of casting in the film.

DOMINIC COOPER: It's difficult to precede Robert.

He's got such an amazing performance.

He enriches it and makes it all sound extremely truthful.

Dominic did a great job of just kind of feeling like,

"Oh, that seems like the loins from which Tony sprung."

It just shows you a complex tapestry.

The structure offers our fans an interconnected world

where continuity is important.

Cap, who's the leader of the Avengers, working alongside of Tony Stark,

knew Tony Stark's father.

And his shield, his most valuable possession as a weapon,

was given by Howard Stark.

That's what keeps us going as filmmakers.

A noble act on Steve's part causes him to be lost.

And we soon find him,

which is what takes us into modern day with The Avengers.

You're here with a mission, sir?

I am.

Trying to get me back in the world?

Trying to save it.

NARRATOR: The stage was set.

Even after seeing several early successes,

the creative team still hadn't played their biggest card.

ROBERT DOWNEY JR: Marvel Studios is going to take

all of their top superheroes

and they're gonna put them all together in The Avengers?

That's the most ambitious movie I've ever seen.

I think what resonates with these characters

in popular culture is the humanity.

And you see yourselves in our characters.

A Marvel comic that was one of my favorite was The Avengers,

because it took some of my favorites from Thor and Iron Man

and it put them all together in one comic,

like, you get them all for 25 cents.

I very much followed the Marvel Universe

and took it very seriously.

And when I heard that all this was kind of leading up

to an Avengers movie, I have to admit, I was pretty excited.

I just really enjoy when they create a world

that you can kind of escape into for a little bit.

Avengers, the movie itself, changed everything.

JOSS WHEDON: What they had done in the movies before

was obviously extremely informative and useful and fun,

but there's also the element of, "Okay, you have all these parts,

"but how can you possibly bring them together?"

S.H.I.E.L.D. popped up in other movies.

Sam Jackson has come in and been cool

for about two minutes and then disappeared.

Well, this is really the movie where we get to see

why he would ever think this was a good idea to form this team.

JEREMY RENNER: What a massive challenge.

Impossible, really, in so many ways

to really assemble all of these characters.

Nick Fury seems to trust you.

But now we need you to come in.

What if I say no?

I'll persuade you.

LATCHAM: Banner is a complex character, and he's a tough character.

As Mark Ruffalo said when he first got cast,

it's like this generation's Hamlet. Everyone takes a shot at it.

And I thought it was a funny way of looking at it.

They enlist him as a scientist

to help them track down this energy source

that the Tesseract is giving off.

If there was any tampering, sir, it wasn't at this end.

"At this end"?

Yeah, the Cube is a doorway to the other end of space, right?

Doors open from both sides.

In order to need the Avengers, in order to need to assemble this group,

it has to be a day unlike any other,

when a threat appears that no single hero could defeat.

And in our film, that villain is Loki.

LOKI: The Chitauri are coming.

Nothing will change that.

What have I to fear?

The Avengers.

That's what we call ourselves. We're sort of like a team.

"Earth's mightiest heroes"-type thing.

So we've made this movie called The Avengers,

and the question burning on everybody's lips when we started is,

"What are they avenging?"

CLARK GREGG: I got this call from Kevin Feige and Lou D'Esposito

saying, "Listen, you have a really big part in The Avengers."

And I said, "That's awesome!"

'Cause I figured, well, come on, all those big movie stars.

Agent Coulson's gonna kind of pop in and give somebody a Slurpee.

And they said, "No, you have a really important part. It's integral."

I said, "That's great guys. That's great."

And then Kevin said, "Yep, what happens to you

"is what brings the Avengers together."

And I said, "Yeah...

"Kevin, is this my last Marvel movie?"

You like this?

Even I don't know what it does.

-(POWERING UP) -Do you want to find out?

(GROANS)

No!

Agent Phil Coulson has been, in his own words,

the glue of the Marvel Universe.

I think suddenly Loki's power and his malevolence

strikes home and they realize that they have to

overcome their differences and save the world.

-How do we do this? -As a team.

Millions of people in this country and around the world were watching

an alliance of superheroes

finally marshal forces to demolish the bad guys.

And the result?

The biggest weekend box office haul here at home, ever.

(CROWD CHEERING)

Fans have been wondering

and imagining if something like The Avengers would ever happen.

You know, they get their wish this year.

That people have responded to what comic fans have known for decades,

that this kind of shared ongoing saga in mythology is of interest to them.

That is incredibly gratifying.

I love comic book movies, especially Marvel comic book movies.

I grew up with Marvel Comics, and I never really matured.

MOYNIHAN: Jeremy Renner was hosting SNL

and I was very excited because anytime someone

from that Marvel world comes in, the costume department

looks at me like, "All right, what are you gonna write this week?"

Hulk!

Yeah, Hulk smash. I know. I know. (GROWLS)

I won't lie. I pretty much wrote it so that they would make me a Hulk costume.

Marvel was one of the deciding factors

in how nerd culture started to spill over and begin to eclipse pop culture.

Yeah, I'm here to announce that we're building Iron Man.

Yes, that's the sound of indestructible Wakandan Vibranium.

For me as a reader and a fan,

this was the stuff that made me love Marvel comics.

If Iron Man 1 was the first in a giant Avengers assemble phase one,

leading up to Avengers itself,

Iron Man 3 is the start of that new road into phase two.

How do you up the stakes from Avengers

when you take the characters that made up the Avengers

and put them back into their own franchise?

Well, I think you have to up the personal stakes.

We can go deeper into their characters in phase two,

and I think we did that with Tony Stark.

Things get more grounded in everything that we've set up,

but also more complicated and more challenging for Tony.

SHANE BLACK: There's an immense power about him,

but he comes round and he says,

"No, I still have responsibility to do the right thing."

Nothing's been the same since New York.

You experience things

and then they're over, and you still can't explain them.

We've seen now what they go through in Avengers

and how they're returning to their own worlds,

to their own storylines.

Changed from that adventure

but now ready to proceed to the next step.

Phase two is all about being true to a film being a direct link

to its first film, but also to The Avengers.

And Thor, more than any of the other characters,

went through a lot in The Avengers.

The entire film was about him

having to come to Earth to get his rogue brother back.

And what's great, when you have continuity like we do,

and when we can make another film, and the audience is telling us,

"Show us what happens next,"

is that in The Dark World, you get see what happens next.

In the immediate wake of Avengers,

sitting down with Kevin, and him saying, where do we go now?

That was really exciting.

That brother relationship is one of the main engines of the Thor movies.

You must be truly desperate to come to me for help.

You betray me, and I will kill you.

When do we start?

NARRATOR: As Marvel Studios was unleashing epic adventures

onto movie screens around the globe,

smaller stories were being developed to expand the universe,

giving fans a shot to further connect with some of their favorite characters.

The great thing about the Marvel characters

is they continue to grow and evolve and expand.

There's a lot of other stories we wanna tell.

There are some characters we wanna highlight,

namely, Clark Gregg, Agent Coulson.

And we decided to do a couple of short films.

It seemed like a logical step when we were building the universe

to be able to go into different nooks and crannies and tell stories

that maybe didn't warrant a giant feature film treatment

but still would be stand-alone interesting stories.

And when you look at the history of the comics,

there's great one-off books and they're called One-Shots.

So we took that name for the shorts program

and told these stand-alone stories

that couldn't exist anywhere else but the Marvel Universe.

During the same call when I was told about my impending demise,

I was also told about these shorts.

And I got the feeling that they did wanna do

whatever they could to kind of let us know a little bit more about Coulson.

What his daily life is like.

You know, just to build the audience's relationship to him

in advance of what's gonna go down.

So we came up with the first few shorts, The Consultant

and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor's Hammer.

The Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor's Hammer was

the drive from when we last saw Coulson in Iron Man 2

straight out to New Mexico to check out Thor's hammer.

We found it.

What I loved about Coulson,

at first he seems kind of just like an annoying bureaucrat.

-Who owns that car outside? -I do.

But it's really more like a lease.

As the story goes along, to my great thrill,

he turns out to be a much more formidable character.

Sorry for the mess.

PEARSON: Just those action beats that we had in there

burned through 80% of the budget for both the shorts.

So they came to me after I wrote the first one, they were like,

"It's great, we have the budget for two guys talking now."

So in The Consultant, I thought it would be cool to see a couple of

S.H.I.E.L.D. agents brainstorming a way to deal with this red tape,

bureaucratic politics of what was going on with the Avengers Initiative.

We send a patsy to sabotage a debriefing.

-A patsy? -Yes. Someone to screw it up.

Someone so inept that General Ross will refuse to release Blonsky.

It reintroduced Sitwell, who had a small role in Thor,

and it was able to tie up a pretty big thread

at the end of The Incredible Hulk, when Tony Stark meets General Ross.

STARK: You know, I hate to say, "I told you so," General,

but that Super Soldier program was put on ice for a reason.

I've always felt that hardware was much more reliable.

We had just seen The Avengers so we thought about it for a while

and we're like, "Man, New York's a mess."

There's probably those guns littered all over the place.

D'ESPOSITO: What if these young kids found the Chitauri weapon

the day of the big battle of New York?

WINDERBAUM: When we first conceived of the idea for Item 47,

Eric was smart enough to bring in the character of Sitwell

to kind of be the antagonist in that story.

(GROANS)

Please stop squirming.

The Marvel Universe is so big and it's so interconnected

that the smaller characters can become more developed.

D'ESPOSITO: It's a short film, so obviously

you're restricted with money, time.

So telling a simple story is a great opportunity for us

to continue to expand other characters. So we developed Agent Carter.

We know we have a resource in Hayley Atwell

that's being underused.

Captain America perishes in the ice.

He's not found. He's believed dead. What happens to Agent Carter?

PEARSON: It was fun to be able to play with the kind of chauvinism

and sexism of the mid-'40s office place.

Luckily for her,

once all the men have left for the night to go drinking

and she's stuck doing extra office work, there is an alarm bell that goes off

and suddenly there is an emergency mission.

This enemy will not hesitate to use lethal force.

Three to five agents recommended.

We framed her as an amazing superhero secret agent in her own right.

She's played a bigger role in the universe

that you've already enjoyed than you may have realized.

Tell her she'll be running S.H.I.E.L.D., with me.

Whenever we approach any project, it's always from the perspective

of how can we have the most fun with this.

Bloody hell. It's not exactly The Ritz, is it?

All Hail the King was really conceived on the set of Iron Man 3

by Drew Pearce and Stephen Broussard.

One of the things we wanted to do was take the source material, the character,

the ideas behind the character, and find an entirely fresh take on them.

I was here in America for my big break.

This would be the TV pilot.

Caged Heat. Wonderful piece.

Handsome lad. Handsome lad.

NARRATOR: The Marvel Universe was expanding,

and fans could follow across the movies and the short films.

But now, an opportunity to give fans a weekly visit

into the Marvel world presented itself.

And to launch this new series, they turned to a trusted old friend.

I'll be honest with you, in The Avengers,

as they were killing me, there's a number of takes of me

looking at the camera going, "I'm the glue!"

And, you know, I thought it was all over.

It had been quite a beautiful ride,

and really felt like the way that the fans responded to Coulson

is kind of what breathed life back into him.

I'm clearance Level 6.

I know that Agent Coulson was killed in action before the Battle of New York.

Got the full report.

Welcome to Level 7.

We see this series as an opportunity

for us to tell stories that happen after The Avengers

and before Avengers 2.

I like to think of it as the boardwalk

through the Marvel Universe.

We've seen S.H.I.E.L.D. in all of the Marvel movies,

and it's always a big S.H.I.E.L.D.

And we're sort of isolating that into this team of six.

We go into superheroes, weird science, things from other planets.

Things that can't be explained.

This goo, sir.

Very similar to the serum Dr. Erskine developed in the '40s for the...

Super-soldiers.

We are a team with some special talents,

but basically we're trying to help out

or investigate cases that have not been classified yet.

WHEDON: Coulson understands very well

what it's like to be a normal human in a supernatural world,

and so he creates a team

not unlike the way Nick Fury did in The Avengers.

That translates, in the role of people, into someone who's not just

a great anchor for us emotionally but a great leader.

GREGG: We're exactly the right team

to go around and investigate new threats.

People attempting to kind of utilize

some of the technologies and doorways

that we discovered in The Avengers.

And at the same time, I got a feeling we're gonna be

taking care of some old S.H.I.E.L.D. business that might pop up.

And pretty much anything that's in the Marvel Comics Universe

is fair game.

Might be some kind of cloaking mechanism.

Maybe it created some kind of portal. Jumped the train there.

Oh, let's hope not. I can't deal with Asgard today.

That's one of the goals, is to be filling in the cracks

between these giant movies, and be the piece that ties them together

through the throughline that is the Marvel Universe.

Hopefully, as it continues, there will be

a little bit of weaving in and around the movies.

Your world is in grave danger.

We're inviting you, and you're getting to meet

comic book elements between, like, you know, Deathlok, Lorelei, Sif.

It's been a great way to get people to experience

the Marvel Universe in a different fashion.

This is Colonel Glenn Talbot, US Air Force.

I need to speak with whoever's in charge over there.

Move in. We have an agent down.

NARRATOR: While the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

embark on new adventures each week,

this spring movie theaters worldwide

will see the return of Captain America as he comes face to face with his past,

and it will rock the Marvel Cinematic Universe to its core.

NARRATOR: In 2013, phase two got off to an explosive start.

Worldwide audiences fueled the box office

for Ironman 3 and Thor: The Dark World.

With the Cinematic Universe continuing to expand,

a founding member of the Avengers is returning to theaters

in an epic new adventure.

I moderated the Marvel panel

at Comic-con this past year in Hall H, and people went nuts.

I think Winter Soldier just kicks it up to the next level.

The biggest challenge is exceeding expectations.

Not just audience expectations, but our own expectations.

Unlike Iron Man, who goes back to Malibu and to Pepper Potts

and to his best friend, Jim Rhodes, or Thor who goes back to Asgard,

Cap can't go back in time. Cap is stuck now in this modern world.

So more than any of the other films, Captain America: The Winter Soldier

is gonna connect most to Avengers.

If you look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe, what's been constant?

It's been S.H.I.E.L.D.

Nick Fury is still the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. when we open the film.

The influence of S.H.I.E.L.D. has expanded

because of what happened in Avengers.

So here now is an organization who is built to address things

like the raid on Manhattan by the aliens.

And all of the sudden you find Nick Fury with more resources

than he's ever had.

FURY: We're gonna neutralize a lot of threats before they even happen.

Thought the punishment usually came after the crime.

JACKSON: Captain America's still not real sure about how the government

has intruded into everyone's lives, and so we're trying to bring him into

an understanding of what's going on.

This isn't freedom. This is fear.

S.H.I.E.L.D. takes the world as it is, not as we'd like it to be.

And it's getting damn near past time for you to get with that program, Cap.

Don't hold your breath.

We get to see those other sides of Steve

as he navigates this world of grays

when he came from a place where it was very clear

who the good guys were, who the bad guys were.

EVANS: I like the relationship between Fury, between Cap.

I think they each maybe have trust issues.

I think they've each been on the front line.

They've seen battles and lost friends.

They're at odds, as Nick often is with the other heroes.

But in this film, we get to see how both Steve is changed by Nick,

but even more importantly, how Nick is changed by Steve.

Nick's mentor, Alexander Pierce, head of the World Security Council,

and very close friends with Nick Fury, comes to help motivate Cap.

ALEXANDER PIERCE: Look out the window. You know how the game works.

Disorder. War.

All it takes is one step.

There's a certain amount of mystery that emerges about my character.

He's got a lot of dimension to him. He's really shrewd, smart.

I found that really appealing.

To build a really better world

sometimes means having to tear the old one down.

And that makes enemies.

Just when you think Cap's embraced this new life,

the old life comes in and punches him in the face,

in the form of the Winter Soldier.

WOMAN: Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists.

The ones that do call him the Winter Soldier.

FEIGE: One of the best Captain America stories in the comics over

the past probably 20 years is a storyline called The Winter Soldier.

And that story influenced us heavily, obviously, being the title of this film

and one of the main characters in this film.

It's this operatic relationship between Cap and his equal,

who just happens to be the friend that he thought was lost in the past.

Bucky Barnes was one of my Howling Commandos

during World War II.

CHRISTOPHER MARKUS: In the first movie,

when Steve rescues Bucky from the camp

in the middle of the movie, he's being experimented on,

with the idea that Bucky's a little off and a little different now.

He's the one guy that actually didn't make it back.

Grab my hand!

No!

He was found brainwashed, given a very similar serum to myself

and is now the Winter Soldier.

SEBASTIAN STAN: They really revived him to be this assassin

and use him as a weapon to target Steve Rogers.

We start to explore that relationship, which is so intense and dark.

JOHANSSON: When we first find Natasha and Steve,

since Avengers they have been tasked on many different missions together.

They have gotten to know each other a bit.

You know, if you ask Kristen out, from Statistics, she'd probably say yes.

That's why I don't ask.

Too shy, or too scared?

Too busy!

EVANS: Cap and Black Widow are very different people.

It's kind of like this odd pairing.

She has very questionable morality and Cap's a Boy Scout.

We couldn't resist the idea of putting those two characters together

because it's fire and water.

In this story specifically it was important for us to have

an outsider character, a character who didn't already work for S.H.I.E.L.D.

-What unit you with? -58th Pararescue.

But now I'm working down at the VA.

-Sam Wilson. -Steve Rogers.

I kind of put that together.

Starting in the '70s, Sam Wilson was one of Cap's closest friends.

They've teamed up for many, many, many, many issues.

And in this movie, we've made him a part of a paratrooper team

from the military.

And it's a very sort of advanced flight suit.

(MACHINE-GUN FIRING)

ANTHONY MACKIE: You know, Marvel gave him a true background.

They made him military ops and they really made the Falcon

a codename as opposed to his actual name.

So I'm glad that they went with that,

even though I was really looking forward to some spandex.

With Winter Soldier, you gotta up the spectacle.

You gotta up the massive nature of this thing

that people are anticipating.

We really wanted Captain America to be responsible for altering

the Cinematic Universe so that when we meet all of our characters

at the beginning of Avengers 2, things are very different

than when we left the characters at the end of Avengers 1.

And partially that's the experience that Tony Stark went through

in Iron Man 3, and partially that's the experience

of what Thor went through in The Dark World.

But primarily, because of the adventure

that Captain America has in The Winter Soldier.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: The price of freedom is high.

And it's a price I'm willing to pay.

NARRATOR: As we journey through phase two,

audiences will next be taken across the stars

where another unlikely group of heroes

will become the Guardians of the Galaxy,

and Earth's mightiest heroes

will reassemble to face a villain no single hero can defeat.

NARRATOR: With phase two continuing to explode

across screens worldwide,

the studio is now looking beyond the stars,

to the farthest reaches of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Guardians of the Galaxy seemed like a good opportunity

to kind of go a different direction.

We're gonna see the world from a totally different point of view.

FEIGE: It does take us back to that same mindset we were in

six, seven, eight years ago

when we decided, "Hey, we wanna make a feature out of Iron Man."

Guardians has been around for years.

Hardcore fans know them well from the comics.

But really we're looking at something new.

The driving force for me

was to be able to create a gritty world that was still very colorful.

CHRIS PRATT: The Guardians of the Galaxy consists of members

all of whom are very selfish for the most part,

but they find that there's something worth fighting for

that's bigger than themselves.

VIN DIESEL: The growth of these characters

allows for the film to kind of create

its own personality and its own identity.

That's always fun when you're at the frontier of something new.

Who are you?

Star-Lord.

Who?