THE GANG’S ALL HERE
Over 20 movie stars, two directors and very few answered questions
“It might be best for you to see it, so I’m going to talk about bass fishing, OK?”
That was Chris Pratt’s response to a typically geeky question at a star-studded news conference for Avengers: Infinity War on Sunday. Pratt, who returns to the big screen on Friday as Peter Quill/ Star-Lord in the sprawling Marvel Universe mash-up was asked something about how his character feels about seeing humans for the first time in 30 years.
As promised, Pratt proceeded to discuss his bass-fishing preferences rather than risk anything that might be construed as a spoiler for the next Avengers blockbuster, which is being hyped as an eraclosing culmination of 10 years of Marvel Universe films. Of course, as of Sunday’s news conference, virtually no one had seen the finished film, neither the gathered press nor most of the cast on stage.
Its red carpet première was more than 24 hours away. Which all lead to the surreal spectacle of 21 of the Marvel Universe’s biggest movies stars, plus directors Joe and Anthony Russo and Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige, struggling to discuss a film they couldn’t discuss and trying to answer questions they couldn’t answer. Granted, they didn’t try very hard.
“I haven’t seen the movie, don’t know anything about the movie, don’t know anything about the storyline, haven’t read the script, haven’t read one of the fake scripts,” said Dave Bautista, the former professional wrestler and fellow Guardians of the Galaxy alumni who returns as the fearsome Drax in Avengers: Infinity War.
What little we do know about the story is that it focuses on the ultimate Marvel Universe villain Thanos (Josh Brolin), and his attempts to gather six magical “Infinity Stones,” which have unimaginable power and will presumably put earth and other parts of the universe in peril should they fall into his over-large hands. Since he is far too big a threat for one team of superheroes to handle, the fractured Avengers (including Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Paul Bettany as Vision, Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlett Witch, Anthony Mackie as Falcon, and Don Cheadle as War Machine), will apparently be joined by Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), Spider-Man (Tom Holland), the Guardians of the Galaxy (Star-Lord, Drax, Zoe Saldana as Gamora, Pom Klementieff as Mantis), and Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), and his crew from Wakanda (Letitia Wright as Shuri, Winston Duke as M’Baku, Danai Gurira as Okoye) for the epic battle.
In an earlier interview with Postmedia, screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely confirmed that few of the actors had actually read the screenplay all the way through. The secrecy over plot points has led to a good deal of speculation among bloggers and other members of the press. Some of it has focused on the fate of Captain America, who had a falling out with Tony Stark/Iron Man in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War. Actor Chris Evans, who sports a beard in Avengers: Infinity War and was conspicuously absent from Sunday’s conference, has said he wants to retire his Captain America after Infinity War’s 2019 as-yet untitled Avengers sequel.
Perhaps aware that the actors assembled on stage were unable to reveal much about anything, the Marvel/Disney organizers of Sunday’s news conference gave it even more of a game-show vibe than normal.
Actor Jeff Goldblum, who played the amusing Grandmaster in Thor: Ragnorak, was enlisted to moderate the festivities. That entailed him spinning a hopper full of balls as a way of setting up how the actors could be questioned. Each ball had a question or name of an actor the press could then address.
To add to the carnivalesque atmosphere, Goldblum also took to throwing the balls around the room, even managing to accidentally bean a not-entirely-amused Downey Jr. on the head at one point.
A somewhat baffled Johansson was earnestly asked to comment on the Avengers’ “fashion elements” at one point (“I got the fashion question?! I honestly don’t know how to answer that question. I wear a leather unitard for most of this film and have been for the past 10 years,” she said).
Mackie had the best line of the afternoon when asked what it was like to “struggle” for screen time amid all the other superheroes.
“A wise man once said ‘Some men need an hour to make their presence felt, some men need 30 seconds,’” he said.
Was that a hint? Who knows. It became clear fairly early on that the stars were unable or unwilling or both to reveal too much about what is likely the most anticipated superhero movie of all time.
The closest to any concrete information we got was from Downey, the actor who was there at the very beginning of the whole overlapping Marvel Universe phenomenon in 2008’s Iron Man. He was simply asked if he would be appearing in the fourth instalment of the Avengers, which has already been filmed.
“You never know,” he said. “I’m going to see it on the screen tomorrow. If I die tomorrow, I’m going to be confused.”