The Avengers thread(may contain spoilers)

[Relaxing Dragon]

A slight quibble but did anyone else find it odd that Iron-Man could hang with Thor in a fight and Cap seemed pretty outclassed against everyone?

I had no problem with Cap being outclassed by everyone. I like Captain America, and they used him well. But he is the peak of HUMAN ability.

I did think that Iron Man shouldn't have been as close to Thor in strength. The shot where Thor is barely able to crimp Iron Man's armor with his grip was a bit weak for him, I thought.

I thought that worked pretty well. Thor's an all-powerful demi-God, whereas Stark created his suit as the absolutely apex of human engineering and armor capabilities. In a film that ends with humanity being established as an actual, legitimate galactic presence that's able to hold its own with the big boys, that's something that fits in well.

Plus, all things considered, Thor still did about the most damage to that suit over the course of the whole movie (or at least did the most damage that was caused by a single source). Shoot, he was able to put a dent (a small one, but a dent nonetheless) in the helmet just by headbutting it. Pretty good, I'd say.

[ScottotD]

Thor was pretty clearly winning the fight I agree, I just found Loki brushing Cap off so easily a little suprising I suppose. 

[100dollars]

They should have authoritatively established Captain America as the leader earlier on.  THEN robert downey's challenging of Cap would have played better. 

[LucasM]

Re: Avengers box-office success, Joss Whedon thanks his 'peeps'.  [<= click it: it's a link]

Tiny, tiny little quote from it:
RDA: What do you feel is the greatest achievement of "the Avoiders"?

JW: Getting "mewling quim" out there to the masses. Also, Hulk.

[Henry88]

$775,427,807    

http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=avengers11.htm

As great as its performance has been at the box office so far, readers and pundits appear to believe that Viacom's (NYS: VIA) Paramount Pictures stands to gain more from Marvel's The Avengers than does parent studio Walt Disney (NYS: DIS) , which produced the film via its Marvel Studios subsidiary.

Could that really be the case? Answering that question requires a bit of number crunching, which I've provided below. Yet we don't need a calculator to know this is a huge win for Marvel and Disney CEO Bob Iger, who orchestrated the theft...I mean purchase of Marvel Entertainment in 2009 for a mere $4 billion. Well done, sir (golf clap).

The story so far
All signs point to The Avengers joining the elite ranks of billion-dollar box-office hits. According to Box Office Mojo, Time Warner's (NYS: TWX) The Dark Knight took in $238.6 million in its first week in U.S. theaters. The Avengers is at $244 million as of this writing, and its first week isn't yet over.

For Paramount, eager audiences could result in a huge and highly profitable haul. Reuters reports the studio is due 8% of the gate, DVD sales, and Internet showings as a consequence of its 2005 deal to distribute Marvel movies. Paramount has already received $57.5 million of $115 million promised as an advance on distribution earnings.

Does that mean Viacom is getting a better deal than Disney? Unlikely. Marvel amended its distribution arrangement in 2008 in exchange for committing more upfront capital to its studio productions. In exchange, Paramount cut its fee from 10% to 8%, guaranteeing the comic book king a larger slice of profits for any future hits. Disney gets the same benefit.

Paramount wins, too, of course. A follow-up to the 2005 deal signed two years ago reportedly guarantees 9% of the proceeds from Iron Man 3, but what happens after that is anyone's guess. Disney's Buena Vista Pictures generally handles distribution for its in-house movies. Marvel productions should shift to this format at some point in the future.

Until then, what can Disney shareholders expect in terms of a cash flow contribution from The Avengers? Will it be any more than a rounding error? Some of you appear to be wondering.

A not-so-heroic attempt at deciphering studio math
The easy answer is that Disney gets a 50% cut of the gate and then writes a check to Paramount for any fees earned above $115 million in promised advances. Lop off another, say, 5% of gross participation for talent and then figure a fair cash flow margin and you've got a decent estimate for what The Avengers might contribute on a total dollar basis. Sounds easy, right? It would be if we knew what makes for a fair cash flow margin, and that demands some math, starting at the corporate level and working our way down. Take a few deep breaths first. Ready? Have your calculator? OK, here we go. According to figures compiled by S&P Capital IQ:

    Disney's studios tend to account for 16% to 22% of total revenue, and 9% to 15% of operating income.
    Disney's overall operating margin tends to run from 16% to 20%, with 19.5% as the average in its best studio years (2007, 2008).
    Companywide, cash from operations has recently come in at around 90% of operating income.
    Therefore -- and really, this is only a very rough guide -- we might say that Disney's studio cash contribution is likely to be 90% of its maximum operating profit contribution, which is 15% of 19.5% of overall revenue. (Still with me?)

Now, let's take this same formula and project forward:

    Analysts believe Disney will take in $42.71 billion in fiscal 2012 revenue.
    19.5% of that is $8.33 billion, which is our rough estimate of current-year operating profit.
    15% of that is $1.25 billion, which is our rough estimate of studio operating profit.
    And 90% of that is $1.12 billion in operating cash contribution from the studio operations.

What would The Avengers' piece of that contribution be? Back to the calculator, Fool. We know that Disney's top grossing films accounted for 22% of domestic gate receipts in 2007 and 2008. Yet that might not be a fair comparison. The Avengers looks like an outlier, more comparable to The Dark Knight than anything else. In 2008, that film accounted for roughly 30% of Warner Bros.' domestic gate, according to box office tracking site The Numbers.

Assembling profits, slowly
Using the same ranges as a proxy for cash contribution, it seems possible a $1.12 billion box office performance by The Avengers would account for somewhere between $250 million and $340 million in cash from operations during the current fiscal year and much more than that in succeeding years thanks to Blu-ray, DVD, and digital sales via the likes of Apple's (NAS: AAPL) iTunes, which already sells digital DVD equivalents packed with bonus features. Overall iTunes sales are on track to eclipse $8 billion during the current fiscal year.

Meanwhile, Paramount's 8% cut of The Avengers gate could reach $90 million this year, and a bit more than that down the road when you include DVD and Internet sales. Good, yes, but still well short of Disney's minimum haul.

Finally, what would a $250 million contribution from The Avengers mean? The House of Mouse has already collected $7.5 billion in operating cash flow over the trailing 12 months. Presuming that number doesn't change too much over the full fiscal year, Marvel's epic team-up could be responsible for -- wait for it -- 3% of Disney's fiscal 2012 organic cash generation.

Call it a rounding error, a blip, or even a non-event if you like. That's not really the story, nor is Paramount's cut. The truth is that, for Disney, The Avengers is the beginning of a long-tail opportunity that could add billions in revenue from park rides and merchandising while teeing up further profits for the studio operations. But it would have been an even bigger win for Marvel had the company remained independent.

Give Iger credit for recognizing the opportunity and moving to capture the profits. Identifying long-term winners isn't easy, especially those with the sort of disruptive DNA that Marvel possessed. Yet there are rebels still out there, and some -- like this potential multibagger -- are still trading on the cheap.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/05/10/the-avengers-will-be-a-billion-dollar-movie/

[wurwolf]

Re: Avengers box-office success, Joss Whedon thanks his 'peeps'.  [<= click it: it's a link]

Tiny, tiny little quote from it:
RDA: What do you feel is the greatest achievement of "the Avoiders"?

JW: Getting "mewling quim" out there to the masses. Also, Hulk.

Funny article, but I had to copy & paste it to notepad so I could read it. My eyes! 

[Rainbow Dash]

A slight quibble but did anyone else find it odd that Iron-Man could hang with Thor in a fight and Cap seemed pretty outclassed against everyone?

Not really.  Even in the Thor and Iron Man fight you got the impression that Iron Man would only be able to hold out for so long, and Thor wasn't even using his Hammer.  The Avengers are not equal.  Hulk and Thor are on entirely other levels than the rest.  Iron Man would be next, and Captain behind him. 

[ScottotD]

They should have authoritatively established Captain America as the leader earlier on.  THEN robert downey's challenging of Cap would have played better. 

No, I really loved that Tony asked him to take charge during the final battle, it was a cool sign of respect and made a lot of sense given he's the one with military experience

[LucasM]

They should have authoritatively established Captain America as the leader earlier on.  THEN robert downey's challenging of Cap would have played better.

No, I really loved that Tony asked him to take charge during the final battle, it was a cool sign of respect and made a lot of sense given he's the one with military experience

I agree.  And Tony also is expert at 'assessing things' just by viewing them a short time (how he manages to be as creative as he is).  It wouldn't have taken him long to figure out "this is the guy who can best form a group strategy".

In addition, the reason there was conflict to begin with was that every person in the room was a Type A personality (including Fury, of course).  Spoilered for - SURPRISE - plot points.But Fury, in his wisdom, realized that if they were ever going to work as a team together, they'd have to figure out for themselves who was the 'leader'.  Only by figuring out their OWN pecking order would it be sustained; having one thrust on them would have actually prevented a group of six Type As from forming a unified group.  Fury also understood that they all would have the Earth's safety as their primary goal [once they were nudged by Coulson's death] and wouldn't f*ck around for too long, knowing what was at stake.  They'd set aside their own egos and decide for themselves who would do what, and then get it done to whatever degree was possible.

[Henry88]

Just as it has been for centuries of immigrants and desperately lost, subway map-reading tourists, New York City is a favorite destination for angry, carnage-minded mutants, monsters and aliens -- though they intend to destroy the city's landmarks, not capture them in Instagram photos.

The latest invaders are the Chitauri, the shape-shifting aliens that descend upon Manhattan in the climactic battle in The Avengers. And with their starships and smaller, strikingly Kawasaki Jet Ski-like racers, they certainly succeed in wreaking havoc on the city. To walk out of a screening of the movie into the light of Park Avenue is a shock, with its clean streets and undented skyline, so to get a sense of just how much damage the Chitauri would have caused had the film been real life, The Hollywood Reporter reached out to Kinetic Analysis Corp., one of the leading disaster-cost prediction and assessment firms in the nation.

In an exclusive report for THR, KAC, led by Chuck Watson and Sara Jupin, employed computer models used for predicting the destruction of nuclear weapons and concluded that the physical damage of the invasion would be $60 billion-$70 billion, with economic and cleanup costs hitting $90 billion. Add on the loss of thousands of lives, and KAC puts the overall price tag at $160 billion.

For context, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks cost $83 billion, Hurricane Katrina cost $90 billion, and the tsunami in Japan last year washed away $122 billion.



Although many buildings in the fight's East Midtown arena suffered extensive structural damage, most were limited to the more superficial destruction of windows, facade and some interiors. Those buildings that had their tops crushed, though, would be especially costly and time-consuming to fix, as would be Grand Central Station, through which a warship crashed.

"The extensive damage to Grand Central Terminal could prove highly disruptive, depending on the subsurface damage to the subway system," KAC notes. "Although such damage is unlikely, as the 9/11 events showed, collapsing buildings can cause significant damage to subsurface infrastructure such as gas, communications and electrical systems. Detailed site surveys will be required to assess the state of the subterranean infrastructure."

KAC also predicts that liability would be a major issue. Who, exactly, will have to pay for the damage? S.H.I.E.L.D., they note, is likely protected as a government agency, though probes eventually will look into its role in predicting, preventing and responding to the invasion -- just as they looked into the Ghostbusters.

"Most insurance policies have special provisions for acts of war, civil unrest or terrorism," KAC adds. "Given the involvement of individuals considered deities in some cultures (Thor, Loki), there is even the potential to classify the event as an 'act of God,' though that designation would be subject to strenuous theological and legal debate."

Watson said he was surprised by a lower-than-expected total. "Compared to the aliens in Independence Day, for example, these guys were amateurs," he told THR. "Of course, the Chitauri/Loki alliance were more interested in conquest and ruling, whereas the ID aliens were just looking for lunch or something."

Still, with a $700 million two-week gross to protect, Marvel and Disney are lucky all the damage happened onscreen.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/avengers-damage-manhattan-would-cost-160-billion-322486

[Rattrap007]

^^ Loki vs Thor battle causing damage to building is ruled "act of God" 

That is kinda cool to see done. I love the occasional stuff like that that shows estimate of the financial damage done to an area in a movie.

[doggans]

That Thing In The Avengers You Totally Thought Was Joss Whedon's Doing Totally Wasn't

[Compound]

Never read the comics, but what is a Skull?

It's a piece of bone that keeps the organs in your head from flopping around. And the bad guy in Captain America.

But forget that. This is awesome:

[LucasM]

This is awesome:

That is so freakin' cool!  Any idea if it is his, or just a 'random' Avengers fan?

[Compound]

That is so freakin' cool!  Any idea if it is his, or just a 'random' Avengers fan?

Apparently that's Mark Ruffalo's son who was on the set quite a bit.

EW gives this quote:

Hiddleston found one person on the Avengers set whom he could gauge his performance by: Mark Ruffalo's 10-year-old son. "I owe so much of my performance to him. He loved Loki. After a take, Mark's son would be like, 'Oh my God, that was awesome!' I'd think, 'This is why I'm making this film.' Poor Mark had to come in on days when he wasn't shooting just because his son wanted to watch." Hiddleston laughs. "Having him on set should be in my contract for all future films."

And that's even more awesome.