We normally reserve 10 & 5 posts for big movies that are familiar to the masses, but once in a while it’s good to shine a light on a low profile indie film. This is not that time though, so instead we’re taking a look at the movie with the biggest opening weekend in history. Joss Whedon‘s entertaining as hell blockbuster, The Avengers, has already earned a rare A- grade from us (read Cole Abaius’ review), but Robert Fure and Rob Hunter wanted to take a more detailed view complete with potential and actual spoilers. Warning: There are major spoilers below. Major spoilers. You’ve now been warned about the major spoilers.

It’s been open overseas for a week, already raking in more than $200m, and now The Avengers is landing on U.S. soil with one of the biggest summer openings in history. But does that mean you should see it now? Or do you wait for home video? Sure, there’s plenty of arguments as to why you can wait, including obnoxious crowds, high ticket prices, and the general hassle of getting your butt off the couch and driving to your local multiplex. However, here are seven ultimate reasons should convince you to, paraphrasing Shakespeare, “Get thee to a theater!” and witness Marvel’s greatest achievement in superhero movies.

Did you hear? Did you hear? Go tell Paul Revere! Joss Whedon and Marvel’s The Avengers is out this weekend which marks the beginning of the summer and an end to the anticipation. To discuss the film, we turn to comic book/Avengers expert John Gholson from Movies.com. Plus, ScreenCrush critic Jordan Hoffman plays Movie News Roulette and talks Dark Knight Rises, Star Trek and texting in theaters. Download Episode #132

The Bourne Legacy is not only one of the most highly-anticipated films of the summer, it’s a unique chance to revisit the blockbuster franchise with a different star at the helm. Meanwhile, co-writer/director Tony Gilroy, one of the key creative voices behind the original trilogy, is preserving the series’ lore while giving its events a broader and more epic context. As the film’s trailer observes, “Jason Bourne was just the tip of the iceberg,” and Gilroy’s insights about the direction he took the franchise in, for the first time as both writer and director, suggest that this expansive view of the world of Bourne was part of his plan all along. But as if embodying the director’s perspective, Jeremy Renner’s character Aaron Cross isn’t an unknown entering a larger world, but an experienced agent who knows exactly who he is and what he’s meant to do. Speaking to the Academy Award nominated filmmaker recently, Gilroy talked about reviving the franchise via The Bourne Legacy, revealing how he paid tribute to longtime fans even as he looked to a broader horizon, and the organic approach he and cinematographer Robert Elswit approached the picture with.

The Avengers the film needs no introduction, and that’s mainly because The Avengers themselves need no introduction. A dream team of superheroes and superallies, The Avengers first appeared in the Marvel universe in 1963, so for fans of the mighty band of heroes, a big screen cinematic adaptation that would do justice to the justice-doers has been a long-held wish. With Marvel Studios churning out blockbusters for eventual Avengers like Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and The Hulk in recent years, it was only a matter of time before that wish was granted and the heroes united for one massive film outing. It goes without saying that Joss Whedon‘s The Avengers is already a big hit here at FSR (our own Cole Abaius called it “Marvel’s mightiest movie” in his review), and we’re all anxious to see what movie-going audiences think of it. To whet your palate for the inevitable Avengers bonanza, here are 12 things that we learned at The Avengers press conference (spoiler-free if you’ve seen a trailer or two!). The event featured a massive gathering of Avengers and pals, including Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man/Tony Stark), Chris Hemwsorth (Thor), Chris Evans (Captain America/Steve Rogers), Mark Ruffalo (The Hulk/Bruce Banner), Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Kevin Feige (Marvel President), Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye/Clint Barton),Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson), Cobie Smulders (Agent Maria Hill), and Joss Whedon (writer and director). Check it out after the break!

Joss Whedon‘s excellent action geek-out The Avengers hits US theaters this weekend after a storm of anticipation that’s lasted for four years and five movies. Marvel’s ultimate team is finally together, and the results are incredibly impressive. You can read my review here, but while you sit in your Captain America uniform, unwilling to remove it or bathe for the next week, gear up to new giddy levels of excitement with these behind-the-scenes videos. From a disoriented Robert Downey Jr. to Jeremy Renner in fight choreography practice to a running Scarlett Johansson to Mark Ruffalo blissfully posing with a nude mini-Hulk, there are some really fascinating bits here:

In a New York living room, sometime in the early 1970s, a young boy is sitting in front of his television (possibly watching an episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus) and playing with plastic toy figures of Earth’s mightiest heroes. He smashes The Hulk into Thor, zooms Iron Man around at incredible speed and makes Captain America leap over an H.R. Pufnstuf doll. Because, you know, he’s got one of those too. Forty some odd years later, that same little boy named Joss Whedon got a chance to slam those toys together again, and he achieved something that’s made up equally of the magic of childhood and the craftsmanship of a seasoned filmmaker. It was an impossible dream, a crazy call-out to the far left field bleachers, but The Avengers is the best movie that Marvel has made.

Joss Whedon has sought to make The Avengers unique, and the latest way was shooting a scene for the movie after the movie premiered. According to HitFix, the entire team (from Robert Downey Jr. to Scarlett Johansson) used the opportunity of the occasion to shoot one last scene. Apparently it’s tough getting a dozen notable names in the same room. There’s no telling what the scene entails, although there’s speculation from Mark Ruffalo‘s press conference statements that the scene will appear at the end of the movie. It’s not the stinger; the audiences on Wednesday night already saw that. It’s definitely an interesting move. Or a really expensive way to get one audience to want to see the movie again. It’s not like they need it. The movie is already tracking for a $135m opening. Let’s see all of them try to get in the same room after that.    

Can you feel it? Now that The Hunger Games has made its way into theaters (and the record books), the only thing left to do now is begin Summer Movie Season 2012. That will happen on May 4, when Marvel Studios delivers the long-anticipated superhero team-up film The Avengers. With a little bit of Iron Man, some Captain America, The Hulk and the rest, The Avengers feels like the perfect place to begin what promises to be an intense summer of movie watching. But before we get to that, there is more excitement to be had (read: Disney has more marketing to be done). So today is the day when we bring you a number of behind the scenes images from the set of The Avengers, along with a new behind the scenes featurette that takes us into the production with Joss and the gang.

Wow. People holding Tribeca badges and passes just got a kick in the pants from a dude in a metal suit, a guy who rips his purple shorts with rage and a host of other dysfunctional family members. According to their latest press release, the Tribeca Film Festival is closing its 2012 calendar with The Avengers. At a film event that celebrates James Franco’s eccentricities alongside indie filmmakers famous and not-yet-famous alike, this is a blockbuster move – one that the fest is using no doubt for publicity and as an opportunity to celebrate the heroes of New York City and beyond. Firemen, police officials, military personnel and others will have a special chance to join in on the screening. Marvel head Kevin Feige weighed in, saying, “We are proud that Marvel‘s The Avengers is the closing film of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival and we are excited to welcome local heroes to the screening as special guests. We all know and love our iconic Super Heroes, but when it really counts, it’s our real-life heroes who save the world every day by making it a better place for all of us.” Despite its normal focus on the obscure, this fits well with the Tribeca mission which arose from the ashes of 9/11 as a means to prop up the New York City economy and to celebrate its art. On another level, it’s a booking that’s incredibly cool and makes native New Yorker Joss Whedon very happy. The director had this to

It’s getting to the point where there are so many huge names involved in Ridley Scott’s upcoming project The Counselor that you can’t even write a proper headline about it. Not only does it have a living legend for a director, but this is also a movie that’s being shot from an original spec script from a living legend of an author, Cormac McCarthy. Plus its attached star, Michael Fassbender, is one of the most sought-after future icons in the film industry. And now an upcoming second round of casting decisions have The Counselor set to become an even more studded-with-stars affair. The Playlist has picked up a report from Twitch stating that three huge names are currently in talks to help Fassbender fill out the cast: Jeremy Renner, Javier Bardem, and Natalie Portman.

The interesting thing about the Mission: Impossible franchise is that, more than any other blockbuster franchise out there, it has been a showcase for its directors. Though they all star the Tom Cruise-played character of Ethan Hunt, the first few Mission: Impossible movies tell very contained stories, and rely very little on what came before them. And when you think back to each movie and what makes them stand out in your mind, whether you picture the kinetic action of John Woo or the lens flares of J.J. Abrams, it’s that the style of their directors was so prominently on display. That’s been a fun exercise so far, but one that may be called into question soon. The big news of the day, as far as Mission: Impossible is concerned, is that a fourth sequel has been confirmed as being in the planning stages. According to a THR report, when asked at a shareholder’s meeting whether there were “any plans to develop an additional sequel,” Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman replied, “Oh, yes.”

Do we really need to introduce this one? Check out the brand new trailer for The Avengers below.

Do you guys even like hearing rumors straight out of Deadline Daytona Beach? Be honest. Is there value in them for you as movie fans? Do you feel like reporting chatter is just like being back in Film Blogging High School (where all of Rejects attended, and were subsequently kicked out). Tell me. In any case, it’s a slow pre-Oscars Friday, and it looks like all we have to report are rampant rumors. So here they are. Deadline Detroit reports that MGM “is making an offer” to rising star Joel Kinnaman for the titular role in the new Robocop. That’s right, the news isn’t that MGM has made an offer, it’s that they will. I’m getting to old for this game. But while rumors and gossip and chatter are, by and large, not very exciting, this news is – mainly because the possibility of a fresh face in an old property is actually interesting.

“There was never just one.” Well, that’s a nifty way to explain why Matt Damon isn’t in the latest installment of the Jason Bourne franchise, The Bourne Legacy. Damon’s out, and Jeremy Renner is in as another victim and/or participant in shady Project Treadstone. This first stylized trailer (complete with Inception-esque “brannngsss” and “brrahhhhmmms”) introduces us to Renner’s character – a bruiser from Reno who is on the run after showing some impressive stuff to all those government heavies who’ve gone through this already with Jason Bourne. Don’t you think Joan Allen‘s Pam Landy is just exhausted by now? Join the program and check out the trailer for The Bourne Legacy after the break.

I tease, of course. The Avengers is almost guaranteed to be a gigantic hit this summer and probably one of the year’s highest grossers. The film has a built-in audience by virtue of its characters, history and the intentionally structured universe that Marvel has created with the earlier films. It’s going to be huge thanks to the presence of Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo/CGI) and others. And it’s going to be fun thanks to Joss Whedon in the director’s chair. But will it be any good? All signs point to yes, and that’s including the new TV spot below.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr goes rogue and infiltrates his local IMAX theater. First, he scales the wall of the plus-sized building and slides in undetected through the air vents. He slowly lowers himself into a theater seat to enjoy an early screening of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Unfortunately, he finds himself in the middle of a wild crowd of six-year-old kids for the early screening of the latest Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. To deal with the psychological damage, Kevin then stumbles into the Sherlock Holmes sequel and later finds an extra seat in Young Adult, where he can imagine that his chubby caboose could land a hottie like Charlize Theron.

Did you ever wonder what might have happened to fairy tale characters Hansel and Gretel 15 years after that fateful day when they pushed a witch into an oven? No, neither did I. But director Tommy Wirkola and his co-screenwriter Dante Harper did, so now we’re getting the new action film Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, starring Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton as the titular duo. That’s a ridiculous idea, so scoff if you must, but I’m starting to think this movie might actually do pretty well. We’ve already written about how awesome it is that Peter Stormare is set to play the villain of this piece, and now Entertainment Weekly has revealed the first official image from the film, which has Renner and Arterton all butched up in black leather with big guns (check out the full photo after the break), and they’re throwing around buzz words like “dark” and “violent” in the accompanying interview. All the talk of darkness and grittiness isn’t just casual though, it’s hammered home in a way that suggests they’ve been instructed by the studio to push how decidedly not for kids this movie is going to be. Arterton told EW, “You see a series of flashbacks with their experience of killing that first witch, which is brilliant. I remember being on set for the final few days of that. The candy house, and the witches are really repulsive and quite frightening. The make-up is out of this world. It’s this bone-chilling scene. Very

It was kind of a head-scratcher when it was first announced that Universal would be making another Jason Bourne movie that didn’t have Matt Damon in it. How do you make a movie about Jason Bourne without Jason Bourne? The plan seems to be to keep the action happening in the same universe that it previously in Damon’s three movies, but to introduce another operative as our protagonist. That’s a dumb idea. Why not just make a different movie called something else? Stupid ideas aside, The Bourne Legacy managed to get a great actor in Jeremy Renner to play the new operative, so maybe it won’t be all that bad. It still leaves a lot of question up in the air, though. Who is Renner’s new character going to be? Is this movie going to look like the original Bourne movies, all gritty and handheld? Well, when recently talking with Empire, Renner managed to cough up some details about the new movie, and while revealing, it all sounds like pretty typical sequel speak. When asked about the tone of the new film, he confirmed that, “Yeah, it’s that same deal, it’s just a new set of agents with a different leash. It’s the same tempo and pace but more expansive and bigger. The differences are pretty vast but you’ll know it’s a Bourne movie.” I think there’s some sort of clause that gets put in your contract when you sign on for a sequel that you have to talk about

Sometimes writing about movies on the internet has some benefits. I mean, we get all the crappy straight to DVD movies you can think of and sometimes free popcorn. We make next to no money, but in return we get to see movies early and sometimes, just sometimes, we get to see bits of movies before they’re ready. Such was the case recently when I, along with a few other journalists, got a chance to see about twenty minutes of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol projected in a true IMAX theater. If my description, reaction, and thoughts isn’t enough to get you wet with excitement, we’ve also got the new trailer for you, so come on in and read some more.