Subject: *bounces excitedly*
Author:
Posted on: 2013-03-04 10:22:00 UTC
Awesome! Should be full of craziness. I'll be sure to let you know! (Craziness indeed. After the first planning session...well, let's just say, we're planning for quite a lot of guest stars. And hilarity. It's wonderful.)
Avengers is, technically, just the movie. However, most of the individual characters--that is, the superheroes--have their own movies leading up to this one, which is where they all come together. It is possible to watch The Avengers without having seen these other movies--I did it, for example--but there are occasional references to their backstories, which are in these movies:
Iron Man
Iron Man 2
Thor
Captain America: The First Avenger
and, technically, The Incredible Hulk, but that's a different actor. It is briefly referenced, though.
Hawkeye and Black Widow unfortunately lack their own movies right now, but they do appear in Thor and Iron Man 2.
Of course, you don't have to watch these other movies; you can, I think, get quite a good sense of what's going on from The Avengers (and it's done by Joss Whedon, so it's pretty darn good). Of course, it may then inspire you to see the others...at least, that's what happened to me, although that tends to happen (see my experiences with: X-Men, Star Trek, probably Doctor Who as well...)
As for what to expect from The Avengers: It's an action film directed by Joss Whedon, so, uh...excitement and fighting and explosions. Quite showy, and very visually attractive (unless you hate fight scenes and/or explosions, of course). However, it's not only a movie about a team of superheroes fighting a villain to save the earth--it's also a movie about six people, some of them civilians, all of them with some sort of baggage, all trying to work together to save the world from a powerful and wily Asgardian with his own emotional baggage. In other words--character development. Quite a bit of it, actually. Also, uh, they don't really get along for a good deal of the movie. So expect tension and some funny jibes and--you guessed it--character development.
In other words, a pretty much perfect movie, in my opinion. Exciting, dramatic, and with actual, human (and not-so-human) characters who carry the movie with, well, their characters. Also, really great acting :) You may not know all the names, but the main six are Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner, Scarlett Johannson, and Mark Ruffalo, and the supporting cast includes Gwyneth Paltrow and Samuel Jackson (among many other amazing actors). So basically...you'll probably enjoy it, at the very least.
(And while all the movies together are the fandom, if you just want to get a general idea of what it's about, you can try just watching The Avengers. You just won't know a lot of backstory).
~DawnFire