It's the moment when Captain America, Iron Man, The Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Thor become The Avengers. From a storytelling perspective, the moment is absolutely essential to the cohesion and theme of the first Avengers movie as well as the entirety of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, the moment has become something of an iconic moment. It's seen in just about every piece of promotion for the Avengers movie or characters... It's also pretty popular in the Avengers meme world too. Honestly, it's just a perfect movie moment.

Sure, Captain America using Thor's hammer in Avengers: Endgame, as well as the big charge at the end of the movie, are also absolute perfection... But you can't quite compare them to this swooping 'hero's shot' in the first Avengers movie.

Thanks to a superb interview with Thrillist, Joss Whedon, and the creative minds behind The Avengers' finale, The Battle Of New York, we now know what went into this incredible moment.

Cue The Avengers theme song...

'The Hero Shot' Was The Basis Of The Whole Avengers Climax

According to the interview with The Thrillist, the idea 'hero shot' moment was the basis of the entire Battle of New York and was included in the script.

"We're going to want to see the group together," writer/director Joss Whedon said of the now-famous shot. "We're going to want to do a shot of everyone back to back. Now we are a team. This is 'The Avengers.' We'd get them in a circle and all facing up. Ryan Meinerding painted the team back to back, and that's basically what I shot. They're so kinetic and gorgeous, and he has a way of taking comic books and really bringing them to life, even beyond Alex Ross in a way that I've never seen."

Avnegers battle of new york
Pinterest

Visual development supervisor Ryan Meinerding had discussions with Joss Whedon very early on about the circle shot.

"He had some really rough ideas for that, like Cap walking forward as the camera spins around him, then he steps up on to a cab, and you'd sort of end with the shot that I finished with," Ryan explained. "The concern was whether it was going to be too disparate -- would it feel silly with these guys -- a green giant, a man wearing a flag -- all standing next to each other. So I dropped the sun behind them a little bit, gave them a little more atmosphere, tried to unify the colors a little bit more. But in the end, the notion of it is the coolest part of it."

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Of course, there needed to be a story reason why the entire Avengers team would be standing around in a circle as opposed to spreading out across the city battling the invading aliens in Loki's army.

"That's where they're standing, but why?" Joss said running the readers through his thought process when creating the moment. "Let's assume that there are aliens all over the walls, they're surrounding them, they're going to shoot at them, but they haven't started yet. Why haven't they started yet? And I was like Oh, let's give the aliens a war cry. So Hulk punches the Leviathan, and the aliens all scream like they're in pain... but it's also a warrior cry. Then one of the aliens takes off his mask because we need to see their faces and hear that cry. The Avengers are surrounded by guys going, 'WE ARE GOING TO F*** YOU UP.' But not by guys who are shooting yet. So there is a very specific reason that sort of evolved more and more right before we shot it. And then it's like, OK, we got them here, and then once they're there, you're like, OK, how do we get them to the next thing?"

How They Shot The Moment

In the interview with The Thrillist, the creative team behind The Avengers' Battle of New York went through all of the components of the creation of the sequence. After the story was scripted, everything was storyboarded to give the production and post-production team a head's up for what they needed to pull-off. From there, the sequence went through previs... Which is essentially an animated schematic of the entire sequence. This was orchestrated by Joss Whedon but actually done by a team of animators.

Avengers previs hero shot
Thrillist

Related: 15 Secrets Behind The Making Of MCU's Avengers Films

By doing this, Joss knew every place he and his production team would need to put the camera and helped the visual effects team plan their component of each shot.

This was what went into every moment in The Battle of New York, including 'the hero shot', which was filmed against a green-screen with the actors (including Mark Ruffalo in a motion-capture outfit for The Hulk).

"After shooting, there is another step called 'postvis,'" previsualization supervisor Nick Markel explained. "We receive plate photography and produce working temps of shots by filling in green screens and adding previs characters to represent the action, timing, and composition in the shot. Postvis helps directors and editors get a sense of the imagery prior to visual effects completion and can support picture cuts for reviews and screenings."

After that, the visual effects were added, it was color-corrected, sound and music were added, and they had a perfect movie-moment.

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