During Marvel’s Phase One, they released a few short films called One-Shots starring Agent Coulson, played by Clark Gregg, to fill in some gaps between their movies. Now, Marvel will continue to produce these shorts, despite Coulson’s fate in The Avengers’, and Entertainment Weekly has a first look at the first piece of Marvel’s Phase Two, titled ‘Item 47’.
This short follows the events of Joss Whedon’s monumental film and stars Lizzy Caplan of ‘Party Down’ and ‘Cloverfield’ and Jesse Bradford of ‘Bring It On’ and ‘Flags of Our Fathers’ as a down on their luck couple who come across a weapon left behind after the Chitauri invasion of New York. After the pair turns to crime to turn their life around, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents played by Maximiliano Hernández (‘Thor’ and ‘The Avengers’) and Titus Welliver (‘Lost’) are sent in to try to stop them.
Written by Eric Pearson, who wrote the previous One-Shots, and directed by Marvel Studios co-president Louis D’Esposito, ‘Item 47’ is more like a short film than the others. Unlike the Coulson shorts, this one has a run time of twelve minutes and contains more of a story as opposed to a single scene. Pearson noted in the article “anything that expands the world and shows you the more human elements of it, that just makes the world more colorful and fun for the average viewer.”
By making these One-Shot shorts bigger, Marvel is exploring the idea of going even further “to not just tell not just inconsequential side-stories, but also experiment with longtime heroes who may not yet be ready to carry their own features.” D’Esposito talks about the idea and the pros and cons of using the shorts to introduce characters in this quote:
“There’s always a potential to introduce a character. We have 8,000 of them, and they can’t all be at the same level. So maybe there are some that are not so popular, and we introduce them [with a short] – and they take off. I could see that happening. [However] let’s say we wanted to introduce Ant-Man [in a short], and that would mean we have to cast him prior to having a filmmaker. That’s difficult and something we wouldn’t want to do.”
Well, in the case of Ant-Man, Edgar Wright, who shot a test reel for the film recently, and Joe Cornish are already in line to bring Hank Pym’s heroic alter ego to life, so I don’t see the problem with that particular character since all they’d really need to do is cast some actors, but I do understand what he means when it comes to other heroes.
‘Item 47’ will be featured on the DVD and Blu-ray release of ‘The Avengers’, which drops on September 25th, but fans at Comic-Con will have the opportunity to see it before the rest of the world. As for the rest of us who can’t make it to San Diego, I assume that the film will make its way to the internet at some point before it’s release in the fall, just like with the other Marvel One-Shots.
What do you think of the new upcoming Marvel One-Shot, ‘Item 47’? Do you like the idea of introducing heroes such as Iron Fist, Black Panther, or The Wasp in short films? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments!