The week of "The Avengers" Blu-ray/DVD featurette teases continues.
The latest comes at us from Collider and is taken from the longer special feature called "Marvel's The Avengers - A Visual Journey." That documentary piece explains how director Joss Whedon and his digital effects team created the look of "The Avengers," and this minute-long clip offers a closer look at the inception of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier.
"It was part of the bargain with Marvel right away. They wanted the Helicarrier, and I wasn't about to say no," Whedon said. "It looks amazing. When it was first designed in the '60s, it had little propellers. Since then they invented science, and we realized that might not actually stay up."
The biggest difficulty was translating the fantastical idea of the Helicarrier presented in the comics into something that was believable on the big screen.
"Always the idea was this floating fortress, and we talked a lot about how do we make it work. We went to a more traditional aircraft carrier design, partially because in the comics it's very bottom-heavy," he said. "The streamlined design that the guys came up with was beautiful but also you could just buy it. It was toeing the line between reality and fantasy."
The featurette goes on to discuss how Whedon and co. decided to create the look of the Helicarrier. The scene where Chris Evans's Captain America and Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner watch the Helicarrier rise from the water was particularly tricky, especially since they shot most of those scenes on land in Albuquerque. The majority of the Helicarrier, as it turns out, was created digitally.
"The Avengers" is available on DVD, Blu-ray and digital download on September 25.
Were you surprised by the creation of the Helicarrier? Tell us in the comments section below or on Twitter!
