The Avengers: Transmedia Storytelling (Post #3)

Avengers Assemble!

The Transmedia 

The greatest team to ever assemble in the world of transmedia has to be The Avengers. A film that was released with much anticipation in 2012 has found its way into the heart of mainstream popular culture. 
     
     What makes their transmedia storytelling so different from others is the sheer size of the vision behind it. Most of the films that came before the Avengers were all in anticipation for the collaboration in The Avengers. 

The film is a crossover of all the films independently produced by Marvel Studios set within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, namely Iron Man (2008), The Incredible Hulk (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010), Thor(2011) and Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). (Marvel Movies)

     Five films were created collectively with the vision to have a film that featured those heroes plus others that made appearances throughout the films as supporting characters. Even the main villain featured in The Avengers was also in Thor.

Avengers Assemble is an animated television
show I binge watch on Netflix.

     And they're not stopping there, that was only the beginning. Marvel Comics recently released their phase three plans for The Avengers Initiative, with The Avengers: Age of Ultron set to release the beginning of next year and The Avengers Infinity War to be released in two parts for 2018 & 2019.   

     They even shifted from the big screen, to the small screen, to the comic book world, and have even inserted themselves into the world of video games, they may not have always synchronized all the multimedia together; however, Marvel has brought together the greatest team of superheroes with simultaneous movie releases. 

     The television show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was released in 2013 only one year after the release of The Avengers. (Spoilers * Although Agent Coleson dies in The Avengers he's one of the main characters in the television show and the ramifications of his death in the movie still hasn't been fully answered in the show as of yet. * More spoilers * and in Captain America: Winter Soldier S.H.I.E.L.D. is completely destroyed from the inside by Hydra operatives, however the show is somehow still running.) And only those watching the television show will know the answers to the questions you're thinking after seeing The Avengers and Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

     The difference between multimedia and transmedia is the way that they travel into your data stream. Multimedia can be the television show or the movie, it can also be the social media you stalk or the video game you binge on for 70 hours. To put it simply multimedia is the platform and the transmedia is the plot.

     I like to think that each multimedia used in transmedia is another layer to the story. Writers know that a good story has multiple layers and much like a well told story, transmedia uses layering to create a deeper plot to a story.

"The challenge, he says, is to create works with enough depth that they can justify such large scale efforts: 'Our primary goal should be to prevent closure from occurring too quickly.'" (Jenkins 97 & Levy)

Bibliography:

Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York and London: New York University Press, 2006).

Pierre Levy, Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Books, 1997).

Marvel Movies Wikia, Nov. 12 2014. <http://marvel-movies.wikia.com/wiki/The_Avengers_(film)>

Matthew Cole

Professor Caçoilo

Convergence 

12 Nov 2014