The Alternative Avengers: Ideas For Other Super Groups
With the first signs of Joss Whedon's superhero team-up The Avengers, WhatCulture! offers up some alternative alliances...
Thor has barely had time to hammer in a nail, Hawkeye hardly a moment to go all a quiver (that's an archery joke), Captain America nary thrown his first celluloid shield and Mark Ruffalo is yet to Hulk out after a couple of face-lifts, the Marvel machine is drumming up fervent fanboy excitement over the Joss Whedon helmed 2012 superhero team-up that is The Avengers. And, boy, do I find it hard to really get excited. Sure, from an Ocean's Eleven point of view it'll be nice to see these actors sparring with one another, and despite my personal distaste for Whedon's work he can at least write banter, and in the mouths of Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner, et al, maybe they'll lend it more sparkle than the likes of Sarah Michelle Gellar, David Boreanaz and Alyson Hannigan. However, I'm more of a casual comic book fan, so this team up isn't exactly directed at me, and personally I'd rather see a Justice League movie that endeavoured to pair Nolan's Batman with Singer's Superman and tried to convincingly put Aquaman into that mix. Anyway, a fair few years ago when The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen came out I was genuinely excited, and look where that got me, but it also made me think about a 'contemporary' spin on the idea, where the bulk of our pulpy heroes dwell at 24 frames a second rather than in the pages of popular fiction, and I put together my own dream team of cinematic action heroes, that I rather imaginatively called The League of Extraordinary Action Heroes, they were as follows... 
Axel Foley (Beverley Hills Cop), Asian Hawk (Operation Condor), Rambo, James Bond, John McClane (Die Hard), The Terminator, Ellen Ripley (Alien). This elite cadre of heroes were involved in battle with the evil Professor Bruckheimer and his assistant Michael Bay as they attempted to destroy the world using their over-editing, blue colour wash filters and bland soundtracks. In a way, like LXG was about retro heroes doing battle with a push towards modern warfare, my film was about old school action cinema going up against the flash-bang-wallop nonsense of too much CGI and this would have been reflected stylistically in the film that would never get made. Now that The Avengers is well and truly on its way I've started thinking about other 'dream teams' and have cobbled together a few more pitches for you, and would love to hear what other 'super groups' you'd put together if time and money were no option...
Tough Kids
Hit-Girl, Edgar Frog, John Connor, Kid (Dick Tracy), Short Round These kick ass kids show the likes of sniveling evil child actors Johnathan Lipnicki, Mara Wilson and Haley Joel Osment how it's done by beating them to a pulp.The Robot Revengers
Good Robot Bill & Ted, Bishop, Teddy from A.I., Box from Logan's Run, C3-PO, Marvin, ED-209. Fed up with the Transformers getting all the 'cool robot' points and big box office numbers a group of metallic marauders made up of cinemas greatest under-rated robots team up to redress the playing field. The Mouseketeers
Fievel, Stuart Little, Desperaux, Luke from The Witches. These plucky rodents form a criminal team to steal a million pounds of hard cheese from under the whiskers of criminal fat cat Garfield.Time Team
Marty McFly, Cole from 12 Monkeys, Time Bandits, Timecop, George Wells from The Time Machine. When all their time machines malfunction these intrepid adventurers find themselves stranded in a place that time forgot (Punxetawny) and have to make their daring escape against the evil overlord of time itself; Phil Connors.