As you all know, the highly-anticipated comic book movie,
'The Avengers', started filming yesterday, and released an official set picture with the press release.
Now, ignoring the chairs, let's look and see what we have: obviously, the main attraction is the big S.H.I.E.L.D. logo. What's interesting is, in the past Marvel Studios films, the S.H.I.E.L.D logo was always the 616 version:
Whereas, in this picture, we have the Ultimate version:
Now, obviously, this is a S.H.I.E.L.D facility, regardless of the logo used. But the change in the logo is still very noticable, and noteworthy, as it likely means this area is of some sort of significance.
Also, I'd like to point attention to what the logo is
on. It's on some sort of cylinder, whether for decoration purposes or actual function isn't really clear. It could be a door, it could be an elevator. I'm inclined to believe it would have some sort of function, as an object of that shape would take up too much space to be merely decoration. If it were just something to put the symbol on, why build a large tube, isntead of putting it on a flat wall somewhere?
I've stumbled across multiple theories as to what this area could be:
Avengers Mansion, funded by S.H.I.E.L.D.
While the Avengers Mansions is awesome, I personally don't think this is it. While I wouldn't be surprised for S.H.I.E.L.D to fund the Mansion (although Tony could do that himself), it just doesn't seem like that's what it would be. It seems kind of like it would be a little less S.H.I.E.L.D influenced. If it were the Mansion, I'd think the symbol would be a big 'A' on the door.
Random S.H.I.E.L.D Facility
This is both kind of reasonable and yet something, with me, doesn't quite sit right. The explanations behind this idea are that since the main cast doesn't arrive until May, this is just a shot of some random facility for setup purposes, or for small-time purposes such as Coulson looking for Hulk. This makes sense, but between the suddenly changed logo, and the fact that they could always reuse a set later on in this films....what, 7 month filming run? They've been building sets for a while, they might not even have filmed in this room on Day 1. It's a picture of the set, but not necessarily the one they filmed on for Day 1.
And, my personal favorite:
S.H.I.E.L.D Helicarrier
This one, I'm inlcined to believe the most, for several reasons. If this were the S.H.I.E.L.D Helicarrier, the use of a different logo would make sense, since this is the S.H.I.E.L.D Headquarters, and having a specialized type of logo wouldn't be surprising. Another big reason is because of the S.H.I.E.L.D Helicarrier concept art from Iron Man 2 that leaked a while back, so they did plan to make one at some point. I can't think of a better time to utilize that than in The Avengers.
Marvel Studios' 'The Avengers' comes out May 4th, 2012.