Samuel L. Jackson carries a lot of iconography into a room with him when he arrives somewhere.
My own kids, for example, already know him as Mace Windu. Allen’s four, but he knows Jackson by sight and by sound. All he needs to do is hear his voice from another room, and he’ll walk in, ready to see what Mace Windu is up to.
That can make things complicated when I’m playing a film like “Jackie Brown,” and his dulcet tones draw the kids to the TV just in time to hear Jackson lay down a stream of perfectly timed motherf**kers. They’re starting to realize he is in a lot of movies, and when they saw him on the posters for “The Avengers,” they were excited.
He’s got more to do this time around than in any of his previous appearances, and talking to him at the press day for the film, it seems like he’s just warming up. He’s happy to keep playing Nick Fury as long as they’ll have him, and he’s got a good handle on the character’s whole history, making jokes about the David Hasselhoff version at one point in the day, eager to step into the Hasbro room to see the action figures. Right now, Marvel is working hard to bridge the classic rendition of Nick Fury into the Samuel L. Jackson image that they’ve developed.
I’m not sure if they’re going to really do a SHIELD movie, but I do think it’s a good idea giving Jackson a sidekick like Cobie Smulders, and I think this film features just enough of the two of them to set things in motion. Obviously, Jackson’s thought a good deal about their relationship, and he lays it out for me here.
It’s hard to believe we’re just a few days away from the film hitting theaters, but it’s true. “The Avengers” is coming, and it’s a blast.
“The Avengers” opens in the US on Friday.