The Splash Page

The Splash Page

We're not going to go too deep into the technical specifics of the movie, but we do want to point out the most famous shot in the whole thing: the circle around with all six Avengers united at last and ready to duke it out with the invading Chitauri. (Here's a still from it, for the curious.)

That shot composition is based on a specific technique in comic books themselves, called a "splash page," which usually occurs at a particularly dramatic point in a given comic book.

Most comics pages consist of multiple panels on each page, moving the story forward frame by frame until the last page. But splash pages are different. They're so monumentally huge that they take up an entire two-page spread to demonstrate their awesomeness. They usually precede some massive fight, featuring large numbers of heroes and villains getting ready to square off against each other.

The Avengers was inspired by comics and uses the language of comics to tell its story. So it's no surprise that its biggest and most famous moment would be the equivalent of a splash page: letting the audience know that we're at the climax of the film, while giving a little nod to old-school comics fans to remind them that The Avengers hasn't forgotten its roots.