The cast of 2012’s The Avengers has reunited for the best project: to dub the iconic film in Lakota, and it’s all thanks to Mark Ruffalo.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe films are beloved internationally, having fans all over the world. Throughout Marvel Studios’ Phases One to Five, the films have grossed billions worldwide, and most of them received great feedback from the critics and the audience alike. Although the original Avengers team, which included Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, and Mark Ruffalo, haven’t been a part of the franchise in several years, they reunited for a celebratory cause.
The latest MCU project reunited the original cast to give something back to the Native American people. The original actors assembled again to release Marvel Studios’ The Avengers in the native Lakota language, and the version is now available on Disney Plus.
Mark Ruffalo is the real hero behind this heroic move
Marvel Studios’ The Avengers is available in many different languages on Disney+, including Chinese, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Italian, and, of course, English. Now, the dubbed versions also include Lakota. Lakota is a dying language, spoken by approximately 2,000 people of the Sioux tribes, and the new move to have The Avengers available in this language is a huge win in trying to keep it alive. And the real-life hero behind it is Mark Ruffalo.
The actor, who portrays Bruce Banner/ The Hulk in the MCU, is a huge supporter of the Lakota people. In the past, he had collaborated with the Lakota community on several projects, including the documentary Lakota Nation vs. United States, which he executively produced. Now he has managed to bring everyone together for his celebratory cause, including Chris Hemsworth and Jeremy Renner, who was still in recovery after his near-fatal snow plow accident. Ruffalo revealed that “everyone was into it,” and he was happy to do the project.
“Just getting everyone together on the same page was probably the most difficult thing. But everyone really was into it. It’s a daunting language: There are sounds that we just don’t have in our language that they have in theirs. But once you start to get there, it feels really good.”
Dubbing the film took over 15 months, and 62 Lakota-Dakota speakers were involved, alongside the original cast of The Avengers.
“You have the most famous film franchise in the world and some of the most famous actors, celebrities, and characters speaking our Lakota language that was once banned,” Lakota dub executive producer Ray Taken Alive explained. “So, a really beautiful thing from the project is that our language doesn’t have to hide anymore.”
In the original behind-the-scenes video, all of the Avengers actors were committed to saying it right, proving that they are real-life heroes, at least for the Lakota people.