The original cast of The Avengers have come together again, this time to recreate the 2012 superhero film in the Lakota language. This is part of a project to draw attention to this once banned form of language.
Marvel announced the project in a video on Friday, July 5, which also featured behind-the-scenes footage of the stars learning the Sioux language and then performing and delivering their lines alongside native speakers.
Mark Ruffalo, who plays Bruce Banner/Hulk in the hit film, helped organize the project and explained how this daunting task came about.
“This project came out of my relationship with the Lakota people,” Ruffalo, 56, explains in the video. “And it was something fun that they wanted to do, where they wanted to take The Avengers, this crazy idea of, let’s do a Lakota dub of The Avengers.”
The actor said he was inspired to join the Lakota Project to revive the language partly because “there aren’t many people left who can speak it.”
Mark Ruffalo, 56, helped lead the push to have The Avengers (2012) dubbed into the Lakota language to shed light on the once-banned form of speech in an effort to revive the language of the Sioux tribes.
All of the main actors went into the studio and had to learn and act out their lines in Lakota, including leads such as Ruffalo (Bruce Banner/Hulk), Scarlett Johansson (Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow), Chris Evans (Steve Rogers/Captain America), Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark/Iron Man), Chris Hemsworth (Thor) and Jeremy Renner (Clint Barton/Hawkeye).
The clip showed Ruffalo reciting his lines in Lakota in the studio and then attempting to not only say the lines but also act them out.
Other cast members who dubbed their lines included Scarlett Johansson (Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow) and Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark/Iron Man), as well as several native speakers of the Lakota language.
One of the men involved in the Lakota project claims that his ancestors were punished for speaking their own language, and that as a result, speaking the Lakota language went “underground.”
“It was only spoken in bedrooms when the matrons weren’t there at the boarding schools,” the nameless man explained. “It was spoken in dark rooms where no one could hear them, but it was still spoken.”
Another Lakota speaker added, “Our idea is to bring the language back into the homes of their people, and to connect them in such a way that they can enjoy watching a movie and become fully integrated into the language of our people.”
“The hardest part was probably getting everyone on the same page, but everyone did it,” Ruffalo admitted.
“It’s a daunting language,” The Kids Are All Right star continued. “There are sounds that we just don’t have in our own language that they have in theirs. But once you have them, it feels really good.”
‘It wasn’t just the dubbing, it was a reconstruction of The Avengers with the Lakota sensibility [and] the language,’ Ruffalo insisted. ‘I’m actually acting with my other Native brothers and sisters. And we’re acting these scenes in the Lakota language, and I have to act it out. I can’t just say the lines, it has to be acted out.’
Ruffalo was inspired to join the Lakota Project as a way to revive the language because “there aren’t many people left who can speak it.”
“This project came out of my relationship with the Lakota people,” Ruffalo explains in the video. “And it was this fun thing that they wanted to do, where they wanted to take The Avengers, this crazy idea of, let’s do a Lakota dub of The Avengers.”
Downey Jr. was excited about speaking his lines perfectly in the Lakota language
Johansson could be heard saying, “That sounded cool,” after a recording of her lyrics in Lakota
She can be seen as Black Widow in a still from the 2012 film
“Just getting everyone on the same page is probably the hardest part, but everyone was on board,” Ruffalo admitted
“You have the most famous movie franchise in the world and a number of famous actors, celebrities and characters speak our Lakota language, which was once banned,” one of the indigenous members of the project said.
‘I think one of the nicest things about the project is that our language no longer has to hide.
Lakota, also called Lakhota, Teton, and Teton Sioux, is a Siouan language spoken by the Lakota people of the Sioux tribes, according to Wikipedia.
Lakota is mutually intelligible with the two dialects of the Dakota language, particularly Western Dakota, and is one of the three major varieties of the Sioux language.
Like many indigenous languages, the Lakota language historically had no written form.
However, a written form of Lakota began to develop in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, primarily through the work of Christian missionaries and linguists.
For the project, which took 15 months to complete, organizers enlisted 62 native speakers of the Lakota-Dakota language to help round out the cast of supporting characters, Marvel said.
The Avengers, written and directed by Joss Whedon, was a huge success at the worldwide box office, grossing $1.519 billion against a budget of $220-225 million.
According to Marvel, the project took over 15 months to complete, requiring 62 native speakers of the Lakota-Dakota language to round out the cast of supporting characters.
Chris Hemsworth and Jeremy Renner were not shown in the video. However, it was suggested that all six original Avengers worked together on the Lakota Project dub.
The Avengers, written and directed by Joss Whedon, was a huge hit at the worldwide box office, grossing $1.519 billion against a budget of $220-225 million.
The Lakota-language dub of The Avengers is now streaming exclusively on Disney+.