What I think is incredible about what Marvel has done and with Jon Favreau I think really maybe helped come up with, is what the template is.

Speaking as Coulson, it's unclear. I feel like that are other formidable S.H.I.E.L.D. elements and they don't have Coulson's connection to some of these people. I think what I like about what seems to be going on is there are differing opinions about who's where on the hierarchy and I think that's some of what goes on in the movie.

I think about it, and I realize there's been some version of a Batman or Spiderman or Superman franchise since I was a boy, since before I was a boy.

To go from Jon Favreau for Iron Man 1 and 2 to Kenneth Branagh for Thor and the very different world of Thor, it's about how to adapt to Coulson in a different setting and a different world while, at the same time, still have him be a part of the same world.

I'd be just another Marvel fan, only with a little bit bigger smile, when I would get the script and be like, "Oh, my gosh, Agent Coulson knows that?

It's a little strange, after all these years of working on camera, but once you start to watch the other people who do this a lot and realize how much of what you're doing has to just come through your voice, I found it really interesting.

I'm just an actor who happened to love these [Marvel] comics when I was a kid, and got to rediscover them.