It’s not just the members of the Avengers who have secret identities. When the team's headquarters isn’t housing spaceships or time machines, its real-life identity is a manufacturer of heavy equipment like excavators, crane machines, bulldozers and concrete mixer trucks.
(This story contains mild spoilers for Avengers: Endgame. If you haven’t seen it yet, why aren’t you in a movie theater right now?)
Head to the HQ in real life and you’ll get an excavator instead of the Guardians of the Galaxy spaceship Benatar that was parked outside in Avengers: Endgame. (Picture: China Daily/Weibo)
Other people have recognized the building before, as well -- like this Redditor did last month. The connection only recently started trending on Chinese social media, though. The discovery was later confirmed by Chinese media. A Chinese movie journalist who is close to Paul Rudd also posted on Weibo a picture on set, saying he visited the Sany location during the filming of Endgame.
Online buzz about the minor detail attests to the huge popularity Avengers: Endgame has enjoyed in China so far. The movie has raked in US$575 million in ticket sales there in just three weeks, making it China’s biggest foreign film at the box office.
Sany and the Avengers crew signed a confidentiality agreement so it didn’t generate any buzz before the release of Endgame. (Picture: DaweixiongDr_GMF/Weibo)
Many netizens were amused by the location choice. After all, the Avengers are supposed to be a high-tech, superpowered team. There seems to be some irony that the real location of their HQ actually makes unwieldy and unexciting machinery.
"How bizarre! So the seemingly very fancy Avengers HQ is actually where Chinese park their excavators!" a popular Weibo comment said.
Look at these mighty, top-of-the-line excavators! (Picture: China Daily/Weibo)
This is not the first time Chinese fans have found their country featured in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In the second season of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., a map showing the headquarters of the evil organization Hydra was found to be eerily similar to the map of Shanghai. While a few people slammed Marvel for the haphazard association, many fans got a good kick out of it.
If you are feeling lazy and just want to copy and paste, maybe try a place that doesn’t have 26 million residents. Just saying. (Picture: Weibo)
But this time around, China was featured on the good guys' side. For that, many Chinese fans appeared proud that the Russo Brothers picked Sany's headquarters as the base for the Avengers.
Others noted that Thanos later blows up the entire building. Oh, well.
Looks like a great place for Robert Downey Jr. to shoot a very expensive Audi commercial, eh? (Picture: China Daily/ Weibo)
So now that you know where Avengers' secret hangout is, can you go visit? If you do go take a look, don’t expect to find remnants of the Avengers’ latest adventure. According to Chinese media, Sany's US headquarters has already been restored to its original look. The movie team did leave behind a piece of drywall as a memento, though.
