The Avengers cast reunite to dub movie in the Lakota language

Avengers, assemble! No, Marvel Studios' original superhero team hasn't reunited on screen — yet. But Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, and newly-minted Oscar winner Robert Downey Jr. recently got together to dub the original Avengers movie into the Lakota language.

"This project came out of my relationship with the Lakota people," Ruffalo says in a new video about the project. "I'd been hearing about the work they've been doing to revitalize the language. There's not a lot of people left who speak it."

Lakota advisor Chuck Archambault elaborates on the goal: "Our idea is to put the language back in the homes of our people — to be able to have them bond in such a way where they're having fun watching a movie, and be totally integrated with the language of our people."

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This is not the first time an MCU project has been dubbed in a Native American language. The recent miniseries Echo, which stars Menominee actor Alaqua Cox in the title role as deaf Choctaw vigilante Maya Lopez, came ready with a Choctaw language dub available for viewers.

But the remarkable thing about the new Lakota dub of The Avengers is that it was done by the original actors themselves. In the video, you can see clips of Downey and Johansson re-recording their lines in Lakota, and celebrating when they nail the pronunciation.

"Everyone really was into it," Ruffalo says. "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.”

In one of the video's behind-the-scenes moments from the recording sessions, you can hear Downey remark, "dude, that is so slick. What a beautiful language."

Watch the full video above. You can now watch The Avengers with the Lakota dub on Disney+.