Watch The Avengers re-assemble to record The Avengers in Lakota

Today, in “Damn, that’s legitimately cool” news: Disney+ and Marvel released a new featurette today showing off the amount of effort that went toward an recent new/old release on the streaming service: A dub of 2012's The Avengers, recorded in the once-banned Lakota language—and with most of the cast of the film, including Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Evans, and Robert Downey Jr. coming back to reprise their roles.

The project was apparently launched by Ruffalo, who produced the 2022 documentary Lakota Nation Vs. United States, which recounted the Lakota people’s century-plus of effort to reclaim and defend their identity after the U.S. government seized their homes in the Black Hills in 1876. (Said seizing also put heavy focus on “assimilation” techniques that included long-term attempts to suppress or ban the use of the Lakota language.) Working with organizers and film workers at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation (which exists in between North and South Dakota), Ruffalo worked with his former superhero teammates to re-record all of their dialogue for the movie, working with Lakota actors who voiced the film’s less-prominent parts.

Watching the video, it’s fascinating to see Evans, Downey, and the others revisit these characters in a new language—as well as the efforts that have gone into making sure their deliveries are both true to the Lakota voice, and to the iconic characters they’re coming back to. Dubbed “The Lakota Project,” it’s both a genuinely interesting look at the work of film dubbing and language preservation, as well as an opportunity for the people of Standing Rock to gain experience working with a major studio to produce more Lakota soundtracks for films.

The Lakota version of The Avengers is currently available for streaming on Disney+