Marvel's The Avengers (2012)
Marvel's
The Avengers (PG-13)
"Whedon out the Chaff"
A group of disparate heroes, brought together for
the first time by an American secret spy agency, take on cataclysmic
cosmic forces that threaten the Earth and all us little people. This
is, after years of hard planning and work, a cinematic Marvel Universe
in all its glory, a living breathing superworld where all the separate
continuities are inseparably meshed. And just as Stan Lee discovered
mega popularity back in the 1960s when he first assembled his superhero
sandbox, Paramount and Disney today are reaping the profits of mashing
together all its possible franchises under one roof, done with
commendable skill by cowriter/director Joss Whedon.
Watching
Thor, Ironman, Hulk and the defrosted Captain America take on Loki and
his extraterrestrial cosmic forces, you can easily understand how these
characters and franchises have survived so long as our new worldwide
mythological figures... Captain America Steve Rogers gives order to the
NYPD, Ironman Tony Stark titters around a mouthful of expensive scotch,
Thor stands around in armor with his magic mallet while the Hulk
curmudgeonly smashes some spacecentipedes to death. It is in fact the
Hulk who really shines bright (previous movies all got the mix of
pathos, stupidity and misunderstood loner all wrong), but they all get
varying degrees of awesome moments even when they are fighting each
other (a very comic book touch) Loki's petulant villainy was again a
highlight, and Johansson's Black Widow honestly surprised me into not
disliking her. Whedon obviously knows these characters backwards and
forwards, and knows how to get them in and out of amusing/exciting crowd
pleasing situations. Well, you say, sounds like a perfect popcorn
flick for all audience, so what could possibly be wrong?
Well
it kind of is a perfect popcorn movie, but when the first half of your
movie is this confusingly boring my inner film critic has to stand up
and shout "Spoon!". It takes FOREVER to introduce all of these
characters that need no introduction (they are popculture icons who have
had their own separate individual films guys), but how it goes about
doing it in this roundabout way was just baffling. In particular the
opening of the movie JUST HAPPENS and leaves you to watch "stuff occur"
for a half hour without any regard to whether your give a hoot... which
I'm guessing most of us don't. Its a good thing it plods through and
starts ramping up for the second half invasion which is strong enough to
balance the first out. But even there, the aliens show up in all their
mediocre "random video game opponent" glory (much like Battle LA or
Cowboys vs Aliens counterparts). Even giant flying Whale-centipedes
couldn't save it from looking like just another CGfest of creatures
destroy New Yorkathon. Don't even get me started on the finale, if your
going to rip an ending off you probably shouldn't do so from The
Phantom Menace. Some of the character motivations are a bit suspect,
there are quite a few moments of "but wait why would she... oh never
mind, MORE EXPLOSIONS!". Also, its probably just me, but I could have
used less closeups of Downey's giant head on screen. I think the
biggest thorn in its side for me is fundamentally the Avengers and the
Marvel Universe have had so many insane and downright genre changing
yarns made over the years that Whedon's feels a bit too conservative and
small (I imagine alot of people won't feel this way however), and
narrative wise it seems like its trying too hard to keep all the
characters on screen every 5 minutes which really hurts the pacing of
some of the scenes. But did Whedon and Marvel succeed? Yes. But just
imagine if they had featured Thanos (I KNEW IT!) as the actual final
showdown, fighting half a universe away on the Battleplanet with M'Krann
crystals stolen by the Xmen and Spiderman swinging from the Fantasticar
being pursued by Fing Fang Foom and you'll have some idea of what the
typical Marvel Crossover event is like, and what this movie only
scratches the surface of.
Because this is a comic book movie
with comic book characters doing comic book heroics, one of the purest
yet attempted. Unfortunately, it just didn't end up much of a page
turner, even though some panels were right on the money. With this
group of characters it was destined to be a damn good read, but when I
think of what it could have been... I'll probably just hand it down to
my brother instead of bagging & boarding it, I know he'll get a
giant green kick out of it.
7 Excelsiors out of 10 (GOOD)
