It’s not often that a film comes around with the
expectations that The Avengers pulled. A film that technically began with
the release of the first Iron Man film, The Avengers grew as a
promise from a studio to the fans of things to come should all the stars align
in the project. Finally, after almost five years and an overall price tag of
over $450 million just for the films leading
up to it, Marvel’s The Avengers finally hits the theaters to a very
anxious audience. So after all this time, was it worth the wait?
Yes… Holy God yes.
I’m not going to lie, for a long time I had a very deep
rooted fear that the end of this project was going to be an abysmal, 2nd
rate “Who cares about the fans” rush job akin to X-men 3…
Ew!
or Spiderman 3.
Ah Gross!
A film with expectations as large as it had along with cast changes and a director with only one low budget film (albeit an excellent film) under his belt is just a minefield of problematic nightmare production scenarios just waiting to happen.
Oh no! Oh God NO!
Well, rest assured that Mr. Whedon has succeeded in this
film in that even a fan like I never could have expected. The Avengers
was a flat out lovable and entertaining thrill ride of the highest caliber,
delivering a great experience not just in action but in loveable character
development too. This film is so thoroughly entertaining that it transcends
just itself and gives us a reason to love other, weaker films as a whole. Just
as the Star Wars prequels were so bad that the they tarnished the
original trilogy with their defamation of classic ideals and beliefs, The
Avengers was so good that is retroactively supplemented the weaknesses of
the previous Marvel Avenger films.
What do I mean by this? Well think back to my original Captain
America review I write a few months back. As you remember, one of my
largest pet peeves with the movie was the fact that American patriotism seemed
to be disturbingly underplayed in a film where it should have been
oversaturating to the point of propaganda. Instead, we got a watered down,
politically correct, “First Avenger” film that did its best to wipe away any
trace of an American Flag or a Swastika. Then The Avengers comes around
and undoes all the PR crap that contaminated the first film. There’s a really
great scene, simple, but great, where Agent Coulson is talking to Cap about his
new uniform. A slightly disillusioned Cap mentions that the Stars and Stripes
are a little outdated, to which Coulson replies how the world needs more “Old
Fashioned”. It’s a fantastic moment of character development, and it comes
across so effortlessly and organically that it’s a testament to the talents of
Joss Whedon.
In fact it’s just one example of the immense talents of Mr.
Whedon, as this film positively glows with his influence at almost every
moment. Several of his filmmaking trademarks are on full display here,
including his tight camerawork, sharp writing, and witty humor. There are seriously so many things to like
about this film that only the most hardened haters out there will find things
to fault this film on.
If they could do it
with this… they’ll do it with anything
The big thing this film pulls off though is being a straight
forward, enjoyable summer action film, and it does that in the best possible
way, with a lot and lot of deep character exposure and development. No
gimmicks, no tacked on summer movie clichés, just the development of characters
that we end up really caring about and believe in. It’s chock full of great
action (action we can actually follow and understand who is fighting who) and
has that very distinct Joss Whedon humor that was so prevalent in Firefly and Serenity
and Buffy. As great as this crucial factor is though, what I really love about
this movie are the little things that fire on all cylinders.
I mean where do I even begin listing out the little but
important positive things in this film? I love everything from the significant
character exposure to the well paced and well filmed action sequences. I love
the Whedon penned smart dialogue that always keeps you laughing and jokes that
never misfire. I love the bromance that develops between Stark and Banner as
they bond over science. Stark becomes sort of a loving and abusive big brother
to Bruce, in terms that he kiddingly picks on Bruce, but gets defensive when
anyone else tries to push his buttons.
I also love how hopelessly outdated Captain America’s
knowledge of pop culture is. There’s a great scene when people are having a
discussion about the modern world and he gets excited when he gets a Wizard
of Oz reference. I loved how Whedon really got everyone’s basic
characterizations right. For example, you aren’t going to hear Cap or Thor make
a lot of jokes, but you can’t stop Tony Stark from opening his smart mouth and
making pun after pun because hey, let’s face it, it’s what he does. Sure, the
other characters have a lot of funny lines, but it’s more responsive humor, or
like I said with Cap, lack of understanding.
I love the fact that we finally get to see the SHIELD
helicarrier and I love how we get to see what a nerd/fanboy Agent Phil Coulson
is. I loved Cobie Smulders in her first appearance as Mariah Hill since fans
will know how crucial she is to the Marvel universe later. I also love how
whenever she acknowledges Cap it’s with the tiniest look of mistrust but when
she spots Stark it’s usually with a nod or small smile, fans of the Civil War
story arc will recognize the implications of those looks. And I love that when
the final action scene begins, the action never lets up and it is easily in my
top three action sequences of all time, unlike the 85 minute dragging finale
action scene in Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon.
In fact, the entire end of the movie reminds me a great deal
of the finale in Transformers 3 with the same portal opening
super-weapons, the giant robotic space snakes, and the non-stop action. But
where that movie utterly failed in the execution of its action, The Avengers
excels for the following reasons:
The action in Avengers was well shot and clear so you
could understand what the hell was going on
The finale for Avengers is roughly 40 minutes as
opposed to Transformers 85 minutes
Most importantly, we have come to care about these
characters by the time the finale erupts
A while back I write about how much more important a deep
character association with the audience is over tons of action and explosions.
I mentioned how I would rather watch the finale of Unbreakable 100 times
before the finale of Transformers 3 because of how much we have come to
care about David Dunn. I also brought up that in a perfect world we could have
a combination of an amazing final action sequence featuring characters we have come to care about, which I’m happy to
report this film does in spades. Every explosion, every crash, every moment in
the action scenes have so much more riding on them due to our love of the
characters, a trait Joss Whedon has learned to perfect during his tenure as a
screenwriter.
In fact, Joss Whedon has refined his strengths into facets
that keep this film crisp and original in unexpected ways. His original and
witty writing style never falls into clichés, and he accomplishes this by using
a distinct style where an action will happen, the audience will feel like they
are going to guess the next thing that’s going to occur in the film, but then
Joss will pull the carpet out from underneath you and throw a twist you didn’t
see coming at you. One great example involved Hulk facing off against Loki,
Loki beginning to monologue at the Hulk, and then as we get ready for a fight
something happens that you seriously never expected. It’s just so refreshing
and original to see something new like that on the big screen that you can’t
help but laugh for several minutes afterwards. Could you imagine Michael Bay
trying to do something different like that? Could you imagine what would happen
to him if he tried to be original? I can probably sum it up in one image.
Watching this movie it’s abundantly clear to me that Joss
Whedon grew up as a huge nerd, which pays off because we get to reap the
rewards of this creative imagination.
Where else could you find real and non-shoehorned ideas about how Thor
and Iron Man face off? If this were any other movie we would probably see a
love triangle develop between Black Widow and two or three of the characters,
escalating stupid and forced tensions until someone inevitably utters that line… you know… the line that goes
something like “THE WORLD’S NOT ENOUGH FOR YOU TONY?!? YOU CAN’T HAVE HER!
(Throw shield/hammer/boulder)”, but again, not the case here.
Even though I was a little worried by Disney brining Joss
Whedon into this franchise I definitely got on board pretty quickly because the
man is fantastic at coming up with ideas and then refusing to budge on his
stances with these properties. You hear a lot of stories about the personal
hells he went through to get his projects made, especially after Firefly failed
so badly despite its superior storytelling, and you can’t help but respect how
dedicated he is to his art. It’s like that perpetually stoned guy you knew in
college got to make movies, but I mean that in the best possible ways. I
imagine his pitches sound something like this:
“Dude… like… I just
had the best idea ever man! No, no,
hear me out man, what if like… what if we made a Western… but in space!”
Now there were certainly things about the film that I didn’t
really like, but they were minor and trivial complaints to the rest of the
film. I didn’t really like the opening action scene for one. It was pretty and
well shot, but it felt like it was kind of tacked on as an opening action scene
when compared to the scope and scale of the rest of the film, so it didn’t
really do a great job setting up the tone of the movie. In hindsight though,
maybe this was a good idea, because Joss Whedon has always had a talent where
his shows and films get better as time goes on, just compare the first thirty
minutes of Serenity to the last thirty.
Also, setting up a smaller scale opening will allow the
later action scenes to be more and more exciting. As much as I loved X-men
United I always thought that the opening scene was a bit of a mistake. When
you have an opening as awesome as Nightcrawler’s break in scene it’s very hard
to create subsequent action scenes that can hold a torch to something as cool
as the first scene, with one obvious exception…
The stabbing
exception.
Now work with me on this, what if instead of an explosionfest to kick things off we instead got a few more minutes of face time with Loki's intensity and his background. You don't need a ton of action to create a great scene of tension, and a great example of this theory comes from the classic genre bender Predator. One of my favorite scenes revolves around a native American member of the commando team throwing down his weapon and grabbing a machete as his friends continue to run. You think you are in for a crazy showdown between the beast and the soldier, who happens to be the only one in the group who understands what he is. Just when we think we are about to cut to the fight scene though, John McTiernan throws a curve ball and instead just has the soldier let out a gut wrenching scream of agony off screen mere seconds after the creature emerges.
Sadly, White Man's Guilt is not the Predator's weakness
I don't know if it was done intentionally like this or if there was just a budget constraint but the end result is a thousand times more awesome than seeing a fight scene between the two. Here we thought we were gonna see the baddest member of Dutch's crew go toe to toe with this monster for a few rounds before conceding, but instead he gets ripped to shreds in a second. It shows us what the Predator is truly capable of, and it sort of works like the "Broken Shark" theory of film making and tension.
The point is that the opening scene in The Avengers felt very unnecessary in the beginning of the film, and that I personally would have liked to see a slower buildup to an action scene. They could have had a deeper exchange between fury and Loki, with Hawkeye getting dominated shortly after, and then maybe Loki cutting through the guards without any effort right after. It would have felt a lot more organic to me, and wouldn't have come off quite like an action scene from a season premiere of 24. But again, this is a minor complaint for a film so good.
I should also point out that it’s strangely sad when a regular, feel-good popcorn action film is something to rave about just because it doesn’t devolve into action schlock like Transformers or Battleship.
Unfortunately, I know it’s just a matter of time before the
studios totally drop the ball and start making gigantic mistakes like trying to
cut the budgets of the film, firing talent, and pissing people off. Mark my
words… after the next Avengers or possibly two more if we are lucky,
Disney will start doing stupid crap that’s going to send the franchise down the
tubes. This is when studios begin to fire the Tim Burtons and bring in the Joel
Schumachers like the y did with the Batman franchise, or fire the Bryan Singers
and bring in the Brett Ratners like they did with the X-men franchise.
Or maybe they will force the directors to do their ideas instead of what thee director wants to do like when
they forced Venom onto Sam Raimi in Spider man 3.
All in all, this film is easily in my top three comic book
films of all time with X-men United and Dark Knight Rises, but
the only reason I can’t label it number one is because those three films are so
different in tone and atmosphere. It’s like asking me to pick whether I liked The
Big Lebowski or The Empire Strikes Back more, it’s just not quite
fair. It may not be a great example of a film that does anything new, but it’s
certainly a great example of a film that does everything right.
9.75 out of 10
