Avengers!
Surprising only myself, I loved Avengers a lot.
So, I've been seeing this dude off and on for awhile, and several weeks ago we went to the movies and saw a trailer for The Avengers, and Dude was pretty excited. I wanted to see it because it is culturally a pretty big deal. I haven't read any of the comics, and I didn't really love the lead-up movies. Thor was watchable, because of the pretty , but Captain America was bland and Iron Man was entertaining but not enough for me to see IM2. I think the comic-to-movie genre is just really tough to do well. How do you cram 70 years of history and storylines into an hour and a half that is watchable for a new-to-the characters audience *and* the obsessive fan? Not very well, usually.
And really, I was in a phase where I was tired of watching men get all the good roles while ladies hung out and wore tight skirts and didn't get good dialogue. I have issues with the overall depiction of ladies in comics, in general.
I explained a bit of this to the dude, and because he is a total Joss Whedon fanboy and a big feminist, he said with the fervor of a true believer: "No, its Joss. Joss would never do that to her. He's going to make her GREAT. It is going to be a GREAT MOVIE."
And I patted his hand and mentally raised his points while nodding extremely dubiously. Because, yes, Joss, but - the genre!
But then I saw it, and, wow. Can we all just roll around in the Black Widow-y goodness? The way she was the star of the show in a really strong ensemble cast? The way she outsmarted fucking LOKI, the trickster? The way she fought just as well if not better than the boys, even when she was wearing a tight dress in the opening scene, and then high heels for the entire rest of the movie? The way even though everyone *knows* she's a master manipulator, they keep buying into whatever she's selling?
Also, for the record, I'm not a huge Scarlet Johanssen fan. I mean, she's fine. I've only seen Lost in Translation, but she did good work there. And she was great here. Comic book movies don't have a lot of dialogue, but she did a wonderful job humanizing her role. Can you imagine someone like Megan Fox doing this, and how flat it would fall?
tl;dr The Black Widow made the movie for me, and I'm looking forward to seeing it again. And I'm already looking forward to the Black Widow stand-alone movie. Also, genusshrike made a *super* vid based on 100% movie footage. Go leave hir feedback here. :)
In other news, this is going to be a crazy couple of weeks, school-wise. I'm really glad I had this two-day break. *whimper*
ETA: I would like to read all the Tony Stark/Bruce Banner sexytimes now. Also, poor Captain America with his crush on Tony! Also, Pepper Potts, Natasha Romanov, and some tequila shots sounds like a good fic, don't you think? And I'm still buying into Thor/Loki all the way.
This entry was originally posted at http://concinnity.dreamwidth.org/52381.html. Comment wherever you like.
So, I've been seeing this dude off and on for awhile, and several weeks ago we went to the movies and saw a trailer for The Avengers, and Dude was pretty excited. I wanted to see it because it is culturally a pretty big deal. I haven't read any of the comics, and I didn't really love the lead-up movies. Thor was watchable, because of the pretty , but Captain America was bland and Iron Man was entertaining but not enough for me to see IM2. I think the comic-to-movie genre is just really tough to do well. How do you cram 70 years of history and storylines into an hour and a half that is watchable for a new-to-the characters audience *and* the obsessive fan? Not very well, usually.
And really, I was in a phase where I was tired of watching men get all the good roles while ladies hung out and wore tight skirts and didn't get good dialogue. I have issues with the overall depiction of ladies in comics, in general.
I explained a bit of this to the dude, and because he is a total Joss Whedon fanboy and a big feminist, he said with the fervor of a true believer: "No, its Joss. Joss would never do that to her. He's going to make her GREAT. It is going to be a GREAT MOVIE."
And I patted his hand and mentally raised his points while nodding extremely dubiously. Because, yes, Joss, but - the genre!
But then I saw it, and, wow. Can we all just roll around in the Black Widow-y goodness? The way she was the star of the show in a really strong ensemble cast? The way she outsmarted fucking LOKI, the trickster? The way she fought just as well if not better than the boys, even when she was wearing a tight dress in the opening scene, and then high heels for the entire rest of the movie? The way even though everyone *knows* she's a master manipulator, they keep buying into whatever she's selling?
Also, for the record, I'm not a huge Scarlet Johanssen fan. I mean, she's fine. I've only seen Lost in Translation, but she did good work there. And she was great here. Comic book movies don't have a lot of dialogue, but she did a wonderful job humanizing her role. Can you imagine someone like Megan Fox doing this, and how flat it would fall?
tl;dr The Black Widow made the movie for me, and I'm looking forward to seeing it again. And I'm already looking forward to the Black Widow stand-alone movie. Also, genusshrike made a *super* vid based on 100% movie footage. Go leave hir feedback here. :)
In other news, this is going to be a crazy couple of weeks, school-wise. I'm really glad I had this two-day break. *whimper*
ETA: I would like to read all the Tony Stark/Bruce Banner sexytimes now. Also, poor Captain America with his crush on Tony! Also, Pepper Potts, Natasha Romanov, and some tequila shots sounds like a good fic, don't you think? And I'm still buying into Thor/Loki all the way.
This entry was originally posted at http://concinnity.dreamwidth.org/52381.html. Comment wherever you like.