The Avengers (2012)
I have a big soft spot for Joss Whedon because he made Buffy and also Firefly.
I wasn't at all interested in this film until I read that he wrote & directed it, so I went to see it.
Having seen it (with my 60 year old parents in tow - I think we raised the average age of that IMAX screening by several points there), I firmly believe that Joss Whedon has somehow managed to hang on to his 5 year old boy self, which... I have mixed feelings about.
Much of this movie gave me a sense of deja vu, specifically of watching my brother and A, my cousin, playing together when they were both 5, where they had a limited amount of toys that moreover didn't do all the cool stuff they wanted, so they had to narrate to each other what they were thinking.
Such as:
- OK so pretend that this is like, an ocean battleship right? It's HUGE. And then - and then! It FLIES. No listen! It's got like, these flat wings that go under the water and then when they want to fly the wings like lift out of the water like WHOOSHWHOOSH and then they're flying. And!! It's got a shield, right? It's got this invisibility shield, it makes the whole ship invisible while it flies!!
In case you haven't seen it - spoiiler - this movie has a giant building-sized battleship that lifts straight up out of the water like a helicopter, and there's a button that makes the underside of this thing reflect the sky rendering it invisible.
There's also a huge worm, no wait! - a flying worm, no wait wait! - a flying space worm - YEAH!! - a flying space worm with huge teeth and also it's vaguely cockroachy and centipede-y AND also expels alien warriors out of its sides like some horrible bug spewing eggs that flies between the buildings of Manhattan in that highly non aerodynamic way that boys have when they fly things through the air going Rrnnnrnrrgghhh woooorrrghh.
So it just wasn't engrossing enough for me because it gave me that same vague sense of embarassment and envy I used to feel when I overheard my 5 year old brother play when I was 9. It's so shameless, this kind of playing, full of deux ex machina and physically impossible things and a sense of loading up all the cool things you can ever think of into one piece of machinery because you can only hold one thing at time in your hand cuz you're little. It's not that great to watch or listen to, but at the same time, it's clear the people playing it are having so much fun so there's that little twinge of envy because I had long ago lost the capacity to play pretend like that.
The only real difference between Joss Whedon playing with his action figures on a movie set (Oh no, Captain America can't handle it - HERE COMES IRONMAN!! BAM!!) and my brother is that Whedon included a girl action figure and also a girl authority figure. I dont' remember my brother ever including females into his battles.
My father tends to fall asleep at movies that get too loud or feature flying people (if someone flies, my dad will sleep) so he told me he fell asleep briefly twice during this long film. My mother thought that Captain America was Superman, and so was upset the whole time that Superman (a) lost his cape and (b) kept getting bested by Ironman.
She especially objected to Ironsman being the one to throw the nuke out into the alien portal.
She first expressed this to my father, who then panicked and thought that maybe he had slept through the brief moments when Superman had appeared and disappeared, and they both asked me, and I said, No, that's Captain America, and my mother goes, Who the hell is that??
Some of the patchwork and Americana they do on this movie irked me - the elderly German man in Stuttgart making a stand against fascism but then having to be protected by Captain America flying in at the last minute (er, uh huh); their explaining the fact that Scarlett Johannson is a touch too young to have been a Cold War spy by having a bit in there about how she 'started really young.'
In sum: Lots of good looking people to look at. Lots of cute little Joss Whedon quips flying by (Ironman: "I'm bring the party to you" - Flying space worm with big teeth roars into view - Natasha: "I don't see how this is a party"). During Hulk Smash of the Alien God King-Wannabe Effeminate Englishman with the Twin Erections on His Helmet, all the little kids in the theater whooped it up, which was really cute. It was entertaining enough, I suppose.