avengers assemble!
Now THAT is how you make a fucking summer blockbuster.
No shit.
You know maybe 5% of me was nervous the Avengers movie wasn't going to be good but it was overwhelmingly outgunned and overpowered by the rest of my. The parts of me that have unwavering trust in Joss Whedon's creativity and vision. He's brilliant. He knows how to be funny, dramatic, and compelling and best of all, he knows how to balance it. People have accused him of being too much of a nerd's nerd or that he can get bogged down with pop culture references or that his ideas are too out there for a general audience to endure. Cowboys in space? A whorehouse for the 20th century? It'll never work.
Well The Avengers is the beaming giant neon sign example of how they're wrong. Joss Whedon KNOWS how to do commercial and do it right. He just always figured we were ready for something more.
I'm hoping that the massive crushing success of this film (it's already broken $200 million in at the box office) will give Whedon license to do the stuff he wants to do and with the freedom he was always meant to do it. Nolan had the same sort of freedom after the huge success of the Dark Knight and he put that hard won credit to good use. I think we all remember a little film called Inception.
It's not that I don't love super hero movies, but I see this not only as a feather in Whedon's cap. I see it as a stepping stone toward the weird, intelligent, yet incredibly entertaining stuff he's always been making but never had the backing to do it right or give his work a general audience. If Nolan is this generation's blockbuster Victor Hugo (seriously though...sometimes he's SOOOO serious) then Whedon is its Alexander Dumas.
Anyway. So the movie. The movie was fantastic. I mean look. A lot is being said for how funny the movie is but the movie is funny! It's classic Whedon fun with snappy dialogue, awkward exchanges, and a deft understanding of who these characters are. Whedon understands that humor comes from taking personalities and throwing them together. Whether the exchange becomes hostile, buddy buddy, or romantic doesn't matter. There is humor and drama to be had by all. The Avengers is definitely Whedon toned down. The dialogue is not as aggressively referential as some of his other work but it is still so very lively. Other reviewers have pointed this out but I want to say it too. A huge part of what makes this movie work so well is how deeply Whedon understands this huge cast of characters. For other screenwriters and directors (Whedon was both), such a huge cast filled with just enormous iconic characters would have been crushing. For Whedon it was like throwing a guy into a toy store. Having all these characters just meant more possibilities for fun combinations and revealing scenes of exposition.
Like, of course Bruce Banner and Tony Stark would form an immediate bromance. And there's no way Captain America WOULDN'T come into conflict with Stark over principles.
One of the concerns I had was that the villains in the trailer looked a lot like the stuff in Michael Bay's third Transformers movie. And while they're kind of similar the film is completely different. Bay's directing style has become so shaky, chaotic, and confusing that watching that third movie felt like 2 hours of audio-visual torture. It was just an endless litany if loud metallic sounds, shaking cameras, disorganized cuts, and dark colors. Whedon's style is much more controlled. He gives you a good look at the action so that you can be impressed and dazzled by it and pulls back enough on the flair and affectations that it doesn't make you confused and disoriented. He uses the action to highlight the abilities of the Avengers superheroes and reveal a little bit of their character and he knows when to shake up the camera for verisimilitude and when to keep it still and pan out to make as statement about scale.
Loki was great too. From the trailers it almost seemed like his dialogue was going to run cheesy and annoying. Tom Hiddleson does a great job of bringing weight and pathos to what Loki is doing though. Even if you haven't seen the Thor movie, you get that there's more to this than just wanting to take over the world, that there's more than mere megalomania. He and Thor have a beef to settle and for the most part it's his problem. The guy's got issues.
Another pleasant surprise is how much more fleshed out Black Widow is in this movie. We saw her first in Iron Man 2 and she was pretty much just wallpaper with tits. Sure she kicked ass but what else? In this movie she has personality, she has mad ass kicking skills, and she is most definitely not secondary to the boy's club that is the rest of the Avengers. It would have been nice to have more lady heroes in this but considering what we've been given (that being a dearth of lady superhero movies), Whedon does a good job of bringing Black Widow up to everyone else's level. You get why she's fighting with a Norse god and a dude who can turn into a giant green rage monster.
The movie is pretty long, I think something like 2.5 hours. I remember wishing Transformers was over by the first hour. For Avengers I wished it would never end. It's like going on a marathon bender of your favorite TV show. You don't really care what these people are doing after a while. You just want them to hang out and for you to be a fly on the wall of their interactions. Community comes to mind as an example. I started to enjoy seeing the Avengers interact so much that it didn't matter what they were doing. Whether it was fighting aliens or arguing over who was cooler I didn't care. That is a huge mark of success right there as a story teller. It doesn't matter how many explosions or fight sequences or special affects you have in your movie if it isn't grounded in characters and story. Whedon gets that.
The Avengers isn't the Dark Knight. It doesn't grit up the story and give it a spin. It doesn't reinvent the genre of superhero movies. But that doesn't always have to be the goal. It takes just as much skill to make a genuinely good pop film that not only has a cohesive plot but one that's entertaining and fun to follow. The landscape is riddled with absolute shit, stuff that only makes money because it's summer and things explode. The Avengers is a good movie that everyone can enjoy and it's unpretentious, rich, and infectious fun. That's all you really need at the end of the day.
No shit.
You know maybe 5% of me was nervous the Avengers movie wasn't going to be good but it was overwhelmingly outgunned and overpowered by the rest of my. The parts of me that have unwavering trust in Joss Whedon's creativity and vision. He's brilliant. He knows how to be funny, dramatic, and compelling and best of all, he knows how to balance it. People have accused him of being too much of a nerd's nerd or that he can get bogged down with pop culture references or that his ideas are too out there for a general audience to endure. Cowboys in space? A whorehouse for the 20th century? It'll never work.
Well The Avengers is the beaming giant neon sign example of how they're wrong. Joss Whedon KNOWS how to do commercial and do it right. He just always figured we were ready for something more.
I'm hoping that the massive crushing success of this film (it's already broken $200 million in at the box office) will give Whedon license to do the stuff he wants to do and with the freedom he was always meant to do it. Nolan had the same sort of freedom after the huge success of the Dark Knight and he put that hard won credit to good use. I think we all remember a little film called Inception.
It's not that I don't love super hero movies, but I see this not only as a feather in Whedon's cap. I see it as a stepping stone toward the weird, intelligent, yet incredibly entertaining stuff he's always been making but never had the backing to do it right or give his work a general audience. If Nolan is this generation's blockbuster Victor Hugo (seriously though...sometimes he's SOOOO serious) then Whedon is its Alexander Dumas.
Anyway. So the movie. The movie was fantastic. I mean look. A lot is being said for how funny the movie is but the movie is funny! It's classic Whedon fun with snappy dialogue, awkward exchanges, and a deft understanding of who these characters are. Whedon understands that humor comes from taking personalities and throwing them together. Whether the exchange becomes hostile, buddy buddy, or romantic doesn't matter. There is humor and drama to be had by all. The Avengers is definitely Whedon toned down. The dialogue is not as aggressively referential as some of his other work but it is still so very lively. Other reviewers have pointed this out but I want to say it too. A huge part of what makes this movie work so well is how deeply Whedon understands this huge cast of characters. For other screenwriters and directors (Whedon was both), such a huge cast filled with just enormous iconic characters would have been crushing. For Whedon it was like throwing a guy into a toy store. Having all these characters just meant more possibilities for fun combinations and revealing scenes of exposition.
Like, of course Bruce Banner and Tony Stark would form an immediate bromance. And there's no way Captain America WOULDN'T come into conflict with Stark over principles.
One of the concerns I had was that the villains in the trailer looked a lot like the stuff in Michael Bay's third Transformers movie. And while they're kind of similar the film is completely different. Bay's directing style has become so shaky, chaotic, and confusing that watching that third movie felt like 2 hours of audio-visual torture. It was just an endless litany if loud metallic sounds, shaking cameras, disorganized cuts, and dark colors. Whedon's style is much more controlled. He gives you a good look at the action so that you can be impressed and dazzled by it and pulls back enough on the flair and affectations that it doesn't make you confused and disoriented. He uses the action to highlight the abilities of the Avengers superheroes and reveal a little bit of their character and he knows when to shake up the camera for verisimilitude and when to keep it still and pan out to make as statement about scale.
Loki was great too. From the trailers it almost seemed like his dialogue was going to run cheesy and annoying. Tom Hiddleson does a great job of bringing weight and pathos to what Loki is doing though. Even if you haven't seen the Thor movie, you get that there's more to this than just wanting to take over the world, that there's more than mere megalomania. He and Thor have a beef to settle and for the most part it's his problem. The guy's got issues.
Another pleasant surprise is how much more fleshed out Black Widow is in this movie. We saw her first in Iron Man 2 and she was pretty much just wallpaper with tits. Sure she kicked ass but what else? In this movie she has personality, she has mad ass kicking skills, and she is most definitely not secondary to the boy's club that is the rest of the Avengers. It would have been nice to have more lady heroes in this but considering what we've been given (that being a dearth of lady superhero movies), Whedon does a good job of bringing Black Widow up to everyone else's level. You get why she's fighting with a Norse god and a dude who can turn into a giant green rage monster.
The movie is pretty long, I think something like 2.5 hours. I remember wishing Transformers was over by the first hour. For Avengers I wished it would never end. It's like going on a marathon bender of your favorite TV show. You don't really care what these people are doing after a while. You just want them to hang out and for you to be a fly on the wall of their interactions. Community comes to mind as an example. I started to enjoy seeing the Avengers interact so much that it didn't matter what they were doing. Whether it was fighting aliens or arguing over who was cooler I didn't care. That is a huge mark of success right there as a story teller. It doesn't matter how many explosions or fight sequences or special affects you have in your movie if it isn't grounded in characters and story. Whedon gets that.
The Avengers isn't the Dark Knight. It doesn't grit up the story and give it a spin. It doesn't reinvent the genre of superhero movies. But that doesn't always have to be the goal. It takes just as much skill to make a genuinely good pop film that not only has a cohesive plot but one that's entertaining and fun to follow. The landscape is riddled with absolute shit, stuff that only makes money because it's summer and things explode. The Avengers is a good movie that everyone can enjoy and it's unpretentious, rich, and infectious fun. That's all you really need at the end of the day.