Reviewing The Avengers Part Two: Here's us, on the raggedy edge...

So, here we are, about a month after The Avengers came into our lives and quite possibly changed the world with its awesomeness. It made over $200 million worldwide in its first weekend and is pretty much praised by critics and fans across the board. Everyone's getting paid and no one's going anywhere. Whedon's a made man, a sequel's all set up, and the fans go home satisfied. Maybe the happiest ending ever associated with Joss Whedon.

So...what now?

Seriously, they have spent four years and all these movies have been building up to this one event, which was indeed successful, but now it's all over. Most people will not see Avengers more than once in the theatre, and based on its box office success we probably won't see a DVD release until at least the fall (which, granted, is not all that bad and I'm sure the DVD is gonna be awesome, and damn skippy I'll be first in line for it). But even then, I'm left thinking about what is going to happen now that this one movie changed the game. 

What I'm getting at is that there might be something rotten in the state of Asgard.

First, let's get the obvious out of the way: Marvel has officially kicked DC's ass out of the multimedia game. There was a chance, before Superman Returns karmically failed (see my X-Men 3 address for the story) and Green Lantern facepalmed its way into The Abyss, where DC and Marvel could have had a good race for the better general movie franchises. The X-Men movies were getting worse and worse, mediocre films about B-Level heroes were getting pushed out (The Punisher, Daredevil, Ghost Rider), and the bigger name hero movies were failing (Hulk, Fantastic fucking Four).

Amidst the mediocrity came Batman Begins and Spider Man, the crown jewels of DC and Marvel respectably. By 2008, Batman Begins was viewed as the best Bat-movie made up to that time, and Spider Man 2 probably received even more praise than that. 2008 changed everything with The Dark Knight and Iron Man. Basically polar opposites of each other, both got ridiculous acclaim and attention, with TDK making more money than God and changing the way people approached Comic Book movies forever. Iron Man flew a little more under the radar (ironically, considering the differences between Iron Man and Batman), but started the Avengers movement leading us to the now of things.

Like I said, there was a lot of potential for there to be a close race between the companies, even after Avengers-planning had begun. But after four years and so many misfires, DC had two things going for it: Dark Knight and Smallville. And guess what? Both are done. Smallville ended in pretty much the worst way possible, and Dark Knight Rises gets released in a couple of weeks, and that is going to be a BIG FUCKING DEAL. But once that happens they have nothing. Nothing, and staring down the barrel of upcoming releases the likes of Iron Man 3, Thor 2, and, of course, Avengers 2. I'm sure DC will attempt to make a comeback (and that I will enjoy it because maybe they will actually try), but it looks bleak, which is hard for me to say because I'm a DC guy at heart. 

So why is this bad? For the zero wrestling fans that will read this and understand this reference, wrestling was redefined by a neck-and-neck competition between WCW and WWF, resulting in the best possible product it could present. It was glorious. Then one day the war ended: one company bought the other, and people stopped giving two shits about how good the product was because they knew there were no other options. This is what I am afraid of. It is easy for a director like a Nolan or a Whedon to legitimately care about their work, but for a company like Marvel (or Disney, really) to maintain that enthusiasm in a fight they have already won years down the road when Avengers 2 is ready to go? The pessimist in me does not think Avengers 2 will live up to the original. 

Let's move on to the Superbowl Syndrome (patent pending).

'But Knight Owl, what ever is the Superbowl Syndrome?'

Oh, I'll feed you, baby birds. Every year I watch several months and many games worth of a season of football to come to an exciting playoff exchange and then the big climax in the Superbowl. There is a lot of anticipation and build up in that time: following teams, becoming emotionally invested in wins and losses. An inexplicably and unjustifiably large amount of time is devoted to this, even though it has that expiry date in the Superbowl and then the whole thing starts from scratch the following fall. Now. I'm not sure about most people, but I can't really think of a Superbowl that had lived up to my expectations fully, or even justified all the time I spent prior to that event preparing for it in so many ways.

I'm not saying that Avengers didn't live up to expectations because it did, very much so. But think about how you'd feel if the football season leading up to the Superbowl was FOUR GODDAMN YEARS LONG. The thing happens, and it's great...but then it ends. Loki. Shwarmas. Done. Would you be sad? I was a little sad. Maybe not the first or second viewing, but after the third or fourth I realized it was over until the next big game. So, sadness after witnessing the end of the conclusion of an culmination of a significant amount of time and investment=Superbowl Syndrome. Tell your friends.

My last big issue to address is the question of what's going to happen with the new characters that have been established? Sure, there's Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor that are all set up, but what about the other kids in the class? I'm sure Fury will pop up every now and again with Agent Robin Sparkles at his side, so no big there. But Widow and Hawkeye? Probably not. I do not think that 'Black Widow and Hawkeye Strike Back' is going to be a thing any time soon, which is a little too bad because I enjoyed their perspectives in this over-the-top world of gods and giants, being two just plain people who are pretty and shoot things.

The big question mark for me is The Hulk. This guy made the movie for me and pretty much everyone else as I understand, and in my opinion it was because it was the first time he was done RIGHT. The movies where he was solo were both two hours of melodrama and 15 minutes of FUCKING HULK SMASH! In Avengers there was a hint of that melodrama, but it wasn't his reason for being or his driving force. He wanted to help out, and he straight up knocked the gig out of the park. As both Banner and Hulk, he was entertaining, convincing and interesting to watch. Throw in a bit of slapstick comedy and you have yourself Hulk as he was meant to be seen. Now based on that, do I want to see a Mark Ruffalo-led Hulk standalone? NOOOOOPE. Let's face it, Hulk was awesome because there were people he could play off of. Banner hangs out alone because he's scared to death of killing ALL OF THE THINGS but he's cool around the Avengers because they can give him a run for his money. Lose them and it becomes another pity party for Bruce Banner and his stretchy pants. If it happens, I'll see it. If it's good, I'll eat my words. But for right now, history is on my side for this round. 

Welp, that's it people. The Avengers is a thing and I am very, very happy about it. If I were smart enough to just live in the 'right now' and pay no nevermind to what's up ahead, I'd have no complaints. I could be very wrong about everything here, but I can very much see myself walking out of Iron Man 3 and saying, 'It was good, but it wasn't Avengers.' That phrase scares the shit out of me because I can see myself saying it a lot.

Let's face it, comic book movies can only really exist among themselves until they pull a Lord of the Rings and win an Oscar or some shit and truly legitimize the genre, but not even I want that to happen. Right now, I don't see myself comparing Django Unchained to Avengers, nor am I going to think about how much the new Superman movie coming out next year is NOT like The Artist (HATE). Keep it that way. At this point all I can say is that The Avengers is awesome and has changed everything. Watch it. Watch it again. Enjoy a shwarma, and we'll wait and see what happens.

Knight Owl

Reviewing 'The Avengers' Part One: Achievement Unlocked

...and we're back! Sorry about the lack of a post from last week, faithful reader(s)(?). If one were to put blame on my late post (and I will), the responsibility falls on three things:

1. Random Shit (i.e. 'Life')
2. Work
3. Final Fantasy 7

Yes, I have finally put some significant time into a console RPG for the first time, 15 years too late as it turns out. But Super Mario 64-level graphics notwithstanding, and my constant and desperate search for a save point persistently unfulfilled, the game is quite awesome (as per what everyone who has ever played the game has told me), but I digress.

I suppose an additional reason for my absence can be attributed to the subject of this post, a little movie that I have now seen 3 times, with more viewings to come: Joss Whedon's Disney's Marvel's THE MOTHERFUCKING AVENGERS!

My wait for this event (make no mistake, this is no mere movie, people) began with a viewing of Iron Man in 2008 upon opening night, after a nice 3-or-so hour wait in the mall among friends because of my overzealous desire to make sure both tickets and decent seats were attained (I REGRET NOTHING). After an awesome 2 hours, we were subjected to an extra treat after the credits, where Jules Winfield sans afro, avec eyepatch informs both Tony Stark and the audience that the Avengers is officially a thing that is happening. Cue blown mind.

This became a pattern over the next 4 years of Marvel movies, except Ghost Rider cuz fuck that guy. We, the audience, would be subjected to a good-to-great comic-to-film adaptation, followed by PSA about THIS PERSON IS GOING TO BE AN AVENGER in so many words. It sucked. Straight up, it was bullshit, mostly because meanwhile, on Earth That Is, the actual film was in some sort of developmental limbo because of 1) costs and 2) a lack of leadership because Captain America is neither real nor a film director. No one wanted, or could manage, a large-scale, high-budget film as unprecedented as Avengers, and those who would couldn't be bought with what was left after RDJ and SLJ got their $$$.

Enter the Chosen One: Joss Whedon. He was perfect. A skilled but unestablished-in-the-mainstream writer and director, who happened to also be a legendary fanboy and specialized in working with larger casts. It was truly brilliant in its simplicity.

Things only got better when Whedon showed up on the sets of Avengers platforms 'Thor' and 'Captain America: The First Avenger...that wasn't even on the team until long after it was established' and said "FUCK THIS SCRIPT"* and helped to re-write the scripts of both movies to better fit his, as the films would all be revealed to be very closely related. As far as I know, Whedon didn't even want a writing credit for the changes, because fuck Edward Norton (but that's a story for another time).

And so the board was set for the endgame that had been built up for 4 years. To say that the hype behind this movie was 'substantial' is so understating that you should frankly be ashamed of yourself. It was the culmination of, and maybe even the reason for, several films that preceded it, including:

Iron Man
Iron Man 2
The Incredible Hulk (kinda, sorta...)
Captain America: The First Avenger
Thor

...and through these movies, the cast was established and expanded to include Nick 'Bad Mother Fucker' Fury, Black Widow, and Hawkeye. Basically, if you weren't invested in this movie, you never will be. And if you were, you knew that this movie couldn't be anything but the absolute best. I ended up being more invested in the film's quality than most, for one simple reason: May 4th, 2012 absolutely SUCKED for me from 7:00am to approximately 10:00pm. Here's the thing, though...I remember nothing from that day now, except that I saw this movie.

So, yeah, The Avengers fucking delivers on every single level. I'm usually accepting of the opinions of others, but if you were overly unsatisfied by this movie, either take the stick out of your ass or get to a therapist for a prescription for whatever pills make you not sad, because there's something wrong with you. First off, the movie looks fantastic, probably better than any of its predecessors. The action scenes were surprisingly clear considering everything going on throughout the scenes, getting away from the up-close, 'What was that? Was that an arm?', Michael Bay-like kind of action that high-scale popcorn movies tend to force-feed the audience. The great visuals continue onto the depictions of the characters themselves. For example, the Hulk has never looked better than in this film. Of course he was going to be heavy CG because hey, Lou Ferrigno and green body paint were not going to work for this (it would have made the Eric Bana-led Hulk movie WAY better though).

The story wasn't as linear as the average action movie, but it fit. Through every viewing I felt as though I was reading a comic book. The pacing, the shifting points of view, and the exchanging dialogue were as reminiscent of a comic book as a movie can get, unless you're Zack Snyder, who basically copy-and-pastes comic book panels onto storyboards while telling Gerard Butler to punt someone down a hole whilst debating the differences between Madness and Sparta.

The true strength in this film, like every other Whedon-written work, lies in the characters themselves. It helps that most of the characters have had at least a two-hour window to develop during previous movies, but they still take on a separate identity when forced to interact with each other. Considering the cast is made up of Robert Downey Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, Chris 'LOL Human Torch' Evans, and Chris 'I was in Star Trek for 2 minutes hurrdurr' Hemsworth, the acting in this movie was absolutely fantastic all around, with Tom Hiddleston's Loki and Edward Norton Mark Ruffalo stealing many of the scenes they were part of.  I was also very surprised by how much I loved the Hulk's appearance in this film considering his former appearances in his own work. Previously, Hulk was depicted as somewhat melodramatic and straight up unfun for a huge green rage monster. Avengers changes all that and turns Hulk into said monster who then develops a sense of humor of sorts, bringing in a not-too-subtle slapstick element to an already entertaining experience.

Were there problems with this movie? Sure, but mostly due to my fanboy anal-retentiveness did I even notice them. The 2-1/2 hour length didn't bother me at all. I mean, seriously how else was this getting pulled off? Biggest problem: Where was the catchphrase I've either been saying or hearing for weeks before the movie debuted: AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!? There is no real phrase for any individual involved here, save for 'Hulk Smash,' which made a cameo appearance. Why not throw it in there? Problem #2: Cap looked rediculous. Not the uniform so much, just the mask. In his movie, the mask was a helmet that not only looked fine but had a practical purpose. There was no need for him to be wearing this half-fabric, half-plastic, painted-on-wings horse shit, but realizing the outcry that would have taken place were he to wear nothing on his head, this is probably the better option.

The only other thing bugging me takes the form of a slightly glaring plot hole that I can't see past. Before the climax in New York, Hulk and Thor get separated from the group and each other, and yet somehow, with no method of communication between them, they both show up in New York to Assemble. Midfight, Thor flies in from out of nowhere and later on, Banner putt-putts in on what looks like the shitty bike Peter Parker had in Spider Man 2.

What in the Seven Hells did I miss?

To think about it, there are perfectly plausible ways to explain how the two deux-ex-machinaed their way into the climax, and I won't really get into them to avoid further spoilers, but it takes little effort to throw some extra info the audience's way to clarify the goings-on.

In conclusion (but not really), Whedon and Co. pulled off what many thought impossible, and did it with seeming ease; and, as far as I am concerned, mindblowing success and accuracy. If you haven't seen this movie, go...NOW. If you have, see it again, because I have enjoyed it more and more with every viewing and have caught something new every time. I heart this movie. I'll have a Part Two coming up addressing what should happen now, considering I believe that this film and its success will be changing the game considerably.

Knight Owl

*Paraphrased