REVIEW: The Avengers Takes a Bunch of Beloved Superheroes and Builds Big Set Pieces Around Them. Is It Enough?
The Avengers is less a movie than a novelization of itself, an oversized, self-aware picture designed mostly for effect: That of reliving the experience of a movie you’ve seen before and just can’t get enough of. The picture is broken down into narrative chunks that ultimately don’t tell much of a story – what you get instead is a series of mini-climaxes held together by banter between characters. The idea, maybe, is that people already love Captain America, Iron Man, the Hulk and Thor so much — like, so, so much — that all a filmmaker really needs to do is put them all into a big stock pot filled with elaborate set pieces and some knowing dialogue and he’s golden. And maybe, given the heightened-lowered expectations of movie audiences, that really is all he has to do: It's possible to have looked forward to a movie all year, to enjoy watching it, and then to have completely forgotten about it the following week.
The Avengers isn’t terrible. It has a welcoming, communal spirit, especially for a big-budget, early-summer picture. But its director, Joss Whedon — who also cowrote the script, with Zak Penn, based on the characters created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby — seems to have gotten lost in mythology on his way to the story. It’s odd that last year, the arrival (and popularity) of The Artist and Midnight in Paris elicited dozens of cranky essays — or at least Tweets — about how lame it was that these movies traded in “nostalgia,” a sentimental longing for an old-timey world of bowler hats and flapper dresses (or, at least, moviemaking with less green screen). But movies built around comic books never get the same treatment, even though they wouldn’t exist if not for a past kept in boxes under countless beds, a past that you get really mad at your mother for throwing out. We have to carry some of the past along with us. How else do you shape the future? But The Avengers isn’t so much a movie as a kind of G-8 summit for action figures who have finally been allowed out of their cellophane boxes. They do action stuff, then they talk a little, then they do more action stuff. It’s a movie that, for all its dazzle, has forgotten that the whole point of reading comic books is for story and character development.
The Avengers certainly doesn’t lack for characters, most of which will be familiar even if you’ve never read a Marvel comic book in your life, provided you’ve been to the movies at least a couple of times in the past few years. As the picture opens, Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury, the godfather of the military law-enforcement outfit known as S.H.I.E.L.D., is just about to put a shiny cube known as the Tesseract away for safe-keeping when out of the sky drops pissed-off alien Viking Loki (played by Tom Hiddleston, who has a fantastic anemic-schoolboy look). Loki possesses a mysterious staff that can steal the hearts of men, even superhuman ones, and he uses this dastardly magical doohickey to take a number of Nick Fury’s employees hostage, among them Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton, AKA Hawkeye, a bow-and-arrow guy. He also takes possession of the Tesseract, which has the power to destroy worlds and to remove that pesky ring-around-the-collar — seriously, this rock can do anything.
Nick needs to get the rock back, and fast, so he summons the most awesome assemblage of superhuman superheroes ever, in the form of Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America (Chris Evans), Bruce Banner, AKA the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Natasha Romanoff, AKA Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson). Later, Loki’s linebacker-sized half-brother Thor (the casually appealing Chris Hemsworth, a collegiate, big galoot of a guy) joins the fray, as Hawkeye does once he’s freed from Loki’s spell.
It’s not giving too much away to tell you that these guys do recover the Tesseract, because luckily, someone has had the foresight to build a reversible thingie into the thingie — smart thinking! And maybe, when it comes right down to it, The Avengers doesn’t need much in the way of plotting to deliver base-level blockbuster satisfaction: It moves forward, set piece by set piece, in a way that can easily fool you into thinking it’s exciting, or at least not boring. In one sequence, Iron Man and Thor -- his mighty hammer looking looking comically, wonderfully tiny in his gigantic hand -- duke it out in a forest; Captain America swoops in to intervene, and the three engage in a vaulting, clanging, technically souped-up version of rock-paper-scissors, each trying to outdo the others with his own personal superhero superpowers -- they don't yet realize that their powers complement each other more than they clash. Later, Thor breaks up more shenanigans among the group with a rebuke: “You people are so petty! And so tiny.”
He’s got that right. The Avengers suffers from the thing that mars so many movies peopled with outsize characters: Everyone is jostling for our attention, and naturally, some are going to grab more than others. Ruffalo is characteristically understated as Bruce Banner, which makes his transformation into, as Stark puts it, “an enormous green rage monster” quietly satisfying. Renner’s Hawkeye is a little lost — it can’t be easy, being the bow-and-arrow guy. Similarly, even though Johansson’s sultry Natasha gets a smashing opening — she vanquishes a bunch of thugs even as she’s tied to a chair, a magnificent feat of bondage combat — she’s quickly relegated to the superhero back burner. And Downey’s Stark, strutting around in his off-hours in a Black Sabbath T-shirt, is amusing until his self-important wisecracks begin to wear ruts in the movie. One thing The Avengers doesn’t have going for it — which is hardly the movie’s fault — is that it can never be the sneak attack Jon Favreau’s first Iron Man movie was. That picture stands as the best in a wayward series of Avengers movies that include Kenneth Branagh’s crazy-Wagnerian Thor and Joe Johnston’s well-intentioned but wobbly Captain America: The First Avenger.
Of all the characters here, Chris Evans's Captain America best acquits himself, partly because Evans never looks as if he’s trying too hard and partly, maybe, because his character's suit — an old-fashioned padded red-white-and-blue number, with matching helmet mask — is so old-school that you never lose sight of the superhuman human being inside it. Maybe that’s also why Gwyneth Paltrow, who appears in only a few scenes as Tony Stark’s main squeeze Pepper Potts, is such a blessed vision: She pads around Tony Stark’s space-age Manhattan headquarters in her bare feet, dressed in a white shirt and cutoff shorts, a sexy vision of down-to-earth braininess — she also happens to be coordinating the technology that makes Stark and his Stark Enterprises such a success.
But maybe you don’t really need a Pepper Potts when you’ve got a crashing, galloping extended climax in which a portion of New York City is destroyed by massive flying metal beasties before the Avengers can restore order. Whedon does a pretty valiant job of orchestrating set pieces like these. And yet — is that what we really want from Whedon? In my book, Whedon will always be a genius for creating and shaping Buffy the Vampire Slayer — a show that addressed not just the major traumas of teenagerhood but of this goddamned thing we call life — and shepherding it through seven remarkably sustained seasons. The Avengers is far less intimate than Buffy — a show whose proportions reached majestic heights — ever was. And Whedon’s 2005 feature directing debut Serenity, based on his ill-fated but marvelous television series Firefly, offers the kind of satisfying, bare-bones storytelling that’s lacking in The Avengers. (I also think it’s time for Whedon to retire the idea of the hole in the sky that suddenly breaks open, unleashing horrors upon an unsuspecting world, a device that also features in the smug, tricky, meta-horror movie Cabin in the Woods, which Whedon cowrote and produced. He never met a portal he didn’t like.)
The Avengers is at its best when Whedon takes the time to shape small moments between the characters, as when tight-ass Agent Phil Coulson (played by the likeably noodgy Clark Gregg) goes all stammering and tongue-tied in the presence of Captain America, his childhood idol. Coulson’s awkward hero worship is a gentle metaphor for The Avengers’ whole reason for existence — these are characters people love, for understandable reasons. But the movie’s scale and size does little to serve those characters, and there’s something self-congratulatory about Whedon’s whole approach, as if he were making a movie only for people who are already in on the in-joke. Comic-book aficionados who have always loved the Avengers may very well love The Avengers; those who wouldn’t know a Tesseract from a Rubik’s Cube may feel differently. That’s the thing about other people’s nostalgia: It’s always a bitch.
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Comments
This is a terrible review. Go watch the movie. It is pitch-perfect.
This is why critics are obsolete and at the same moment ubiquitous. Think how much money could be spent to employ actual talent doing real jobs if everyone dispensed with this gossipy clap-trap. It's funny that they even refer to themselves as writers.
Why are you mad at her journalistic opinion on this movie? I know that you are a fanboy of the movie and that its probably the best movie in the world to you and other fanboys. But this is just a review based on the movie she saw. Grow up and you become movie journalist and review movies and quit degrading other people careers because you disagree with there opinion!!!
The movie is many things. However, it is not "pitch perfect" or even "above average"
"It’s a movie that, for all its dazzle, has forgotten that the whole point of reading comic books is for story and character development." - I really think you need to go back to your own comic collection (if you ever had one) and re-read.
There are some seminal pieces of literature within the comic genre, Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns being two quintessential components of that list. Other writers such as Will Eisner (The Plot) and Art Spiegelman (Maus) have crafted amazing stories that achieve an unrivalled attention-grabbing and emotional thrust by their medium.
But to say that comics of old, and the still mass-produced studio comics of now, have a focus on story and character development is the most laughable thing I have read on this site for awhile.
Marvel and DC are interested in maintaining status quo with their heroes and villains, are interested in stretching out stories across multi-branching narratives through several different comic imprints (Civil War from Marvel, and the Infinite Crisis sage from DC) so that people will continue to BUY and BUY and BUY.
The comics industry as an artistic form is not interested in expanding characters. In fact both of the major publishers, DC and Marvel, came up with ways to tell "interesting, new stories" whilst also making them NIL and VOID in terms of character development and significant changes within the comic universes by having them exist as such in totally separated worlds.
They wish to give you the facade of development, so as not to risk the alienation of other superfans of their favourite superheroes, when a comic is written in a way that would undermine what THEY think of the character.
Marvel gave Joss Whedon a hell of a challenge. How can you take so many different heroes, origin stories retold and retold again countless times in comic book form, animated and live-action television form, video games, novels, fan-fiction and films and have them authentically exist in the same space?
This movie is pure blockbuster spectacle. As a film student I am a lover of artistic cinema, something which stirs in us the most beautiful of emotions (in varying ways, some being beautiful in themselves, others beautiful in their ugliness) I am not so much a fan of blockbusters.
I went to see The Hunger Games and was left cold and detached from the entire film, a film which was awarded a very good review on this site.
That was a blockbuster that had forgotten itself.
The Avengers works because it speaks to the child within us, the child that needs a few explosions, some ladies in hot pants, and a few fantastic jokes.
What Whedon has done is toe-the-line perfectly for Marvel's, Jon Favreau's, Branagh's, Johnston's, Penn's, and all the other countless individuals who have worked on the different Marvel Cinematic Universe banner films and put them together. And it works. Solidly.
The joy of this film is in seeing how well it works. How well it is made. How Whedon was able to create something both a part, and apart, from the other works.
The child in you has grown to old to see that "spectacle cinema," that which George Melies started on long ago, can still be as exciting as ever.
It's a subtle feeling, and one that seems to have been lost on you.
(By the way, The Hunger Games doesn't work because it's always trying to hard to be more than it should. The Avengers knows exactly what it is, and is a real pleasure to watch because of it.)
Thanks.
Honestly, you lost me at "As a film student..." even before you argued that Avengers works partly because of "some ladies in hot pants." That might warrant a 5-star review from the child in you, but it only proves Stephanie's point re: nostalgia.
Thankfully though, I don't boil film reviews down to stars and points. I was only interested in debate.
Film is always an open interpretation, I don't think Ms. Zacharek's opinion is incorrect, just that her review is centred on a misguided idea about the primary antagonists comic-book counterparts. Marvel Comics and Marvel Movies are two entirely different beasts.
AH Ha Ha Ha Ha. You said it, sister. "As a film student...." ...."I am indoctrinated into a very literal ideological metaphor of how all experiences should be viewed. I am unable to think past my Prof's taint, and genre is a dirty, dirty word I will never give a nod to while people are looking. I realize I do this because I am a phony, advancing an agenda with no talent to contribute or actually create."
It's funny I said Film student, people think it means Film Studies.
As in criticism.
As in, what Stephanie Zacharek does for a living. And most of the other writers on this site.
"I am indoctrinated into a very literal ideological metaphor of how all experiences should be viewed." - Every critic I have ever read a review from uses this as their starting point. They never think about an audience, only themselves as audience.
Such is the difference between film-making and film criticism.
I study films by making films as well as reading them (i.e: watching with the viewpoint of someone trying to understand how an image is used to communicate meaning.)
What do you do? Watch films and think that by defining them through the stereotypes of genre that you are somehow helping to acclimatise an audience to its charms. You merely advance the alphabetical ordering of Action/Adventure, through to Romance/Thriller, forcing people to forever watch the movies suggested to them on NetFlix as opposed to opening up and viewing something entirely new to their senses.
Anyone who wishes to categorize film so effortlessly is someone who gets no joy from pure film. Something that would transcend all boundaries of genre, existing only as "Fiction" - as all films in reality can ever hope to do. If I made a film that was a 'Kung-Fu/Action/Thriller/Post-Apocalyptic/Group Ensemble/Character Study/Period Piece', what section would you file that under? Because I would just call it a 'Film'.
"I realize I do this because I am a phony, advancing an agenda with no talent to contribute or actually create."
I've made some short films and I hope to make more, forever learning from my mistakes and mishaps, trying to create my own language within cinema to then communicate my ideas to an audience.
I'd love to see what films Steven R. Morrow has made. Or perhaps just find out what he enjoys in life and insult him for it. Nice one, Morrow, you're a real hero.
Now let me go arrange my DVDs based on their IMdB ratings!
"The joy of this film is in seeing how well it works. How well it is made."
The joy of a great film is when you don't even notice how it works when you're watching - because it captivates you. An intricately-designed, clever machine is, for mine, never as good as emotional investment in a story - you've got to *care* what happens. There's plenty of folks who disagree with that - clearly, since Nolan etc receive such acclaim - but for me it's the centre of the story.
I skipped around your review because I didn't want to read anything that would give away even a small detail (of which I think you did when talking about the cube) and of all that I read, I want to know...what the heck does Wagnerian mean when referencing the Thor movie anyway? If it means totally-super-awesome then I agree. If not, then that means you probably are out of your element reviewing comic movies to begin with.
Really...Thor was sooo epic on every level...it was a true masterpiece of filmmaking. Kenneth made a pure classic movie...and if I had to pick...I would easily choose Thor over the original Iron Man. That movie had some major drag time that I literally have to skip when I now watch the movie again.
Thor was not perfect, not like Kick-Ass was, but it was close!
Thor was not a masterpiece. Fantastic, yes, but the over development of the love between him and Jane was awful.
And, I shouldn't say "over-development." I mean sudden development, as in "out of nowhere" almost.
Totally agreed. And granted, it's tough to pull together so many story lines and characters but Avengers suffers from a bit of shortcut-itis as well.
I disagree...I thought it felt natural...she was a star-struck scientist unlucky in love and came across something possible out of this world. There was food chemistry there between Jane Foster and Thor. You want to talk contrived see Green Lantern....Transformers Dark of the Moon.
"what the heck does Wagnerian mean when referencing the Thor movie anyway?"... "Thor was sooo epic on every level..."
That's EXACTLY what it means: for good and for bad, epic on every level. It makes gentler emotions difficult to portray, because drama becomes melodrama, but it means the thing goes WHAM! and BOOM! and THWACK! with the best of them - not a bad characteristic for a comic-book movie.
I actually thought Thor was more mock-Wagnerian; it seemed enjoyably aware of its excesses.
Bro, next time, check a dictionary or - and this is a crazy idea - put the big scary word into google instead of writing your thoughts.
Also, you know what the terrasect is, it is the cosmic cube mcguffin rejigged a bit. Don't be worrying about jumping arounfpd in this review, she doesn't blow any good lines etc.
There's always that 1 person who just vies for attention in being an attention whore in trying to brig down the fanboys who basically know the movie is damn good and probably seals it better coming from someone like Richard Roeper who gushed about it VS , Well, you.. The mlovie rules and your review blows and RT should've had better integrity than to allow this review..
YES! For once I am in total agreement with Ms. Zacharek! And now the hypocrisy for all those shameless trolls who criticized ME for criticizing some of SZ's other reviews will be revealed. You see, it's all fun and games and "oh, it's all subjective, everyone's entitled to their own opinion" until the movie YOU are looking forward to gets slammed and then all bets are off. Carry on SZ, more power to you!
You should get another line of work. Clearly movie reviewing isn't for you. Your job as a critic is to warn us of bad movies, help guide the majority to what we would like. Instead, you take something the majority of us (and your fellow critics who have a clue) like, and try to steer us away from a fantastic movie. When your opinion is against the overwhelming majority, clearly you are disconnected from movie goers. Perhaps you should try being a fashion designer or Chef or something. But, for God's sake, stay away from movie reviews. My critique of you as a critic is that I give you an F.
Daddy. What are you talking about? Hardly ANYBODY has seen the film (which includes myself), so where do you get the "overwhelming majority" from? SZ is what is known as a critic, not a movie reviewer. No idea whether I agree with her or not, and can't until I see it, but she breaks down and justifies every negative (and positive) comment. That's what a critic is supposed to do. 90% of them out there are movie reviewers/consumer reporters with thumbs either raised or lowered, but with no solid basis for their opinion other than received from the trends out there (they want to be part of the hossana or naysayer crowd, depending on what way the wind is blowing).
Seriously, people? Seriously?
The job of a film critic is to communicate his or her individual thoughts on a given movie and explain why he or she felt that way. It is not to be a sheep. If a movie doesn't work for someone, it doesn't work. Is a critic only supposed to like movies that the majority likes? Does a critic's reviews have to be connected to the opinion of moviegoers? If so, we'd see tons of four-star appraisals of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and most Adam Sandler comedies would be locks on Time magazine's best-of-year lists. And don't get me started on the Twilight series. "The majority" clearly likes them, which clearly means they're worthy of only the most effusive praise and immediate induction into the National Film Registry. Clearly.
Stephanie's review doesn't even slam The Avengers. She seems to think the movie is fine and all, it's just nothing special. You know, for her. It reads like a B-minus assessment to me. Speaking as someone who expects to really really REALLY enjoy The Avengers — because I haven't seen it yet, and, I figure, neither have a lot of people who are upset about this review — Stephanie's opinion doesn't bother me. Why would it? She saw it, she thought it was okay, she told us why.
But you know what? If it really upsets you that the mean critic lady thought The Avengers was only okay, you should go see it (again or for the first time), and you should love it extra-super-duper hard. You know, to make up for this crime that Stephanie perpetrated against professional film criticism here today.
fuck. i just saw the fucking movie, and this reviewer is correct. this movie doesn't leave u deflated, but you're not pumped either. there were long stretches of dialogue/argument that went nowhere except to slow the momentum of the film. With the kind of reviews the movie got, i expected a 'wholesome' quality script, the GOLD standard of comic book movies. it is NOT. With less emotional impact and characterization of Iron Man, and less substance in it's storytelling than the Dark Knight, this Avengers movie is merely passable. A slam bang ending and a few laughs in between does not automatically make a movie great, and the end finale is full of CGi but nothing we haven't seen before in some Micheal bay movie. Wheadon turned out to be mortal after all. The overwhelming criticism of this negative review shows that low standards are now, the norm.
ps- and Sam Jackson, wtf? he did nothing to advance his role or give weight to the 'world ending' situation. He could have been the token black guy, except that he lived.
Yeah, i felt the same too. My gf fell asleep at one stage in the first half... and i was wondering if I shouldn't leave because it really really seemed to be going nowhere for ages.
I agree with you totally - great, exciting ending, a few laughs, but it isn't slightly consistantly good, and is nowhere near the level of awesomeness that all the great reviews - 94% currently - would imply
As a comic book film fan, I felt that this was an interesting read (although I'm not sure I agree with it yet; I'm going to see the film for myself and then form my opinion). I do feel that this review touches upon many of the problems that recent films suffer from: lack of character development being the key problem. In your review, you wrote that "there’s something self-congratulatory about Whedon’s whole approach, as if he were making a movie only for people who are already in on the in-joke." That should tell folks that if they're interested in watching this film, it might help to watch the ones preceding it for any backstory that's lacking. Perhaps this film should solely be considered a sequel, and nowhere near a stand-alone. I'll see soon whether I agree whole-heartedly with you, Ms. Zacharek, because frankly I do fall into the heightened-lowered expectations" category.
There are a lot of interesting geek moments in the movie, which is what she's probably alluding to (heli carrier, comic style science, comic witticisms, stan lee, etc). But they are just moments - like, if top ten were released, but without the interesting story to piece it together, just a bunch of clever panels of comic references.
Believe you me, the characters are fleshed out (or rather, re-hashed) in this movie.
Ms. Zacharek - you're review gives away way too much detail about the movie. I think you could have easily made your points without spoiling so much of what happens in the film. Obviously I havent seen the movie yet, but the fact that you feel that this specific movie is lacking on story and character development strikes me oddly. The Avengers is a unique compilation of characters and stories from multiple other films - I would think that the basic understanding that most people would have going in to see this movie is that all of the substance of each invidivual featured here has already been drummed up in earlier movies like Iron Man 2 and Captain America, with The Avengers serving as a 2 hour climax to the already established mythology.
Perhaps thats why you weren't able to fully appreciate this movie - because you believe that dusting off the old comics laying underneath the bed of a comic geek is a prerequisite to being primed for this kind of flick rather than just being one of the millions of average action film-loving people who hit a theatre last summer to enjoy Brannaugh's Thor who now consequently could easily tell you the difference between a Tesseract and a Rubik's cube...
Nope, reviewer is right in her review. You are right in thinking that people should be familiar with the characters - but this movie treats us like we're not. A lot of time is spent introducing them and showing how they all come together.
A lot of their time is spent bickering with each others - incidentally, something that *ruins* most of the character development they have ALL been through in their respective films about working with others (esp thor, iron man). (on the subject of Thor, how is he back on earth? Didn't the rainbow bridge blow up at the end of his movie?)
Also, the reviewer gives away nothing that you're not aware of via trailers, and if you've not watched the trailer you're no comic geek.... and if that is the case, why are you posting here?
She iis spot on, ok film, not great, def not good, very def not Whedon worthy.
Thank you, Stephanie. I found "The Avengers" to be the Rat Pack of movies, a project that presumes if one superhero is cool five of them must be cool to the fifth power. It's diverting enough, and has a few laughs, most of them from Clark Gregg and Robert Downey, Jr. Though Whedon has written some very funny dialogue to put it politely he is not a visual storyteller.The movie looks like a lot of mud-cake sneakers as seen through the window of a washing machine. (This might be the result of the 3-D, but I don't care enough to go see it a second time.) I kept on waiting for Warhorse to rescue Tom Hiddleston's Joey.
This movie just need to get direct to the point. We already know this characters from the past movies. Obviously she didn't know to much about how the avengers comics are. Which comic from the Avengers has a complex story? i know a few people don't like this kind of movies and thats fine with me. But after looking at rottentomatoes and saw that this review is only counts for less than 10% of the critics its hard to take it seriously until most people see the movie.
did you watch the movie or did you write the review just based on what you heard from other people..?
Reads like she watched the movie. No other reviewers seem to have, though.
Opinions are never wrong. Someone who rights a review expressing an opinion different from the masses, is not wrong. Someone who forms an opinion by breaking apart a movie and assessing it by it's base components is just stupid. I don't particularly like raw tomatoes...and I wouldn't eat a handful of salt...but I do love ketchup. Go figure.
She clearly had a problem with special effects, thinking that if there are "boom-bang-wow" moments, there must not be much of a story. I also noticed that when she ran out of that brand of ammo, she took shots at Joss Whedon. For what? Because he hasn't created another Buffy? At best she offered a back-handed compliment by suggesting he made a good effort with substandard material.
This movie, with whatever flaws it contains, has been constructed to be a crowd-pleaser. That crowd being comic book fans, that for the better part of their lives have wondered how a collection of favorite stories and characters could play on-screen. This is that moment.
You appear to have formed an opinion by breaking apart this review into component bits - as you've listed them, they'd be joss whedon hate, cgi hate. It is hard to review much of anything without breaking it down... Actually, i'd argue that is the pointof a review, to break it down so others
A. Don't get the whole taste
B. can form an opinion on if they'd like it
Um, bad news bear! If comic fans where waiting, it was only for a B grade film at best. Sorry, the reviewer is bang on the money. This is a decent - decent, as in "oh kaaaaay" not decent as in good - movie, not a great one.
Wow, haterz gotta hate. Just moved the uk last monthso i got to see this movie a week earlier than I would in the states. The reviewer is *balls* on the money. Avengers isn't bad, no, but it sure as hell shouldn't be firing in the 90%+ category at rt. Tome, movies above 90 are gold - dark knight, wall e, say. They have a real impact and they never, ever have dull moments. Certainly not moments where i'm not in the movie, but am sitting in a dark room watching a flickering screen thinking "get on with it".
Avengers has an epic, awesome last 40 or so minutes, but everything before that - 100 minutes - is rubbish. Take away the exhiliration of the last 40 and you are left with a pretty mediocre film. Too much talking - and not the honey smooth Whedon kind either. I am talking crap like "this is a category 7 event" and "we have just declared war" and so many other phrases that IMPLY that there is sooooo much tension happening, when there really isn't, it's just a bunch of people saying tension-sounding phrases.
Too much of the dialogue feels manufactured... probably to hit that elusive one billion transformer market, possibly Joss toned it down because this movie is a Big Deal for him and it was too much of a risk to go all Serenity on it. And who can blame him? Bay puts out crap with explosions and makes a packet, Whedon puts out firefly and it gets canned.
Think of this as a Bay/Whedon film, but with 80% Bay and you are on the money. If that sounds cool to you, you're in for a treat.
You should read what Stephanie had to say about "The Dark Knight" then. She liked it even less than Avengers.
The "whole point" of reading comic books is not character development and story. They are just one point of reading comic books. Sometimes you get that and sometimes you don't. More often, the primary point of reading a comic book is the action that occurs when the good guy takes on the bad guy. It's escapism.
I'm a major comic book fan, especially Marvel. I run a comic book website, a comic book podcast and have amassed a huge collection of everything superheroes. Simply, I love them. However, I must say I agree with a lot of what she says.
Joss made such a big deal about the time having to run long so that every character could get their screen time in, but I thought there was about 15-20 mins that could have been cut out to shape it up a little nicer. The S.H.I.E.L.D. stuff could have been trimmed a lot! And Maria Hill seemed useless to me. She may as well have been Agent XYZ or 123, as she did nothing to make her character memorable or important. She seemed to be there just to make fanboys say, "Look another Marvel charater come to life!"
While I don't dislike the movie, by any means, i just don't believe it lived up to the hype. I was not overwhelmed or underwhelmed...just whelmed.
I normally try not to be a beligerant net nerd in comments sections, but I just had to say thanks for the Cabin in the Woods spoiler, asshole. Fuh.
It's not a spoiler, since at no point in Cabin in the Woods is there a hole in the sky that suddenly breaks open to unleash horrors on an unsuspecting world. That isn't even opinion, it's just factually wrong.
The review reads (to me) like someone had already decided the movie wasn't for them before they watched it.
It's a good, very fun movie. Not the best movie ever but a brilliant start for to the summer. I enjoyed it enough to see it twice.
I can't believe you saw the same film I just saw. Perhaps you need to step away from film review so you can enjoy it for a change. Comparing this film to Buffy to Firefly is preposterous. It's a whole different genre with whole different characters. You lost me completely with that. I never read the Avengers, but did read several of the characters individual books, so I'm not one for all the "in" jokes..and certainly never felt I missed anything. Yes, its a big film with lists of explosions. But in between he manages to touch on all the characters personalities, fears and hopes and brings their strengths together to tie up the bad guys. I can't fathom what is wrong with that. Unless it's just that you don't particular care for movies of that sort.
Re: Maybe that’s also why Gwyneth Paltrow, who appears in only a few scenes as Tony Stark’s main squeeze Pepper Potts, is such a blessed vision
Just a note -- you said the same thing about Gyllenhaal in Dark Knight. Sharp women are coming across a bit as welcome perches into inhospitable territory. For me, with Dark Knight, I could cooperate with you and see her (i.e., Gyllenhall) as a resolve of sanity, awakeness, against a director's vision carried to brilliance for its dark spirit being the darling of the Era. But you seem a bit unwilling to even recognize the brilliance when it's there, as it was in the equally dispiritingly dark-visioned, bile-moved Planets of the Apes. You deserve a pass for liking the nostalgia films from last year, as there are powerful forces of goodness moving them which ought to have been recognized, championed, certainly as much as retreat. But you certainly haven't yet convinced you're not going to start seeing genius in castoffs adrifted to those ultimately tameable for fretting the fray. Be the red-headed harradon, and run amock -- what the hell has gotten into her!
I agree with your review. It's a good comic book movie but I expected more from Joss Whedon, though that's my problem of (may be unrealistic) high expectation. I usually like Scarlett but she was playing it too flat for me, "I don't see how that's a party" should be Whedon signature dry humour, ends up a completely wrong and jarring scene. I just somehow got it in my head expecting it to be like Serenity (even though I never watched a single episode of the Firefly) The Avengers are just not very interesting group of people, in this movie.
For me the only engaging characters are Haweye and Coulson, probably because they are yet to be fully explore so far. There should a SHIELD movie so we can have more Coulson, and I refuse to believe he is not coming back in the Iron Man 3. Tom Hiddleston's Loki is brilliant, over the top villain is always much more entertaining.
I AGREE WITH IZZY. THE MOVIE SUCKED.
I thought it was a pretty straightforward review and not one way or the other. In other words, a good review (although the Buffy worship was a bit much). What's more disturbing is a generation that thinks Thor is a masterpiece of filmmaking.
Agreed. What the heck was so good about Thor?
We all knew she wouldn't like it. Its a mainstream action film. Why get her to review it? She was always going to see something wrong with the film. It kind of epitomises the whole review when she can't help but mention 2 films from last year The Artist & Midnight In Paris, 2 films that have no substance or significance when reviewing The Avengers.
Fair enough if she didn't like it, but it was the fact that we all knew she wouldn't thats a shame to be honest.
Her review is really really really fair. Why have (as from the rt esponse, has been done) fanboys review the film? Everybody knows that fanboys are going to watch it... there aren't that many fanboys anyway (how many people read comics vs books, for example?) - so you might as well get a nonfanboy to review.
Ridiculous, comparing Buffy to the Avengers. Like you say, idiot reviewer, he had SEVEN SEASONS to shape Buffy. Also, it was a flop movie that he could recreate in his own image, much like Firefly was entirely his own imagined universe. With the avengers he has to tread more carefully, not stepping on the toes of expectant fans and crafting a movie from decades of established lore. For me, he succeeded. The movie was fun, all characters had their own satisfying story arcs (unlike "Wolverine and the X-Men: parts 1, 2 and 3") and it never dragged.
Completely lost credibility when you compared it to Buffy. If it had only been to compare the Whedonesque humour, I could have agreed. How many hundreds of hours and thousands of pages of script did Buffy get versus the Avengers???
I thought the movie was pretty close to perfect... but the comments people are leaving in here are disturbing. Ms. Zacharek has been one of my favorite critics for years, and while I wish she had experienced the same joy I did in the film, her review is her perception of the film's strengths and weaknesses just as mine is my own perception.
Not sure why I'm even commenting though. The posters leaving comments about how Ms. Zacharek should leave the film criticism game obviously (a) aren't familiar with her body of work at ALL and (b) are either sexist idiots or your average garden-variety idiots, so stating that their grossly unfair judgment of her work is grossly unfair is merely preaching to the intelligent choir. Sigh.
I watched the movie.
I disagree with this review.
Stay away from comic book movies from now on, miss. Or review The Dark Knight Rises, as I see it will be snob enough for you to like it.
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