The Avengers Review (Pros & Cons)

 

A Comic Book Nerd's Dream Come True

There's no getting around it. It would be the understatement of the year to say that this movie had outrageously enormous shoes to fill considering everything riding on its success. Fortunately for us fans of this gradually expanding franchise, The Avengers delivered on just about everything that it needed to. Seeing these celebrated characters transition from their individual solo films onto one giant epic ensemble piece went beyond my expectations from 2008's Ironman. Marvel has officially set the stage for big comic book crossover movies to become more than just fan fiction fantasy but instead actual live action big budgeted releases. Ever since they've created their now highly successful cinematic universe, the flood gates for other comic book adaption projects has now opened wide up and we get to reap the benefits as a result. There were so many risks taken with just the mere idea of having a character as relatively grounded as Black Widow and Ironman share the same screen alongside a fantastical being as Thor and make us genuinely relate to and buy into the serious narrative stakes. And yet, they've managed to make it all work proving that the sky is the limit for who and what they can mix and match from the source material.

Satisfyingly Equal Character Spotlight

With ensemble or crossover titles (especially one that involves highly celebrated characters and/or actors), you're likely to run into the unavoidable, favoritism driven conundrum of certain characters feeling left out in comparison to others. In the case of The Avengers, I can safely say that everyone surprisingly got their fair share of the spotlight considering the storyline being explored here. There were of course many concerns of Ironman now being Marvel's prized character stealing screen time away from his Avenger counterparts, but those theories were immediately put to rest from the film's constant focus on giving everyone a "shining moment". 

One minute we see Captain America leaping over cars while throwing his shield around at enemies and the next we see Ironman swooping down blasting aliens as Hawkeye fires off arrows from a skyscraper. It's all seamlessly paced through and visualized ensuring that every hero gets their epic "memorable moment of badassery". Speaking of which, focusing on Hawkeye for a moment, I'm sure that there will be plenty of fans that will likely complain about Hawkeye being thrown into the the sidelines here. However, keep in mind that this is the character's first legitimate big entrance in the franchise after what was just a glorified cameo in Thor. This movie's primary focus was to bring together these previously introduced and fully fleshed out characters for one giant  "event" scenario. So going by that concept alone, I do believe that the writers did an amazing job overall in giving every major character a genuine sense of purpose and expectation fulfillment.

Breathtaking Spectacle

Considering that the Ironman and Thor solo entries already impressed fans from a visual perspective, this game changing crossover event had high expectations to deliver something borderline mind blowing with its epic scope. Thankfully, The Avengers goes above and beyond at certain points to offer up some some of the most incredible jaw dropping spectacle heavy scenes ever to be shown in a comic book movie to date. Watching scenes of sky portals releasing colossal sized creatures and alien armies while the Hulk leaps building to smash through enemies was everything a comic book fan could ask for and more. The final act of the film is literally one massive action sequence transitioning from each hero's individual battles taking place in one city setting. Now, this in of  itself isn't necessarily a groundbreaking idea as we've seen similar imagery in the Transformers movies' style of staging multiple characters fighting onscreen.

However, with some of those movies, the camera at times seemed to have been held by an adrenaline junkie chimpanzee on its 5th case of Red Bull as shaky cam and poor choice of camera angles lead to incomprehensible action. Whereas in The Avengers, we're given plenty of wide screen framing and clear cinematography laying everything out to the audience that revolves around the characters and their environment. When Hulk and Thor are on top of a giant flying alien fighting hordes of enemies while Ironman soars through explosions in the city, we can see every necessary detail without the visual noise. The audience can feel the epic scale of the dangers that surrounds the heroes as opposed to being disconnected by the over stimulating light show and overcrowded nature of it all. Because of that attention, love, and respect given to the material and to the fans, I have to give credit where credit is due. Not every director would've treated these characters as people as opposed to just flashy visual FX to throw at the viewers as if we were babies laughing at jingling keys.

Amazing Fan Service

As if it wasn't enough to just have these characters in the same movie share the screen together, Joss Whedon (director/writer of the screenplay) still managed to offer us more by slipping in some highly entertaining moments of pure fan service. I honestly couldn't express to you in words just how much of a kid I felt like after those 5 quick seconds of Ironman swooping down and reflecting his beam off of Captain America's shield just to blast away the surrounding aliens. There are many scenes such as these that are either subtle or front and center for the sake of servicing the fans who has loved these characters for years from various forms of media. When a filmmaker shows this much care and attention towards the material's fan community, there's a notably loud portion of the audience that ends up celebrating the end result even more. The Avengers does this in spades and exceeds expectations.

The Power of Good Writing and Directing

As ridiculous as it is to see Thor conversing with Captain America on paper as their films feel light years away from each other in genre exploring "realism", the film knows this and brilliantly takes full advantage of the potential humor. We're treated to these hilarious scenes of Tony Stark making fun of Thor's outfit as well as Banner's transformation control. It is largely because of these fun character interactions being injected that the bizarre thought of having such unique and different individual personalities from various background (and even mythologies) exist in one room effectively work. If the film took itself too seriously, then it definitely would've opened the door to many unintentional jokes regarding Thor's character, so for them to take that into consideration implanting what many would've likely made fun of was clever and useful in the long run. 

We also get a great sense of where every character's individual journey is after their solo films prior to the Avengers event narrative through individual scenes. There was a major concern going in regarding the cohesiveness of the multiple stories intertwining which Whedon, in my opinion, fully understood and perfectly remedied through pivotal bits of dialogue. From beginning to end, you understand where everyone was before teaming up, during their team up, during the big climactic battle, and where they're left off for the future. It takes a highly skilled and keen eye to successfully deliver on character writing and story structuring with such a behemoth of a project. For that, I also have to give credit where credit is due.

The Not So Strong, Not So Weak Villain

One of the most beloved and fan favored Marvel villains, Loki, takes the big stage as this movie's spotlight antagonist. Unfortunately, I never really felt as though he made much of an impact on the heroes themselves. I really enjoyed the character of Loki from the Thor movie as the mischievous yet conflicted child understandably crying out for attention. But did it really take the entire might of the Hulk, Captain America, Thor, and Ironman to defeat him? Well technically, it took the entire team to defeat his army of easily expendable and forgotten alien henchmen (let's call them forgettable drones as a more accurate description). Sure, I had a lot of fun hearing him speak of being able to dominate the human race as Captain America makes a reference to the Nazis having a similar goal, but in the end, I never really felt the need to have all of these characters desperately brought together to confront him.

I'm sure a royally pissed off Hulk, Thor, and fully geared up Ironman would have sufficed. Or at least...that's how it felt. Clearly the movie gives examples of everyone serving their purpose to stop this invasion, but I just felt that Loki came off as a joke at times more so than a legitimately terrifying threat for our heroes to struggle against. And as much as I really enjoyed the imagery surrounding the Chitauri army attacking New York, I didn't really find them particularly interesting. A bit more expansion on the mythology surrounding them would've certainly added a much needed layer to their characterization beyond just "alien army". That being said, this is more so a nitpick than anything and doesn't shatter the movie's viewing experience whatsoever. This was about bringing these heroes together for the first time ever onscreen to fight a singular battle. In that respect, I think the villains serve their purpose well enough. The next villain for an Avengers team up however will have to deliver more of a multi-dimensional and intimidating threat. So, let the post credit scene speculations begin.

Rating: 10/10