A Marvel Fan’s Spoiler-free Review of ‘The Avengers’
So, just to get it out of the way, yes, The Avengers was awesome. And if you know me at all, you know that I present that as honestly as I can; I immediately and again point out what was already offered in the title of this article—I’m a Marvel. That doesn’t mean that I’m ignoring the flaws—I’ll present them as I’ve come to understand them—but if you’re looking for a dissection-under-microscope of The Avengers, you haven’t found it.
What you have found, instead, is an attempt to argue why The Avengers is the best comic book movie I’ve ever seen.
My Reasoning, Assemble!
It’s at Once the Very First of Its Kind and a Brand New Standard - One of the reasons why I was more excited for The Avengers than any of the top notch superhero movies we’re getting this year is because beyond all of them, The Avengers was the only one that attempted something completely new. And I’m not talking, “Oh, so Spider-Man’s all serious instead!? Wow!” because it wasn’t something as simple as a change in tone or even the introduction of a new character. No, this is the very first superhero movie of its kind.
Not a team movie (because, ya know, we had Fantastic Four and all 18 X-Men movies). No, this movie was the very first crossover; the Avengers are a team, but they’re all awesome solo acts combined into a single unit. They’re all huge personalities that would’ve immediately overpowered most writers.
But, despite Tony Stark’s indomitable charm, Joss Whedon was able to deliver a movie that highlighted all of the characters so well that none of them fell especially far behind. There was no forgetting that Captain America was there or wondering what ever happened to Black Widow. And that translated to there not being a moment when you wondered, “Why is that person an Avenger?” or even the all important, “Who is that person anyway?”
And in that way, this insane gamble was incredibly successful, dropping a kind of terrifying new standard that I worry won’t be topped by The Avengers 2 (or anything else) for a long time.
It Watched Exactly Like What It Was—A Summer Crossover Comic Event - In Marvel’s model for superhero movies, the individual heroes’ features act as full story arcs for their individual titles. But The Avengers acts as the large-scale summer crossover event. In that way, the movies follow the general mold of a comics season. Now, those crossover events are supposed to be epic free-for-all’s with high stakes (i.e. New York gets destroyed [like every time]).
Well, The Avengers more than delivers. It has high stakes—with aliens threatening to take over the world—great action scenes, enthralling fight scenes, the whole New York getting destroyed thing, the sense that (at the very least) the Avengers are having a hard time keeping everything contained and the fight going, the sheer awesomeness of seeing your favorite characters in the same place, working towards the same goal). Watching the final act is particularly like reading a double length final issue for a crossover (differing only in the way that it’s more insane and epic than such issues usually are [probably due to its lack of advertisements for 13 other books at the end]).
Yeah, you can pretty much take this, make it live action, and then turn up the awesome dial to “UltraMAXX” for everything and you’d get The Avengers.
So in the end, it does exactly what it was meant to do in relation to the movies that came before it.
And so, it was definitely not disappointing and well worth the… what? Four? Five movie build up?
It Was True to the Source Material in the Best Ways - While other superhero movies always manage to get something terribly wrong (i.e. all of Green Lantern), The Avengers goes out of its way to make everything right. But like… more… everything right; I’m talking super subtle nuances that almost no one would notice that just highlight how much care was taken with it. Okay, the best way to explain it:
- When Steve Rogers is reintroduced, the gym he’s working out in looks like it could’ve been a set from Captain America (it even has black and white cut-outs of old boxers on the walls).
- When Thor is reintroduced, he lands on a hillside that looks a lot like Yodenheim (the world of the Frost Giants as it looked in Thor). To boot, a pair of crows fly by (once when Thor lands, and again in a wide shot of the landscape moments later); and these crows are Huginn and Muninn, or “thought” and “memory” / “mind.” No characters mention it or even notice, but they were put there to say “Odin is watching” in a really awesome way.
- The Avengers fight among themselves so often that you could almost say their villain for this movie was also the Avengers. And that, of course, is exactly like them; I (like any fan of the comics) was worried that they wouldn’t fight at all (which would just be silly), but of course, Joss Whedon delivered.
- Bruce Banner often had purple in his wardrobe, although never his pants (because really).
I would go on, but I’d start getting into spoiler territory and I refuse. The point is, it’s hard enough to get it right with a single character. Yet The Avengers manages with six heroes and two and a half hours.
No One Shouted “Avengers Assemble!” - And, seriously, thank God. I love the Avengers, I really do, and I even like that line, but I was worried about the inevitable quaintness of it souring up a scene and tipping the scales right into All of This Is Really Silly Land, but that never happened. So, to the people who are upset about this, I’m sorry, but seriously, phew.
There’s Just No Serious Red Flag - As my last point, I just have to say that there’s always a red flag—in every super hero movie. Whether it’s excessive shaky cam, a terrible, terrible third act, a completely unnecessary forth act, or the occasional face-palm inducing musical number, there’s always something (at least for me) that makes me say, “It wasn’t really amazing.” Unless, ya know, I’m still unconscious from that musical number.
I don’t have that with The Avengers.
I mean, despite rumors roused by this picture, the Hulk did not have a musical number… But actually, ya know, even if he did… Kidding!
I do have a list of issues with the movie, but most of them are from friends, not me. I definitely can’t say you won’t find any flaws on your watch, but I can say I didn’t… and remind you that the next part of this review’s all about the flaws you may find.
I know this won’t matter to anyone who doesn’t care about comics, but it’s my only real gripe with The Avengers (from a guy who’d be first in line for an Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. movie).
And Now For Some Nit Picking
Not Enough Actual Hawkeye - If you know anything about Hawkeye, you know that there was potential for a lot of great character moments with him. Of course, you probably also know that Whedon’s take on Hawkeye hearkens to his beginnings with the Avengers in Marvel continuity.
Of course, if you didn’t know that, you probably also don’t know that he’s actually a great character. Or that if he had [really] been there from the start, many of his moments would’ve infringed on the sarcastic humor Tony Stark wielded so well (think back to Thor and “Want me to slow him down, sir? Or are you sending in more guys for him to beat up?” for an idea of what I mean).
All of this is to say I totally understand why he was portrayed as he was and I honestly don’t consider it a flaw.
But I did want to take this opportunity to express my excitement for the inevitable arguments between Hawkeye and Captain America in the sequel (because saving a bunch of people from drowning is always the best time to make your case to Captain America that you should be leading the team instead of him).
A Case-a the Long Expositions - At least among my friends, it’s pretty well accepted that the movie started off slowly. I would say, “There was both an action scene and Maria Hill,” but I understand that that action scene wasn’t as super-powered as many would’ve wanted and that Maria Hill isn’t exactly a huge incentive for someone who hasn’t had a major crush on her since forever.
About the scenes after the intro and before the action picks up, I thought it was all well written, interesting, and completely essential for the character building that everyone really enjoyed, but, be warned, lots of people (that I know) were kinda “meh” about it.
And Uh… <Clears Throat> the Uh… … <Tries—Really, Really Tries—to Come Up With a Third Thing> - Uh… Ah hell; there is no third thing.
The Final Word
I honestly can’t think of a reason why you shouldn’t go see The Avengers. Wait! Yes I can; don’t go see The Avengers if you’re determined to hate it… Nope. Cause even the people I expected to hate it liked it.
Okay. Don’t go see it if you’re a hardcore DC… … No. Dammit. Even the really irrational, Marvel-hating DC fanboys that I know still liked it… Dammit!
Don’t go see it… if you like fun.
Or if you really, really prefer to hate things instead of liking them.
Or if you’re going to sit down and expect a complete revelation from every last theme of the movie (I’m sorry, but this just really isn’t the place to expect a revolution in cinema [so seriously, if you are expecting that, get a ticket for The King's Speech on your couch, by yourself, ya butt]).
And to anyone else, seriously, see The Avengers this weekend, before the spoiler tide takes you!
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I completely agree. Everything about this movie was great, and it’s impossible to ignore the fact that Marvel just raised the bar to impossibly high standards, both for DC and for itself. It also shows that there is NO EXCUSE for comic book movies not to get the majority of what it needs to get right: Whedon’s script isn’t flawless (what is?) but it more than delivers what it promises and stays true to the source material in so many ways.
The plot was straight-forward, but it’s exactly what this movie needed to be: such disparate personalities and backgrounds (for both the characters and the actors involved) could have easily made a trainwreck of a movie. But instead Whedon gives us a plot that makes it easy to bring the heros (and franchises) together, regardless of whether they’re magical heroes like Thor, tech heroes like Iron Man, or soldiers like Captain America. Or hilariously awesome and savagely satisfying monsters like the Hulk! And though the premise is simple, it doesn’t stop Whedon from delivering very solid character development moments for each of the main characters, more than anyone probably expected in a movie like this.
As both a DC and Marvel fanboy, I can’t help but feel like DC has a lot of making up to do, and even movies like the FF and X-men can take a page from Whedon on how to properly make a group hero movie.
I agree with you completely–but note the sneaky brilliance of Marvel: in Thor, all the “magic” stuff is explicitly labeled superscience (aka, Clark’s Law: any science, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic). So Thor fits perfectly in the same Marvel Movie universe with Iron Man, Captain America, and the Hulk. Joss didn’t have to do a thing beyond slipping in a reference to how much “dark energy” Odin must have used to get Thor to Earth without the Bifrost.
Very good point, something I really appreciated about Thor. They made magic make sense for this shared universe and gave us Asgardians we could “believe” in, rather than snort and laugh at. Great job at integration, these Marvel movies. I’m so won over.
Watched it over the weekend, lightly reviewed it myself; all hail the genius of Joss! As for your wish for Hawkeye, I’m picturing a Hawkeye/Black Widow movie that sheds light on the story she alluded to explaining how he recruited her to SHIELD.
That would be an awesome movie I’d love to watch. I love what Joss did with Black Widow, a character non-fans don’t know too much about who could have easily gotten lost in the shuffle of her much more popular male cohorts. There’s a point where she’s confronted on her use as a spy or a soldier, and she proves her worthy several times during the movie. She was fantastic.
Actually, I agree with the complaint that the movie starts off slowly. Although, I don’t mean slow in terms of action. I mean it drags it feet for a while. If I were to write a review, which would be overwhelmingly positive, I would say something like, “Although The Avengers hits the ground running, it runs in place for about forty minutes.” While there’s plenty action, the action doesn’t seem to take the story anywhere for a long while. Of course, when the movie finally hits it stride, there’s no stopping it.
You know what, as I’m considering my comment, I’m willing to back track. The opening action isn’t really meant to advance the story, it’s meant to set it up. So while it is a very, very long set up, it doesn’t do anything to detract from the storytelling. So yeah, still a slow opening, but not a narrative flaw.
I can agree to the reply of your agreement: it felt a little slow despite the action that takes place. But, like the prologue of a novel or comic, is made to set up the terms for the rest of the story that follows. I’ll also add that, in terms of the Avengers narrative origins, the beginning felt the most “comic booky” to me (yes, even compared to a handful of heroes where colorful costumes trying to repel an alien invasion), especially how things were shot and the general atmosphere of things.
But once we get things moving, that character development and depth starts to kick it up 100-fold and we get this awesome summer blockbuster the likes of which have never been seen before.