Monday, May 14, 2012

The Avengers

The Avengers is a very ambitious movie. After all, it took 5 movies (Iron Man, Iron Man II, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America) to set up all these comic book characters. And that's not even counting the Ang Lee-directed Hulk movie. With a star-studded cast and an out-sized Hollywood special effects budget, this was a big roll of the dice for Marvel/Disney. Not to mention the fact that they filmed the whole thing in 3 months. Frankly, if I didn't know better, I would expect this movie to be a big, shiny piece of Hollywood schlock, à la Michael Bay.

Except this isn't a Michael Bay film. It's a Joss Whedon film, and not only did he direct it, he co-wrote the script. Once I found that out, I started getting pretty excited about the movie, and the early buzz was good. Very, very good. People I know who wouldn't ever consider reading a comic book came out of the theater gushing about much they liked The Avengers. And I can happily say that the buzz is true—The Avengers is almost everything you could want in a summer blockbuster. The dialogue was good, the action was very impressive, the special effects were shiny, the story was tight and well-paced, and the acting solid—not Shakespeare, but very appropriate for the genre. There isn't much emotional development for the characters, but then again, most of them have already had a movie or two dedicated to them individually, and the character development already took place. It probably helps if you have seen the movies that lead up to this one, but The Avengers brings you up to speed quickly and relatively gracefully. I haven't seen most of them, and I didn't feel lost. Most of all, it's a very exciting movie that is a lot of fun to watch.

To put it succinctly, this is a superhero movie that does everything right. Is it the best superhero movie of all time? Probably not—I would give that title to The Dark Knight or Spider-Man 2. But The Avengers is close, and it does it all at a pace and scale that defy the skill of most movie-makers. Given all the pitfalls and pressures of such a crazy big-budget superhero team-up movie, it should have been mediocre. But thanks to Joss Whedon, it's much more than that. If you're part of the half of the country that still hasn't seen the movie yet, I highly recommend it.
∗∗∗∗

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