The Avengers (2012)

Boy, this sure fell short of what it was cracked up to be. There's really nothing wrong with it, but it was hardly the most exciting thing I've ever seen. If the rest of you want to get swept up in the hype, be my guest. I realize The Avengers could have been a multi-superhero disaster like Fantastic Four, so kudos to Whedon for basically pulling it off to decent effect. But it is very long and just has a sense of much ado about nothing.

Yes, there was plenty of amusing banter, but there was also an excess of confusing babble about the MacGuffin -- the gamma radiation cube they were all after. When the Hulk comes across as the most compelling character you sort of know you're in trouble. Downey was walking through this but he's good enough to get away with it. Samuel L. Jackson didn't project any gravitas. Let's face it, he's a dud as Nick Fury. Jeremy Renner and Scarlett Johansson might have a good prequel movie in them. Biggest beef: The closing battle is endless -- and taking place in New York, had blatantly obvious echos of 9/11. I can't tell you how much some of us from here are so completely sick and tired of that event being exploited. Christ, give it a rest!

I wonder what Germans will be thinking when they watch the Stuttgart scene. That contained the most compelling part of the picture -- and I don't mean the simplistic Jewish bit. I mean Loki explaining to the humans how much they love to be subjugated by authority figures. He had our number on that one! Too bad more wasn't made of that point. Not everybody seems to think Loki was a formidable-enough heavy for this picture, but I appreciated having a somewhat cerebral villain for a change with his Hannibal Lecter-esque demeanor. (I'm sure the Red Skull will beat the fanboys into more of a frenzy in the follow-up.) I also loved that scene for the gruesome eyeball extraction. At least there was one squirm-inducing moment to relieve the overall tedium.

Oh yeah, the tear-jerking (and unexpected -- at least by me) exit of Agent Coulson didn't move me in the least. I don't buy the fate of that cypher of a character actually being the impetus for the Avengers to get their shit together to accomplish their mission.

I've seen most of the films in the Marvel series twice when released, so maybe I'll check this out again in a couple of weeks before it leaves the theaters and see how it strikes me upon a second viewing.

 

Your predictable review makes me like the movie even more

 

Wow. After reading that, and thinking about it a bit more...I think you might be right. Much, much less action, and a deep and meaningful story about human subjugation, and the futile nature of a group of misfits running\flying around in funny costumes, naive in their attempts to prevent that......would have served as a much better storyline for an Avengers movie.










NOT. The movie is ********ing awesome.

 

I watched this last night. I enjoyed it, but I don't get all the hype. It was a fun super-hero movie and I enjoyed the Hulk and many of the laughs, but it didn't blow me away. I watched The Cabin in the Woods the other day and thought it was funnier and more entertaining.

 

Finally saw The Avengers, and enjoyed it. Actually, as a DC fan, it makes me kind of sad that Batman excepting, DC characters have never had anything like the movies that those in Marvelverse have had. So, if Whedon gets more pull and can do a Wonder Woman (I've been wondering for years when she was going to get the treatment) and Dune (OMG, I'll turn into a bouncing fan girl here) then the whole movie would have been worth it.

I didn't think the movie was overlong. A good movie that is 2 hours 20 minutes is better than a good movie that is 1 hour 30 minutes and the extended fight scene reflected that each Avenger was asses and elbows in bad guys. Which were the problem. Loki meets with some bad guy on some space-scarred rock, and these are supposed to be asstakers and heartbreakers of the intergalactic set, AND they've got some sort of space worm, AND they have huge, huge numbers and Loki gets them just for the tesseract, which we just sort of found in the bottom on the ocean, which seemed to be more of a rip-off of the Transformers' cube. They couldn't even massacre corraled humans very well. The best movies have compelling villains, but this process of assembling all this "good" talent seems to have overwhelmed the story.

I'm a sucker for comic book movies, so I will see all the sequels, and the new Spider Man, but I think I'll wait for them to come out on DVD.

 

so I'm not some marvel guy, but I love these movies. So that first bonus scene is obviously setting up the next bad guy .... i read somebody above called him Thanos?
Is that right? what was I supposed to take from that last scene? Is that a cool villain?

movie was great fun, loved it.

 

My wife and I certainly did.

I can't imagine anyone who lived through it not blanching at some of the destruction

 

If you're more familiar with DC, he's sort of Marvel's equivalent to Darkseid, although I think he's more fun. Imagine an already immensely powerful being whose intention is to have the power of God and court Death (and I don't mean that figuratively, he pretty much wants to marry Death and have her babies). I read recently that Joss Whedon's a huge Thanos fan so I'm guessing if anyone will do the character justice it's him.

 

I didn't get any 9/11 overtones, either. Giant space worms are not comparable to Islamic terrorists.

Now, when Hulk went up the Chrysler Building, I got King Kong vibes...

 

No, of course not. And I don't particularly agree with Riverplate that Avengers was exploiting 9/11.

That said, it was nice when, for a few-years, there was a bit of an unspoken moratorium on films destroying NYC. Can't somebody knock the shit out of Boston or Chicago just once?

 

They don't have to just destroy Boston or Chicago. They could just be set there. I hate that seemingly 90% of movies are set in LA or New York....

 

i liked that iron man was based in LA. every superhero is new york. nice to seem some left coast superheroes

 

Eh. Too much Transformers IV for my liking. A lot too much Transformers IV. At least Downey & Ruffalo are great.

 

Nolan's Gotham is Chicago, though.

It also made a lot of sense given Lockheed's history in the LA area and the fact that Stark Industries is a thinly disguised counterpart thereof.

 

I can see this. While I enjoyed the acting, script, and flow of the movie, I didn't really like the ending as much. Overall, I enjoyed the movie and would recommend going, but I'm struggling whether I like this better than Iron Man I and I think Iron Man won in my book.

I haven't seen Thor or Captain America, but from this movie, I want to see both of them. I thought both actors were compeling, and of course, my wife had no problem with them!

I really don't want to see Battleship because it's just another Transformers...

 

A movie "based" on a game. I won't see this movie even if someone were to give me $50.

 

here's my question on that -- how is it based on the game? I've seen many trailers and how is it based on the game? it doesn't appear to be ... so why name it battleship and immediately turn off so many people? Why not called in Indepencence Day But In Water (or anything else)? I just find it weird that the Battleship name was worth so much for them.

 

Maybe they'll have a Damage Control movie, or at least some webisodes.

 

My God Battleship looks to be awful. The horrifying idea of basing a movie on a childish game, made even more horrifying because it's mucked up with cheesy aliens-are-invading crap. Goosed with nonstop Transformers type crashbang, of the sort that my son refused to watch when he was 13 because it was "so dumb dad." And the lead actress is a pair of tits, which she won't show.

I retract anything unkind that I might have said about Avengers.