I HAVE MOVED

Hello, everyone. Thank you very much for reading CinemaSlants these few years. I have moved my writing over to a new blog: The Screen Addict. You can find it here: http://thescreenaddict.com/.

I hope you follow me to my new location! You can find an explanation for the move on that site now or on the CinemaSlants Facebook page.

Saturday, May 5, 2012

The Avengers (2012)



Like pretty much everyone, I’ve been looking forward to The Avengers for a very long time. The prospect of throwing all these iconic characters together into one film under the supervision of Joss Whedon is a thrilling prospect, and since most of the heroes had worked reasonably well on their own there was reason to expect great things. At the same time, I’ve grown to somewhat resent this whole Avengers project, mostly because it’s kept Marvel from giving us great standalone superhero movies. Instead, films like Thor, Iron Man 2 and parts of Captain America were devoted entirely to setup, and there were long stretches where I just wanted to get back to the actual movie, already. It’s not like the tickets were any less expensive just because it was a prequel.

This relentless Marvel universe-building put a whole lot of pressure on The Avengers. This couldn’t just be a capable superhero movie. We’ve already had several of those. It had to be a truly epic superhero movie; the thrilling culmination of all the Marvel films we’ve watched over the last several years. Not only does it have to feel like a huge movie, but it also has to be a good one. All of the characters have to get equal time, the dialogue has to be smart, and when the end credits finally roll there has to be a feeling that it was all worth it. In a rather brilliant gamble, the Marvel team decided to hand the keys over to Joss Whedon, who in this case is a fan as much as a filmmaker. He knows exactly what Marvelheads would want to see out of an Avengers movie, and he comes through. This is not a film without rough patches, and some aspects are a tad sloppy, but if it’s an all-star team of superheroes coming together you want, it’s an all-star team of superheroes coming together you’ll get. And then some.


Somewhat inevitably, Robert Downey, Jr.’s Tony Stark (a.k.a. Iron Man) often takes over the proceedings, but that may be more of an issue of charisma than anything else. When Loki (Tom Hiddleston, villain of Thor) steals a mysterious—and possibly apocalyptic—glowing object called the Tesseract, our friends over at S.H.I.E.L.D. (Samuel L. Jackson, Clark Gregg, Cobie Smulders) decide to bring in the gang of misfits that they have built up over the years. There is the aforementioned Iron Man, but also coming aboard are the now-modernized Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Bruce Banner/The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo, replacing Edward Norton), and two others that didn’t get their own stinkin’ movie: Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner). After arguing with each other a lot, they eventually have to put aside their differences and take on Loki and his extraterrestrial army in the streets of New York City.

There are long stretches of The Avengers that are just about perfect, chief among them the climactic battle in New York that goes on for a while but never loses steam. The film is able to utilize all of the characters satisfyingly without any moments feeling shoehorned in, and it’s all complemented by some truly incredible special effects. There’s obviously a ton of CGI at work here, but it’s always appropriate. It isn’t used just to make things easier on the filmmakers, but instead to create detailed, thrilling visuals that make the film feel as grand as it should. Whedon knows he’s making one of the hugest event movies in years, and he is sure to make everything as appropriately massive as possible. One may ask what makes this climactic fight better than, say, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. To that I reply: a functioning nervous system.

All the actors are tremendous here as well, but it’s Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner who swoops in out of nowhere and occasionally steals the film. Going into The Avengers, the addition of Ruffalo as one of cinema’s shortest tempers seemed strange to me. His characters are usually of a more laid-back sort, and even when they get angry it seems like a great inconvenience more than anything else. True rage—the kind that could turn you into a muscular green monster—normally seems out of his grasp. Somehow, Whedon and Ruffalo are able to take his easygoing persona and turn it into an asset rather than a liability. Ruffalo’s relatively chill Dr. Banner is a man who hates his problem and is willing to do anything to stop it, and when he ultimately transforms it’s a shockingly impactful moment. By the end of the film, Ruffalo went from a curious choice to the only choice.

The rest of the cast is stellar too, though it helps that they all had a film or two to grow into their roles. Hemsworth was the best part of his rather slight film, and now that he’s got more substantial material he feels just about perfect. Evans continues to impress as Captain America; a man suddenly in an unfamiliar world and trying to come to terms with his new responsibilities. And of course, Downey, Jr. fits into his Tony Stark role like an old glove.

The film is at its best when it focuses exclusively on the central team of superheroes and how they uneasily come together both on and off the battlefield. Outside of the familiar faces and the action scenes, not a whole lot is very interesting. Not that it had to be, and perhaps it’s best that not everything is explained, but some aspects of the film just feel glossed over. The most obvious example is the alien army that attacks at the climax. While they are introduced in some early scenes, we really don’t know a whole lot about them besides they are the bad guys and now the Avengers need to kill them. The end. The Tesseract is also something of a MacGuffin, and Stellan Skarsgård just feels wasted in his role. And don’t get me started on the teaser of a mid-credits scene. I mean, this is The Avengers; the movie that’s been teased at us since Iron Man. We’ve made it. Can’t we enjoy this one pinnacle before getting another sequel teased at us? It never ends, does it?

I may complain about these things, but then I think back to all there is to love about The Avengers. If you are someone who has been looking forward to this film at all, I cannot see a universe in which you are disappointed. As annoying as some of Marvel’s buildup has been in their last several movies, you have to give them credit for making the grand finale worth all the trouble. Does it ever transcend the superhero genre and become high-level art? No, it never really comes close, but that’s not what any of Marvel’s movies have been going for. Leave the “ideas” and “tragedy” for Christopher Nolan and his pouty Batman movies. This was intended to be nothing more than massive-scale fan service, and it was made by a filmmaker who knew precisely what had to be done for it to work. With The Avengers, Marvel gave Joss Whedon $220 million and told him to give the people what they want. And so he did.

Grade: B+

No comments:

Post a Comment