The Avengers (2012)
Directed by Joss Whedon
When an unexpected enemy emerges and threatens global safety and security, Nick Fury, director of the international peacekeeping agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D., finds himself in need of a team to pull the world back from the brink of disaster. Spanning the globe, a daring recruitment effort begins!
61 connections found
View:
61 films that influenced The Avengers
What critics say influenced The Avengers
Director-screenwriter Joss Whedon makes excellent use of 3-D, and, despite the overload of special effects and kabooms, he doesn’t turn the movie into a head-rattling endurance test à la Michael Bay ’s “ Transformers ” series.
It is inevitable that comparison between the final attack on Manhattan and the destruction of Chicago in the third "Transformers" movie will be made because there are too many similarities, right down to the mechanical flying 'creatures' from Chitauri vs. "Fallen's" giant drill bit.
Outstanding special effects and stuntwork contribute to an exhilaration so constant it risks the kind of exhaustion, if not monotony, inspired by the Transformers pictures.
There's a-like intensity of lines filled with portent, and just as "Here's lookin' at you, kid" could have been corny in lesser hands than Humphrey Bogart's, the same dynamic holds here: When the evil, complicated Loki talks of his "terrible privilege" or when Rogers, echoing Tommy Lee Jones in Captain America: The First Avenger , speaks of war being "won by soldiers," they make it work on a visceral, emotional level.To criticize the conventions of superpowers or costumes, or to pigeonhole this into a "popcorn movie" ghetto misses the point: This isn't Transformers .
That said, those action scenes are staged in a manner that puts the sights offered up by their blockbuster brethren to shame--the difference between the graceless pummelings on display in the "Transformers" films and the stylish and cohesive set-pieces on display here is so startling that uber-hacks like Michael Bay and McG should hang their heads in shame at the sight of what Whedon has accomplished here.
They brawl, they bond and then, boy, do they kick some alien butt in a city-wrecking slugfest that puts Michael Bay's bombastic Transformers franchise in the shade.
Whedon handles the action set-pieces well too, the (very) extended closing face-off has you on the edge of your seat with CGI detail reminiscent of Transformers 3 .
Not like we’ve seen that before, with Clu in “Tron: Legacy,” Cohaagen in “Total Recall,” Megatron in “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” or in countless other silly films that in a more enlightened age would have been relegated to Saturday morning children’s cartoons.
The giant snake aliens seem like they came out of a wormhole from Transformers: Dark of the Moon , and Whedon even uses a 360-degree Michael Bay camera move.
The third act of The Avengers bears a resemblance to Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and while Michael Bay has a greater mastery of 3D, Whedon has mastery over creating a coherent narrative featuring characters you care about.
Match up the mise-en-scenes here, where there's never any doubt of the spatial relationships as well as the simple dynamics of who's battling who, against the incoherent climax of last summer's depressing Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
Whedon, then, has made a technically impressive and perfectly entertaining film that feels, for long stretches, kind of bland, and, during its worst moments, kind of like an assault (I’m certainly not the first one to notice that the film’s climax bears many similarities to the climax of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, as both films feature an urban-set battle with snake-like robot monsters, and a sky portal to another planet; although to be fair, The Avengers does it a little bit better).
There’s no moment in The Avengers to compare with the slaughter of Bruce Wayne’s parents in Batman (1989) or Jonathan Kent’s collapse in Superman (1978).
But even the most striking, like Richard Donner’s Superman and Tim Burton’s Batman films, either winked at or took outrageous liberties with the source material, or both.
Not only that, but The Avengers is the comic book movie I’ve been waiting for because it fully, successfully explodes the ‘street level’ stuff we’ve been dealing with since Tim Burton’s Batman .
Up until now, the movie industry has been content to seize on a single superhero and spin out a series, usually lasting three or four films over a 10-year period before running out of gas or becoming bloated and decadent and going into hibernation until it is rebooted (see, for example, Warners’ Superman series from 1978 to 1987 and Batman series from 1989 to 1997, as well as Sony’s Spider-Man series from 2002 to 2007).
When Hollywood began to rediscover the pioneering DC and Marvel superheroes of the 20th century, it was refreshing and delightful at first, and for a while: the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, Tim Burton’s “Batman,” Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, the X-Men series.
Then there is a second level that includes "Superman II," the Tim Burton "Batman" films, the last "X-Men" epic and the first "Iron Man"--all solid films that nevertheless lack that final spark that separates the good from the great.
There’s no moment in The Avengers to compare with the slaughter of Bruce Wayne’s parents in Batman (1989) or Jonathan Kent’s collapse in Superman (1978).
But even the most striking, like Richard Donner’s Superman and Tim Burton’s Batman films, either winked at or took outrageous liberties with the source material, or both.
What we’ve seen since Richard Donner’s original “Superman” from 1978 is the steady closing of that gap.
Up until now, the movie industry has been content to seize on a single superhero and spin out a series, usually lasting three or four films over a 10-year period before running out of gas or becoming bloated and decadent and going into hibernation until it is rebooted (see, for example, Warners’ Superman series from 1978 to 1987 and Batman series from 1989 to 1997, as well as Sony’s Spider-Man series from 2002 to 2007).
Then there is a second level that includes "Superman II," the Tim Burton "Batman" films, the last "X-Men" epic and the first "Iron Man"--all solid films that nevertheless lack that final spark that separates the good from the great.
Loki is a little too similar to Superman II ’s General Zod at times but duller—without Terence Stamp’s mix of menace and oblivious humor.
It doesn’t reveal new layers to the characters or deepen our understanding of them in the way of sequels like The Empire Strikes Back , Superman II , and The Dark Knight .
You might think The Avengers , renamed Avengers Assemble for Britons, in a slight to their intellect, is a new staging post in a cycle than began a thousand years ago with Bryan Singer’s X-Men (2000).
Compare this to Bryan Singer’s slickly ponderous first X-Men movie, in which there’s a whole lot of scene setting and not much else.
Most will agree that both the “X-Men” and “Spider-Man” series were for the most part good, but there were bizarre diversions, like “Daredevil,” “Ghost Rider” and the odious and nonsensical “Hulk” by Ang Lee.
Then there is a second level that includes "Superman II," the Tim Burton "Batman" films, the last "X-Men" epic and the first "Iron Man"--all solid films that nevertheless lack that final spark that separates the good from the great.
Advertisement
It comes tantalizingly close to reaching the level of the very best comic book films of the current generation: Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies, Sam Raimi’s first two “Spider-Man” films, and the debuts of Iron Man and Captain America.
In fact, I even preferred the biological web slingers in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” series because it just made sense to me, instead of knowing that Peter Parker’s own version of Kryptonite was him running out of web fluid.
Up until now, the movie industry has been content to seize on a single superhero and spin out a series, usually lasting three or four films over a 10-year period before running out of gas or becoming bloated and decadent and going into hibernation until it is rebooted (see, for example, Warners’ Superman series from 1978 to 1987 and Batman series from 1989 to 1997, as well as Sony’s Spider-Man series from 2002 to 2007).
He has a crush on Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), and he suspects all is not right with his father's former partner, Dr. Curt Connors - who is also known to "Spider-Man" readers as the Lizard.
Better than any film since Sam Raimi’s excellent Spider-Man 2 , The Avengers gets what makes comic books a thrill for young readers—that feeling of fantasy and family.
Despite a noble and noteworthy effort, this film never fulfills all of its potential and never achieves the status that superhero classics like The Dark Knight and Spider-Man 2 have already achieved.
It's not a "Superman", a "Dark Knight", a "Spider-man 2".
It’s the best action superhero movie since the first “Iron Man,” and the best Marvel Comics adaptation since “Spider-man 2.”
That’s why for every Batman Begins there’s a Batman Oh-God-Make-It-Stop, for every X-Men 2 and Spiderman 2, there’s, alas, an X-Men: The Last Stand and Spiderman 3. Granted, at least for the studios behind the Marvel titles, there hasn’t been much reason to sweat missing the point.
Next Tuesday, "The Amazing Spider-Man" will be released, charting a new start for the web-slinger just five years after "Spider-Man 3."
That’s why for every Batman Begins there’s a Batman Oh-God-Make-It-Stop, for every X-Men 2 and Spiderman 2, there’s, alas, an X-Men: The Last Stand and Spiderman 3. Granted, at least for the studios behind the Marvel titles, there hasn’t been much reason to sweat missing the point.
Jeremy Renner’s work as Hawkeye pales compared to his “Mission Impossible” turn a few months back, mostly because Renner spends much of the film in a literal trance so there’s no time to give him any real development.
Although we shouldn’t feel too bad for Jeremy Renner, who plays him — the man was Oscar nominated for The Hurt Locker and The Town; starred alongside Tom Cruise in the latest Mission: Impossible; and replaces leading man Matt Damon in the next Bourne movie.
That said, Whedon and cinematographer Seamus McGarvey owe a debt to Jean-Luc Godard's "Contempt" because they exhibit anything but disregard toward Black Widow's posterior, which gets the Brigitte Bardot treatment.
And such female-centric touches are a recurring theme in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"-creator Whedon's work.
For the ultimate union-reunion, the Lee team called on writer-director Joss Whedon, whose inspired toying with genre tropes gave birth or at least new life to TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Dollhouse, plus the recent smarty-pants horror comedy The Cabin in the Woods and the Internet miniseries Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, a musical comedy whose self-reflexive ingenuity was topped only by its all-sung DVD commentary.
Perhaps the biggest problem facing director-screenwriter Joss Whedon (TV’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”), who co-wrote the story with Zak Penn (“X-Men: The Last Stand”), is that the genre is in danger of being beaten into the ground.
In many ways, “The Avengers” — written and directed by Joss Whedon, best known for the beloved cult TV series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Firefly”— out-blockbusters its predecessors.
Who better to be behind that camera than “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”, “Serenity” and “Firefly” creator Joss Whedon?
Advertisement
Thor's megalomaniac half-brother god Loki (Tom Hiddleston, recalling too much of Alan Rickman's Euro-trash villain from "Die Hard") steals the Tesseract as part of his plan to lead an invasion of Earth to subjugate all humans.
At times — when various members of a game and nimble cast amble in and out of the glassy, metallic chambers of a massive flying aircraft carrier, cracking wise, rolling eyes and occasionally throwing a punch — the movie has some of the easygoing charm of “Rio Bravo,” Howard Hawks’s great, late western in which John Wayne, Angie Dickinson, Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson did a lot of talking on their way to a big and not-all-that-interesting shootout.
The story seems unwieldy in scale, broken as it is into two parts: an entertaining Rio Bravo variation aboard an airborne aircraft carrier (!), and an epic “good few versus evil horde” showdown set in and above midtown Manhattan.
I remember the joy of reading David Thomson’s entry on Howard Hawks, in “A Biographical Dictionary of Film”; the principle underlying Hawks’s work, Thomson argued, was that “Men are more expressive rolling a cigarette than saving the world,” and his adage rings true far beyond “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” or “The Big Sleep.”