It’s not very often that one of
these blockbusters lives up to the hype, but I have to say that the cast and
crew of Marvel’s The Avengers
delivered. I was greatly surprised,
because I’ve gotten a little lukewarm on the last three Marvel releases related
to this effort: Captain America: The First Avenger, Thor, and Iron Man 2. Most of my complaints about this, stem from
my complaints about those individual movies which were held over in to this
one. But overall, I’d call this a
smashing success, and I know why no other movies were released this week, or at
least, no other movies were released in Dallas this week, and believe me, I
looked. I tried to make today a double
feature, but no such luck.
What do I look from in a
blockbuster? It’s a little different
than what I look from in a regular movie: (1) Action and stunts, (2) special
effects, (3) solid story effort, and (4) cast. Let’s start with the action and stunts, which
were very cool. Not over the top (at
least not frequently so) and the explosive final battle between the Avengers
and whatever alien race drops out of that wormhole looking thing was… truly
awesome. The Dark Knight Rises and The
Amazing Spiderman will have some big shoes to fill. The special effects were used effectively
(no pun intended) and mostly limited to Iron Man and a few gunfights until the
very end of the movie, then they got BIG and seemed to borrow a little from the
newer Star Wars trilogy. As you might expect from Whedon, his story
was TIGHT, yo. I remember questioning a
few things, but not many, and now those moments are gone, so the high vantage
point says everything was great. The
cast is great, and I’m hoping new members join us for the inevitable
sequels.
My favorite thing about this effort
is that it didn’t take itself too seriously.
There are a LOT of uses of humor, most of it tongue-in-cheek, most of it
from Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark (some of it, and some of the best uses of
humor, actually came from The Hulk). It
managed to be good and give the whole superhero movie phenomenon a big, erect
middle finger all at the same time, and that’s well, impressive. Many have tried to walk that balance between
being part of a genre and poking fun at it, and only a small, small number have
succeeded.
I’m not sure this is worth the money
for 3D. It was great on IMAX, even from
my left-most chair vantage point. The
lady next to me kept freaking out, acting like stuff was going to hit her, so
maybe the problem I have with 3D comes from my inherited vision problem. But, I do look for things that are clearly
filmed with an eye to 3D and I didn’t see much, so I still call the 3D thing a
fad, a novelty that may not continue unless the technology for it improves
immensely in coming years.
Go see this movie. Take your kids unless you don’t want them to
see a lot of people take beatings, or explosions, or you just don’t want them
to be cool. I’m done.
