Marvel's The Avengers

[helen]

Caught the 5:45 pm showing of Marvel's The Avengers yesterday (Friday) afternoon at the Regal Cinemas 18 at Dole Cannery. While this movie is available as 3-D, the showing I went to was the 2-D version and the theater was sort of packed.

While I am out of touch with current Marvel comic lore and I have seen all of the previous Marvel movies which include Captain America: The First Avenger, Thor, Iron Man 2, The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man, I think watching at least the Thor and Iron Man 2 movies before watching this movie would bring anyone not knowning the Marvel Universe up to speed (or that fails bring along someone who does know and have then explain it you afterwards).

The movie is kind of long, 2 hours and 22 minutes according to IMDb but there is a lot of story to pack into it.

It is a superhero genre type of movie, with lots of action, holes of all kinds (including dare I say it plot holes), things that explode, spies by the boat load, aliens, planes, one-liners, sight gags and smashing things up.

There is of course a couple of scenes after the ending credits.

[Amati]

Helen is right that knowing the characters beforehand will help. I only knew the Hulk, and that was from the old TV show! I never could figure out what the "special Avengers powers" of the female was.

Good movie if you like those sort of movies (others in my family loved it). Good 3D effects. I'm thinking the 3D is sort of what "saved" the movie for me, as the plot was one notch down for me since I don't know one Avenger from another.

[lensperson]

I still keep thinking back to the original Avengers with Diana Rigg and
such.
The three series , The Saint, The Avengers, and the various James Bond films
had many shared production crew.

[Serenity]

http://marvel.com/avengers_movie/?deeplink=tickets

Who saw this movie? What did you think of it??

I thought it was awesome, good story line, & Good action packed!!.

If it goes into DVD later, I would buy it!!.

[Kaonohi]

Sorry. It was boring and.... worse.

The first 2/3 of the movie moved so slowly that some koki frogs might have hitched a ride. We are like b . o . r . i . n . g ! ! !

The last third was action so fast it was hard to follow.

The story was pedestrian:

Ancient God comes to rule Earth as a dictator, reluctant heroes come to save the day at considerable risk to their own selves. BORING!

Unless you are a die-hard Marvel fan, save your pesetas.

[Serenity]

All I can say about that is; to each their own. We all have our own opinions on how we feel about the movie .

By the way, Clark Gregg in the Avengers, was also in the comedy series called; The new adventures of old Christine. http://www.cbs.com/primetime/old_chr...t/clark-gregg/

[helen]

Originally Posted by Amati

I never could figure out what the "special Avengers powers" of the female was.

While it was not shown in the movie, if a locked car was missing its keys and it needed to be moved the six superheros of the Avengers would have done the following things based on their physical strength and skill sets:

Black Widow and Hawkeye would have either picked the lock or smash the window, hot wire the car and just drive it off.

Captain America would either smash the window or rip off the door, while he couldn't lift the car, he could have tipped it over and somehow remarked that the car lacks a clutch.

Iron Man would most likey to have lift the car out of the way but there is a small chance that his armor could have interface with the car and have it drive itself away (not possible with an older car)

Thor would most likey to have lifted the car out of the way or get hit by the car (twice) assuming either Black Widow, Hawkeye or Iron Man was driving the car.

The Hulk, I would have to say maybe 10% chance he will lift the car away, 15% chance he tosses the car away (with a small chance Thor will be standing at the same spot the car lands) and the remaining 75% chance he would just smash the car.

[helen]

Watched this movie again today at the Ward Theater. Did notice that Black Widow has something around her wrist that she using against the alien bad guys but its kind of short range, almost need to touch them in order for them to be effective, otherwise she is using handguns against them.

Still have no idea what's the alien army reason for attacking or invading Earth.

[scrivener]

The Avengers (2012)
Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow), Chris Evans (Captain America), Mark Ruffalo (Hulk), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye)

Loki’s got a chip on his shoulder. The younger, adopted brother of Thor has possession of a fearsome power source, the tesseract, and has made an agreement with an extraterrestrial race that will serve as his army in his takeover of earth. Don’t ask me why he wants earth; I know he wants it in a grand, self-glorifying way so he can demonstrate his superiority to his brother.

The Avengers need to stop Loki, to regain the stolen tesseract, to close the gateway through which Loki’s army is invading the planet, and to protect New York City, the location of the portal. It’s a plot with too many pieces because it’s a group of superheroes with too many members; they’ve each got to have something to do, after all.

As an ensemble movie, The Avengers works if you don’t try to make too much sense of it. Just go along with what happens and you’ll probably enjoy most of what you see: fun interactions between the characters, a lot of stuff that goes boom, and some pretty neat-looking visuals involving super-able people in weird costumes.

The temptation is to compare it to the X-Men films, but I found those movies much more enjoyable; something about the X-Men plots is much more compelling, plus there’s an extra charisma that most of the X-Men have, something the Avengers are lacking. For all their coolness, the Avengers are actually more interesting in their non-costumed alter-egos, except Thor who doesn’t have one.

The real disappointment is in Loki as the villain. In 2011′s Thor, Loki is a great villain because he’s Thor’s brother. He’s a villain easy to sympathize with because his torment is believable and because there’s a genuine fondness and love between the brothers. This is pretty much completely absent in The Avengers, and Thor himself, while still a pretty cool superhero, lacks the layered conflicts that made his solo movie much more interesting. Where the X-Men films have the great tension and fondness between Professor X and Magneto, this film just seems to have a lot of ugly flying mechanical caterpillars and butterflies.

What can separate the good superhero movies from the not-bad superhero movies are themes that have universal and personal applicability. While the X-Men films tend to be a bit heavy-handed with these themes, the attempt to be about more than just their plot and heroes gives them a little more resonance, a little more stickiness. In the post-credits scene at the end of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, we get to see a quick dialogue between Logan and a bartender, and it rings like those bronze bells at Buddhist temples. Okay, not really like that, but it rings a little, and we’re meant to feel something for Logan in this small moment. There’s very, very, very little of that in The Avengers, very little that’s meant to make us feel for the characters, a disappointing departure from the solo films of Thor and Iron Man, which give us enough angst and inner turmoil to make us feel like there’s a bigger and better reason to watch a superhero movie than just the costumes and explosions. Scenes with Bruce Banner (Hulk’s alter-ego) hint that there could have been a lot more, but the film seems intentionally to avoid becoming a movie with Hulk as the central figure.

I really wanted to see a lot more interaction between different combinations of heroes, something there just isn’t enough time for in this one picture. This can be forgiven if the intention is to build a long-term series with these characters. All by itself, though, the movie is fun to watch without being especially engaging. This is a bad decision, no matter what the box office receipts say.

6/10 (IMDb rating)
64/100 (Criticker rating)

[Honoruru]

Scrivener, I agree with you about Marvel's The Avengers. This was a case of six super heroes in search of a screenplay. It was just okay, somewhat like watching an all-star game, where the game itself doesn’t seem to matter.

By the way, you’re really on a movie roll, aren’t you? Have you seen every single movie that’s come out so far this year? It sure seems like it. Keep them coming. I like it.

[scrivener]

I've seen a few more movies this year than usual, but not many more. For some reason, I couldn't find my reviewing mojo for most of the year, only doing serious write-ups about two or three films between January and June. I'm trying to get caught up.

I've seen thirty-seven 2012 releases in theaters, two 2012 releases on DVD, and five 2011 releases in theaters this year (you know...all those Academy Awards pics get wide release after the new year). I think I've written 26 reviews. So I've still got a lot of work ahead of me.

[lensperson]

Finally got around to watching the film.

I must admit that I did not have the cultural context vis a vis comic books to
initially grok the scenario

The translation to the screen is epic and well worth a second screening after a time.

Any good movie worth watching once is worth watching twice.
Thus the value of good reviewers and their critiques.

The Lara Croft films snuck up on me in a similar way.

[shaveice]

Originally Posted by helen

Watched this movie again today at the Ward Theater. Did notice that Black Widow has something around her wrist that she using against the alien bad guys but its kind of short range, almost need to touch them in order for them to be effective, otherwise she is using handguns against them.

i thought that was the dumbest thing ever! using a hand gun! she might as well use a pea shooter!

[helen]

Originally Posted by scrivener

The temptation is to compare it to the X-Men films, but I found those movies much more enjoyable; something about the X-Men plots is much more compelling, plus there’s an extra charisma that most of the X-Men have, something the Avengers are lacking. For all their coolness, the Avengers are actually more interesting in their non-costumed alter-egos, except Thor who doesn’t have one.

During the course of the first X-Men movie Wolverine and Rogue encounters the X-Men as group that already exist. Granted as audience members we didn't get to see the origins of those members during the course of the movie other than in this movie world mutants exist who's power tends to manifest during their teen years.

In the Avengers movie each member's origin story or character introduction was made in the earlier MCU movies. I think the concept of the SHIELD Helicarrier and the Chitauri as well as the character of Maria Hill were initially introduced in this movie.

As far as the members of the Avengers themselves, only the name of the group (or the Initiative) existed before the movie starts. It is during the course of this movie that members started to come in. It started with SHIELD gathering just Captain America at first, then Tony Stark (Iron Man) as a technical consultant. They also got Black Widow to bring in Dr. Banner (Hulk) as another technical consultant to find the Tesseract (the thing that makes portals). Thor just happens to stop by to get Loki but was stopped by Iron Man and Captain America. Hawkeye became available to the team after he was freed from Loki's mind control.

It wasn't until the final third of the movie that all six of them first worked together as a team.