Late-breaking thoughts about The Avengers (no spoilers)

[andrewducker]

Summary: I liked it. It was exciting. I don't think it was as good as some of the reviews were making out, and I think it's lucky they got Joss Whedon in, because he papered over the cracks very well.

Basically, Marvel's head of movies (Kevin Feige) came to Joss with the structure of the movie, and Joss then worked within that*, and it really, really shows. The basic story is dull beyond belief, repeated from millions of cookie-cutter comics. "Bad guys shows up, good guys fight amongst themselves, things get bad, good guys pull together, epic fight, good guys win." A plot so tired that it can fall asleep itself, probably joined by half of the audience.

What Joss does brilliantly is give character moments through the movie. The interaction of Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, Captain America's observations, Black Widow being generally awesome, and numerous things that I shan't specifically mention, but added up to a sheen of fun and depth placed over the overall structure of nothingness.

None of which makes it a bad movie. For an action movie with a non-existent plot it's great fun, and more deserving of cash than most other examples of that type. It just felt like it could have been more, and it's a shame it wasn't.

My favourite two reviews are this one over on Angry Flower, which points out many of the good things the script does, and Abigail Nussbaum's review at Strange Horizons, which also looks at the good and bad bits of the structure.

*It started out basically with Kevin (Feige) and Jeremy telling me “We know the basic structure of how they come together, what works, what doesn’t work, and how we see the climax,” which was nice, because he gave me a basic skeleton of three acts that I knew I had to hang on and then it was just a question of “How do I get there? How do I earn that? What moments would cause these people to be in that situation?” - from here

Comments

[drjon]

Hey, did I get these from you?

http://exurbe.com/?p=796 and
http://exurbe.com/?p=1368

If not, enjoy!

[andrewducker]

Fraid so. And they are awesome, aren't they?

[johnbobshaun.livejournal.com]

By coincidence, it's a structure that has served Joss very well in the past: probably why they hired him.

I honestly don't think it could have been "more". I'm staggered that it slots together as well as does. These films tend to fall apart quite badly when you're juggling this many main characters. I'm not even sure what "more" is in these circumstances without turning it into something it isn't.

I think the last half an hour is about as good as this type of thing gets.

The only thing I would criticise is the opening five minutes: it seemed less surefooted than the rest of the film. And personally, I *loved* the "rounding up the characters" stuff.

[andrewducker]

The final half hour felt a bit over-long to me. I felt that Loki could have been more of a big menace himself, rather than basically just hanging about/joining the fight as just another zappy soldier, he could have instead been The Big Bad. Instead it rather felt like there wasn't a Big Bad, just an army of indistinguishable little bads.

I also enjoyed the round-up.

[ajr.livejournal.com]

The only thing I'd change about the film is that I'd not have Loki say the word 'quim'. Yes, Joss, it's very funny that you can use British slang to sneak rude words pass the censors, but that was just trying far too hard. *shudder*

[andrewducker]

That line really worked for me. Loki losing his temper and descending into name-calling when he lost control was great.

[snarlish.livejournal.com]

One of the things that makes the film a success is that it's a comic book adaption that actually incorporates entertaining elements from them: the good ol' team-up, superheroes bickering with each other, superheroes trying to beat each other into a pulp instead of fighting the bad guy, and superheroes talking over each other. I think a lot of study into what worked and didn't work in the X-men films and the quaint Fantastic Four films happened as well.

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

It's not simply a comic book, it's very recognizably a Marvel comic book. I was very impressed at how well Joss Whedon incorporated the signature Marvel tropes of dialog, characterization, composition, and so forth.