| d21lewis said: What Whedon did that really impressed me was give fans of Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, and Captain America--and to a lesser degree, Hawkeye, Black Widow, and Nick Fury a reason to feel like this was their movie. I'm a Cap fan and I felt like Cap kicked the most ass. My sis likes Iron Man. She thought he was the star of the movie. A lot of people I talked to felt like this was Hulk's movie. People on this very thread said it seemed like Thor 2. The fact that everybody feels like they got what they wanted is a feat in and of itself. I know the meat of the story was the heroes coming together to overcome a threat. It didn't matter what the threat was as long as it was huge. It happens all of the time in these origin stories. I can respect that. I know that if I made the movie and it had touched on everything I would have touched on (Cap adapting to life in our time and being discouraged with what America had become, Iron Man drinking too much, etc) it would have been a much darker movie and it would have been six hours long. It would have been the wrong way to go. The movie did what it was supposed to do. It gave us The Avengers. Not as tragic or tightly woven as something like X-Men but the closest representation of what we think of when we think of comic book super-heroes--larger than life characters, bright colors, unbelievable action, and cool set pieces. As a superhero movie, it's second to none. I just remember the heroes and their action more than anything the villains did or exactly what their motivation to do certain things was. |
Well, The Avengers is a lot tougher movie to direct than X-Men. In X-Men, the characters are completely driven by Xavier, which allows for a pretty linear and tight story. On top of that, there are obvious first tier, second tier, and third tier X-Men. There are several characters to deal with but many of them can get virtually no screen time (Colossus), moderate screen time (Rogue, Ice Man, etc.), or be a primary character (Wolvie, Jean). The Avengers had five or six primary characters.
On top of that, The Avengers are a motley bunch. What I thought was most fun about the movie is that the heroes did fight before coming together. It's an homage to the original Avengers story where they, unsurprisingly, fought Loki. The Avengers have always been about disparate heroes agreeing to come together to fight a greater evil, most of the time very reluctantly. You've read the comics, you know how often the characters fight one another. It happens all the time. That kind of story is going to seem more superficial and shallow than a Dark Knight or X-Men. It's just a different kind of film.
I'm really interested to see where they take Cap in future films. In Iron Man 2, we saw Tony start drinking too much but it ever devolved into full-blown alcoholism. In that vein, it will be interesting to see if Cap become disenfranchised with the American government over time.
PS. Nobody is really talking about it in the thread but Whedon did a fantastic job with Black Widow. I went into the movie thinking she was going to be vacuous arm candy but Johannssen hit it out of the park with her performance. She actually seemed like a real person, God forbid. That's far too rare when it comes to female action heroes. And my god, her ass. It was nice to see a female action star on film who didn't look like she could be broken in half by a six year old boy.
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