The Marvelous Marvel Rewatch (Now Playing: Avengers: Infinity War)

[The_Liquid_Laser]

The Avengers

Rewatched The Avengers last night.  Just want to say that the first time I saw it I was pretty disappointed by it, unlike most people I've talked to.  I have since rewatched it several times and now I like it a lot more, but still see it as far from perfect.  Below are my thoughts and as always there are lots of spoilers, so don't read if you haven't seen the film.

 

Pluses:

They created a movie universe.  When I think about Marvel comics, the thing that stands out to me the most is how all the characters exist together in the same universe.  This feature is much more important to Marvel than it is to DC.  And the comic book that exemplifies the shared universe the most is The Avengers, because so many of their characters have their own individual books.  They managed to bring that same feeling of a shared universe to the big screen for the very first time.  We got to see these characters in action in their own movies, and now we get to see them all fighting together.  It definitely gives the movie an epic feeling.

The action in this movie is awesome.  I love the opening scene were Loki comes in and kicks all of their asses, and then the base implodes.  I love the awesome end battle of The Avengers vs. the Chitauri.  The fight on the helicarrier was also very awesome.  This movie keeps me engaged the whole time.  I can't wait to see what they will do next.  I have seen big budget movies where the effects suffer, because they spent so much on big name actors.  This movie has the big names, and it also has action better than any of the MCU movies that came before it.

Loki is an awesome villain.  He is much more vicious here than he was in Thor.  I think it is because he views the humans as ants so he doesn't really care who he kills.  Loki is the type of villain that you love to hate, so he is an awesome villain for this movie.

Samuel L. Jackson is awesome as Nick Fury, and I love that he gets more of a central role in this movie.  So far Fury has been subtly behind the scenes.  In this movie he is as important as any one of the Avengers.  In fact, it seems like the story is told from his point of view.

That shawarma scene is my favorite post credits scene of the whole MCU.


Minuses:

In general I have one complaint, but it's a huge one: the characters.  I love these characters, but the movie makes no effort to connect me to them in any way, shape or form.  There needs to be more character development, and there needs to be more reasons for me to care about these characters.  In particular, this movie's main job in this area was to connect me to Coulson, and the movie failed miserably.  I understand intellectually why the Avengers care that he died, but I personally want to care that he died.  I want to feel what they are supposed to be feeling.  They needed to put more in the movie about Coulson.  Did he have a family, or maybe he and NIck Fury are long time friends?  Something!  Make me feel that his death was meaningful.  Instead I don't really care.

The MCU so far has totally hosed Hawkeye.  He gets a couple of minutes in Thor, and at the beginning of this movie he gets mind controlled.  The fact that Loki mind controls an Avenger would have been a bigger deal if we had actually gotten to know this character first.  Instead, Selvig's mind control seems like a bigger deal, because we actually saw a lot more of that character in the Thor movie.

There is zero connection between this Hulk and the Edward Norton Hulk.  How am I supposed to know that Mark Ruffalo is playing the same Banner that Edward Norton played?  This Banner feels just as much of a reboot as the change from Eric Bana to Norton.  In fact they even go out their way to make this seem totally different from Norton's Banner.  "What is your secret?  Yoga?"  "Nope."  Oh yeah, Ed Norton did yoga!  So you can't, because you're totally different characters!  Right?  I don't fault Mark Ruffalo in any way for this stuff.  I like how he portrays Banner, but the writers and director really don't want you to associate the two portrayals.  This is a big deal since THE WHOLE POINT of The Avengers is to bring together characters that got their own movies.  The Avengers feels like three main characters and three side characters, when it could have easily felt like four main characters if they had just tried to connect this Hulk more to the Ed Norton Hulk movie.

Cap's suit was a lot better in The First Avenger.  It looked like battle gear, while this suit is kind of cheesy.



In conclusion, The Avengers is both a very fun movie and a groundbreaking movie, but you really have to see the previous MCU films to feel connected to the characters and even then you might not feel too connected to them.


7/10

Last edited by The_Liquid_Laser - on 02 February 2018