Luke Owen looks back at last year’s The Avengers….
Last year saw, for me at least, the biggest event in comic book movie history. The first movie to assemble some of the Earth’s mightiest heroes together on the big screen – Marvel’s The Avengers (or Avengers Assemble if you’re part of Good Ol’ Blighty).
Although the movie was released at the end of April, I was fortune enough to go to a special screening two weeks earlier on Friday the 13th (not unlucky for me). Those who follow (and subsequently unfollowed) me on Twitter will have seen how excited I was. Tweets went out every hour, every half hour, every train ride and every stop I made until I was sat in my seat ready for the movie I’d been waiting for since Samuel L. Jackson showed up at the end of Iron Man – The Avengers (Assemble).
The crowd laughed, the crowd cheered and the crowd erupted with applause at the end of the movie. It was an incredible atmosphere.
Upon leaving the cinema, I met with a good friend of mine but couldn’t find the words to describe how I felt about the movie. Not only had it exceeded the high expectations I had, it did so much more. It was funny, it was action packed, it was emotional, it was based on characters and not actions, it was true to the spirit of comic books and it featured the best iteration of The Incredible Hulk since Bill Bixby. I may have even used the word, “perfect”.
A couple of days later I wrote a glowing 5* review of the movie and told everyone and anyone to go and see it.
I bought the DVD on day one, I downloaded it on my iPad on day one and I watched it on day one. I was in love. And despite the utter balls up Disney made of the DVD release, I loved it just as much as I did sitting in that cinema on Friday 13th April.
However, after watching it a couple of times, I put it to one side and didn’t go back. Perhaps I talked about it too much. Perhaps I burnt myself out on the film. Perhaps I’d built the movie up to Ghostbuster levels of greatness and it couldn’t match the pedestal I’d placed it on. Whatever the reason was, The Avengers and I had to spend some time apart.
With Iron Man 3 kicking off Phase Two of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe in the next couple of weeks and it being Comic Book Month here at Flickering Myth, I sat down to watch a movie that last year could do no wrong. So, one year on, how does it hold up?
The Avengers is still as great as I remember it being. The script is fantastic, the characters are great, the sets are outstanding and that final action sequence is probably the best I’ve ever seen. And if it isn’t the best, then it’s definitely in the top 5.
That may sound like a bold statement – but just think back to that final act. That swooping camera shot showing their solidarity as a team for the first time, Hulk’s transformation and punching out that big alien, that single tracking shot that shows them all fighting, Iron Man firing into Cap’s shield to make it bounce off, Hulk vs. Loki, Hulk punching Thor, Hulk saving Iron Man, Hulk in general, the list goes on. It’s just chock full of “wow” moments and it never, never, lets up.
One of the arguments that has been thrown around by some of our writers here is that, while the film is great, the first half is actually kind of boring. Screen Junkies even joked about it their Honest Trailer spoof with a clip of Steve Rogers, Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanoff standing around looking lost. While I can certainly see the argument, the opening sections of the movie are perhaps some of my favourite.
As I said in my review, The Avengers for me was all about the characters and not the action. Don’t get me wrong, the action is key (I just gushed over it a few paragraphs ago), but the movie truly succeeds in the characters and how they interact with each other. I could sit down and just watch a movie of these people talking to each other and in fact one of my favourite scenes of the movie is where they are all pointing the finger of blame at each other on the Hellicarrier. That is a great scene and it contains no “action”.
I adore the scene between Natasha and Bruce in Calcutta. I love Johansson’s slightly nervy demeanour as she tries to keep her cool. I love Mark Ruffalo’s nervous stance as he fears the worst is going to happen and the Hulk would be unleashed. There’s a ton of interesting back story that bridges the gap between The Avengers and The Incredible Hulk when Bruce Banner looked more like Edward Norton. It’s just a well-crafted scene and not only is it not boring, it also facilitates the story.
An argument I had recently was about how Quentin Tarantino writes interesting but pointless dialogue. For example, Jules and Vincent talking about European traits is interesting but ultimately pointless as it doesn’t serve the plot. The diatribe about foot massages it really funny to listen to, but it doesn’t really move the plot forward. Tarantino’s monologue about Madonna’s Like a Virgin is absolutely brilliant and quotable – but it does nothing to help the plot progress. The Avengers doesn’t have this problem – every scene and every line helps move the plot forward or set up future scenes – and it’s all great to listen to. Not a second of screen time is wasted (the aforementioned scene in Calcutta for example sets up the relationship between Banner and Romanoff as well as builds to Hulk’s first transformation).
But, as much as I wish I could repeat my “perfect” claim, I do concede that the film is flawed. The Chitauri are a faceless alien race that are there because they need to be there, sadly there are certain comparisons to be made between this and Transformers, Robert Downey Jr. feels like he’s phoning in his performance, some of the jokes aren’t funny and misplaced, they can all talk to each other during the fight sequence without the aid of earpieces and – the biggest one I’ve been told – Banner can turn into Hulk without getting angry (I do have an argument for this, but I will concede that it’s a bit ‘plot holey’). However, to look at these flaws is to miss the point.
The point is that, while slightly flawed, The Avengers is an absolutely fantastic movie. It has everything comic book fans have ever wanted to see, it has something for the casual audience and it was a movie that was built up through clever planning and not thrown together to make a quick buck. Everyone working on the movie clearly cared about it a great deal and wanted to make the best movie possible – and they did. I can’t go as far as to say it’s “perfect”, but it’s damn close to perfection.
The Avengers and I may have spent some time apart and we went our separate ways but when a situation happens, they’ll come back. Because I’ll need them to.
