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Apr. 28th, 2012 12:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nigeltdemy primary take away from The Avengers is being impressed. Impressed at the quickness and cleverness of the extremely efficient script: Avengers would not have been the a hardest movie of the last year to write, but it would have been one of the hardest to write well, and it is written very well. Star Trek, the other recent ensemble-of-icons adaptation/reborquel, did a great job introducing characters with flair and giving everyone a hell yeah moment, with humour. Avengers does all this, but think of everything else it has to manage. It needs to generate equalities and equivalencies in status and power between 4 superheroes, some of whose set-up films were seen less than others, some of whom have less obvious roles and purposes in the oncoming conflict than others. It needs to (did it? I don't know Hawkeye and Black Widow from Adam but I assume they're important to the comics) incorporate two lesser, more human powers, who had seconds of honestly forgettable screentime in previous films, as major characters who can carry arcs. It needs to locate a strong organisational pivot around a character, Nick Fury, has the built-in coll of an eyepatched SLJ, but who was really just previously just some guy that you saw if you were also interested in reading copyright and humane society disclaimers. The only place it really struggled structurally I'll put under the spoiler cut along with more general discussion.
Joss threw in a couple of neat camera tricks, mostly playing with reflections, which is not really thematically relevant but oh well, but mostly kept things pretty neutral, generally avoiding the standard chaos of present-day blockbuster action. Certainly other action directors could learn from the gorgeous Serenityesque floating shot that tracked the action of the major players in the climactic confrontation. Beautiful clarity!
I loved the way it moved the pieces around on the board, often delaying maximum superhero deployment. Robert Downey Jr was always genius casting for Iron Man, but imagine how distracting, how completely beamed-in-from-another-movie, that scenery-chewing, dominating, obnoxious charisma could have been. Instead they turned it into a plot point! In fact, a character arc! Instead of trying to force these characters together they split them off into interesting pairs, giving just about everyone at least two major relationships.
Cap/Stark: Team action! Discussions of the individual vs the community! One learns to love! The other learns to be suspicious!
Stark/Hulk: Gentles them both, lets them geek out and do science and provides Banner some support.
Hulk/Black Widow: Shows us how terrifying Hulk is; gives him a human connection from the start, shows her compassion.
Black Widow/Hawkeye: Strong, interesting and thank god non-romantic; provides bedrock tension in Hawkeye's separation from and rejoining of the group, giving Hawkeye, who is a robot we know squat about, the illusion of character
Hulk/Loki: um
Loki/Thor: well
So the major problem I have with it is the Thor-Loki(-Banner) business. Least importantly, what interest does Loki have in the Hulk? It was great, great, great to have Loki on the ship on purpose, but all the Hulk connection gives us is that awesome-in-retrospect slomo Hiddleston smirk as he walks past Banner. Does this tie in somehow to Banner's muddled story where he goes from being terrifying, destructive Id to slightly shirty and humorously violent Superego? Are the pants that nice man gave him somehow magical brain-engaging pants? If so uh oh! I think he tore them again at the end!
I think the Hulk-Loki connection is there to draw Loki into the Avengers as a group, but it mostly doesn't work. Loki was a fantastic choice of villain in the abstract, because why else would Thor care? Giving the most distanced and inhuman Avenger personal stakes in the team-forming stage is necessary, but the execution basically puts the two of them in a separate movie.
AND NOT THE MOVIE I WANT!!! The movie I want has a Loki who has not so unrepentantly decided to be an evil Thor-hating megalomaniac mass murderer. The ambiguity -- or at least comprehensibility -- of his character in Thor was one of its strongest elements. Hiddleston brought the smirks and the looking-up-from-under-your-eyebrows-grimace-of-evil and the fierce bitch posturing in spades and thank god, but I think to have Loki care so little about the (obviously traumatic) betrayals and reversals and relationships and trouncings of Thor really reduced him and emptied out the Thor/Loki scenes, which should have hurt like hell! It should have been more personal. I get that he needed a random army so everyone else had stuff to do while he was flying around like a Stormtrooper on Endor but the whole "I'm an evil overlord because that would be cool now" motive actually gave Thor less emotional gravitas than Banner, Stark, Cap, and Black Widow, because he didn't have anyone feeding him anything. He was just kind of pushing, you're my brother! And Asgard! And stop it!
Le sigh.
Mostly though, very impressed, with its visual and verbal wit, its care and efficiency, its devotion to examining interpersonal and group relationships, and its cameo appearance of Enver Gjokaj. Never change Joss.
Joss threw in a couple of neat camera tricks, mostly playing with reflections, which is not really thematically relevant but oh well, but mostly kept things pretty neutral, generally avoiding the standard chaos of present-day blockbuster action. Certainly other action directors could learn from the gorgeous Serenityesque floating shot that tracked the action of the major players in the climactic confrontation. Beautiful clarity!
I loved the way it moved the pieces around on the board, often delaying maximum superhero deployment. Robert Downey Jr was always genius casting for Iron Man, but imagine how distracting, how completely beamed-in-from-another-movie, that scenery-chewing, dominating, obnoxious charisma could have been. Instead they turned it into a plot point! In fact, a character arc! Instead of trying to force these characters together they split them off into interesting pairs, giving just about everyone at least two major relationships.
Cap/Stark: Team action! Discussions of the individual vs the community! One learns to love! The other learns to be suspicious!
Stark/Hulk: Gentles them both, lets them geek out and do science and provides Banner some support.
Hulk/Black Widow: Shows us how terrifying Hulk is; gives him a human connection from the start, shows her compassion.
Black Widow/Hawkeye: Strong, interesting and thank god non-romantic; provides bedrock tension in Hawkeye's separation from and rejoining of the group, giving Hawkeye, who is a robot we know squat about, the illusion of character
Hulk/Loki: um
Loki/Thor: well
So the major problem I have with it is the Thor-Loki(-Banner) business. Least importantly, what interest does Loki have in the Hulk? It was great, great, great to have Loki on the ship on purpose, but all the Hulk connection gives us is that awesome-in-retrospect slomo Hiddleston smirk as he walks past Banner. Does this tie in somehow to Banner's muddled story where he goes from being terrifying, destructive Id to slightly shirty and humorously violent Superego? Are the pants that nice man gave him somehow magical brain-engaging pants? If so uh oh! I think he tore them again at the end!
I think the Hulk-Loki connection is there to draw Loki into the Avengers as a group, but it mostly doesn't work. Loki was a fantastic choice of villain in the abstract, because why else would Thor care? Giving the most distanced and inhuman Avenger personal stakes in the team-forming stage is necessary, but the execution basically puts the two of them in a separate movie.
AND NOT THE MOVIE I WANT!!! The movie I want has a Loki who has not so unrepentantly decided to be an evil Thor-hating megalomaniac mass murderer. The ambiguity -- or at least comprehensibility -- of his character in Thor was one of its strongest elements. Hiddleston brought the smirks and the looking-up-from-under-your-eyebrows-grimace-of-evil and the fierce bitch posturing in spades and thank god, but I think to have Loki care so little about the (obviously traumatic) betrayals and reversals and relationships and trouncings of Thor really reduced him and emptied out the Thor/Loki scenes, which should have hurt like hell! It should have been more personal. I get that he needed a random army so everyone else had stuff to do while he was flying around like a Stormtrooper on Endor but the whole "I'm an evil overlord because that would be cool now" motive actually gave Thor less emotional gravitas than Banner, Stark, Cap, and Black Widow, because he didn't have anyone feeding him anything. He was just kind of pushing, you're my brother! And Asgard! And stop it!
Le sigh.
Mostly though, very impressed, with its visual and verbal wit, its care and efficiency, its devotion to examining interpersonal and group relationships, and its cameo appearance of Enver Gjokaj. Never change Joss.
