4 gibbles out of 5

A preview of Avengers 2, depicting the Civil War Marvel storyline.

Director: Joss Whedon

So you should know: I’m a liar.  Avengers isn’t a four gibble film.  It’s a totally average action thing, a lot of bluster and wisecracks and predictable ups and downs of plotting to get us to a major showdown with more bluster and wisecracks.  However… it deserves extra notice for being a first.  Marvel did what they said they were going to do.  Some years back, when Iron Man came out, we heard plans about this Avengers movie.  About each character getting their own film on the road to a team up.  This is old hat in the comic world, but in the film world it seemed like a pompous claim.  Sure, it’ll make dollars, but companies just don’t pump cash into ventures like that.  Sequels are your reliable earners, a set formula that people can return to.  But a new actor and a new look for some non-name characters for one off films… despite the nerdgasms, it seemed like it wasn’t likely.  Now they didn’t stick to the plan 100%, as Iron Man 2 reared its head before a Hawkeye film was even considered, but damn if they didn’t do right with the little after-credit tie ins, and mostly maintaining cast from film to film, and finally making their team film happen.  Not only is the setup a first, but the very nature of the film is a first.  Ocean’s 11 and other team films have given us star power bursting at the seams, but Avengers not only gave us recognizable faces, but some fully developed main characters, now sharing the screen.  While, as mentioned, the majority of the movie offers no surprises, and Whedon’s pop-pacing put everything in place, the possibility for failure with so many BIG characters on screen was high, but when we get there, it’s the most exciting, and most skillfully shot, part of the whole movie.

A front heavy intro?  Yup.

The plot: Loki, from our Thor movie, is using the cosmic cube, from our Cap movie, to be evil and bring an evil army to Earth.  Nick Fury has to convince the government to okay his Avengers Initiative – using Iron Man, Cap, Hulk, Black Widow, and Hawkeye (super powered special forces, for those who REALLY don’t know (but by now, who doesn’t know? (Mom?  Even you know, right?))) – to fight this wacky evil and save the world.

What works: As mentioned, this type of crossover happens all the time in comics.  But you know what?  Even though they keep happening, and idiots like me keep buying them, they’re never really that great.  Nothing much of consequence happens that isn’t reversed a year later, a writer who wasn’t working on the original books writes the story, and the multi-issue hopping around between a large cast never feels balanced properly.  It turns out that film might be the perfect medium for this.  Not that development time means better writing, but a movie script (hopefully) isn’t produced on a month by month or week by week basis, allowing for actual rewrites, or revisions.  The consolidation of plot into 2 hour chunks instead of weekly books also allows for a bit more consistency and meaning to what happens.  We don’t have to watch Avengers 2 next week and wonder about what doesn’t match between the films, or try to recall the dangling plot lines between movies.  Instead we get a solid chunk of story, wait a year or more, and then get another solid chunk of story.  It’s really a thrilling experience.  And while Whedon, unburdened by the forced creativity of budget constraints, makes the majority of the film a little too zippy and easy, the characters really are all given a great balance, with important parts to play.  When we finally get to our final battle, we are amped to see everyone actually together and Whedon somehow still maintains the fairness of his approach, giving each hero something thrilling to do in the insanity, camera swinging from battle to battle, giving us a real physical impression of the massiveness of what’s being portrayed.  Awesome.

What doesn’t work: Take this stuff away and it’s a pretty normal action film.  Annoying bickering between ego centric folk.  Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner is an interesting counterpoint to the normal blend, but it’s still a predictable formula: we don’t trust our boss, we don’t trust each other, let’s fight, la dee da.  The movie also whips out a little too much sound and fury right at the start when we are re-introduced to Loki.  My theater had the sound blaring, but it’s a lot of noise right from the get go that really leaves a large echo looming over a lot of the conversations that follow.  The film relies on some similar Wow factors that just don’t have enough down time between to really Wow.  But that’s modern big budget for ya.  Also – our bad guys.  Thor was the least interesting of the Marvel films because – besides it being the most imbalanced – it was too cosmic.  It was hard to ground it, to care about it.  And our bad guys are the same – too cosmic.  Loki was much more frightening here than he was in Thor, and the enemies looked cool enough when getting smacked around, but you just put a sci-fi name to something and have them stream out of a portal and it’s hard to relate.

Iron Man still dominates as the best comic book film yet conceived.  But Avengers is such an awesome triumph of intent and is so impressively balanced with its big screen personas that it deserves some extra notice.  It helps that it’s also a pretty fun movie.