The Avengers (2012)
Dir: Joss Whedon
It’s not
all the time that we see a movie as ambitious as The Avengers, Marvel has built
a complete universe of characters and stories leading up to this event with
fantastic results. For most of us who embraced this right from the moment we
saw the post-credit scene in the first Iron Man the expectations were insanely
high and while it’s not perfect or deep enough to be considered something like
a “superhero Seven Samurai”, it absolutely meets and sometimes even surpasses
them.
Much like
in the original comics, the Avengers come together when the evil god of
mischief Loki (Tom Hiddleston) threatens our planet after taking possession of
the tesseract, a mysterious artifact that provides him unlimited energy and
allows him to take control of an army of alien known as the Chitauri. SHIELD
agents Nic Fury, Phil Coulson and Maria Hill bring together a group of heroes
that consists of self-proclaimed genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist
Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), master marksman Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner),
Loki’s stepbrother, the god of thunder Thor (Chris Hemsworth), skillful
assassin Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), Super-soldier Steve Rogers
(Chris Evans) and the incredible Hulk himself (Mark Ruffalo, who takes over the
role from Edward Norton who played him in the 2008 movie).
These
people are egotistical, lost in their own minds and messed up in unbelievable ways;
they do not belong in the same room together, let alone in the same team.
Naturally, conflict arises and them trying to balance their inner problems with
Loki’s imminent attack takes up a huge chunk of the film.
In
writer-director Joss Whedon, Marvel found the perfect person to lead this
massively ambitious project. Whendon’s knowledge and love for the story and
characters allows this movie to be what it should and needs to be. The characters are treated with respect to
their comic-book counterparts and their previous portrayal in the other movies
but the new elements added to their personalities mash-up well with what’s
already established and the story is well-paced and has enough twists to keep
it surprising yet they never feel cheap.
Perhaps
most surprising of all is how well the many characters are fleshed out and
balanced. It’s not only the titular Avengers and Loki who get all the attention
and focus but secondary characters like Fury, Coulson and Hill also get their
big moments in the action sequences and some well-made personal scenes. We also
get to see new sides of characters that didn’t get a lot to do in the previous
films like Black Widow, Hawkeye and Agent Coulson. Everyone gets plenty of
moments to shine and none of them get the short-end of the spotlight.
This is
best shown in the massive 20+ minute climax in New York City where they confront
Loki and his army in what is the purest form of exhilarating entertainment.
There are plethora of memorable moments and characters doing awesome things on
an epic scale. I’ve seen a lot of comparisons between this and Michael Bay’s
Transformers series which I think is completely erroneous. Bay’s obnoxious
style is nowhere to be found, the action is coherent and because the characters
are so well-developed and the story has set-up what’s at stake we care a lot
more about the result, which makes it a lot more exciting.
This is
also a very funny movie. Nowadays we’re used to seeing most comic-book and
action movies being dark, gritty and super serious, thanks in no small part to
Christopher Nolan’s Batman series and Daniel Craig’s recent Bond films. In
keeping with the tone of the comics, Whedon has included plenty of hilarious
dialogue and scenes that are perfectly balanced with the action and the more
dramatic character moments. They are all really well made and seeing the
characters interacting with each-other is as much fun as the action.
Every
member of the cast does a fantastic job in the movie; their shared chemistry is
what makes it work so well, because if it didn’t the rest of the film would
lose its impact. Thankfully that’s not the case; Robert Downey Jr. is
charismatic and sardonic as only he knows how to be and has a great dramatic moment
with Captain America when a certain thing that shakes them all up happens.
Renner plays Hawkeye as what he is, a loner, but he gets to show some
vulnerability. Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans don’t add much more to their
performances than what we saw at the end of Thor and in Captain American: The
First Avengers but they still do a great job and Scarlett Johansson has some
great scenes with Hawkeye, Loki and Banner as he turns into Hulk, I know she
has her detractors but I thought she gave an excellent performance and added a
lot to the mystique of the character.
Mark
Ruffalo and Tom Hiddleston were the stand outs. Ruffalo completely redefines a
character that has been played countless of times by many different actors and
he is just perfect as both Banner and the Hulk. Meanwhile, Hiddleston evolves
his character from Thor by making him a lot more evil and confident, in my
opinion he is one of the most memorable villains in recent memory.
But this is
not a perfect movie, there were a lot of weird angles that bothered me a lot
and one great battle in particular kept being interrupted by some less-than
exciting scenes which proved to be really annoying; the most disappointing
thing was probably the epilogue, we never got a chance to see how the
experience had affected the characters, it just sort of ended in a very
unsatisfactory way. The 3D didn’t add much to the experience, it doesn’t bother
and it’s perfectly watchable with it but it felt unnecessary. But these were just a few problems that don’t
hurt the experience of having all these heroes together in such an amazing way,
marvel’s risk definitely paid off.
By the end
of the movie, the whole theater burst out in applause, we knew we had seen
something special, a film that reached its potential and was more than the sum
of its parts. One that can be enjoyed both by people who’ve been following
Marvel’s cinematic universe and by people who have no interest in the comics.
It did not disappoint, it’s one of the purest and best pieces of entertainment
I’ve ever seen and I’ve never left a theater with such a big smile on my face.
