Quality:
This week I went to the Marvel Marathon in a lead up to The Avengers. I know a lot of you where doing a similar thing. It was my first theater movie marathon and it was a real good time. They showed the 5 superhero movies that lead up to The Avengers in order; Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, and Captain America. If you skipped some on these, I would probably suggest seeing them before you see The Avengers.
The Avengers starts off with Loki, Tom Hiddleston, returning to Earth to steal an artifact called the Tesseract. It was the same relic stolen by The Red Skull during Captain America. Loki wants to use the Tesseract to open a portal to another world and allow an army to infiltrate the Earth that he met after he was ejected from Asgard in the movie Thor. (see why you might want to watch the other movies first?) To prevent this from happening; Nick Fury, Samuel L. Jackson, calls in superheros to help get it back and to stop Loki. The team is dysfunctional at first. They all seems to have pretty strong personalities, but as they are tested they unite to become The Avengers!
This movie was a lot of fun! The action was great, but with Joss Whedon (Serenity, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Dr. Horrible) at the director's helm the story in between is just as entertaining. Although there isn't much character development since that growth took place in the lead up movies, the chemistry evolution of the teammates in captivating. Tony Stark/Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr., does seem to have most of the spotlight, but the ensemble cast balance is done very well. Even Black Widow, Scarlett Johansson, and Hawkeye, Jeremy Renner, get a good share of screen time. When I was a kid we had premium channels on our cable and usually that resulted in me and my sister watching hours of the same movies over and over each summer. One of those movies was My Giant. One of my movie quality markers come from that movie, "The size of the Villain determines the size of the Hero." Loki is played very well. He is conniving, clever, persuasive, and bit mad. As for the army he brings in, they are pretty faceless. We really don't get much of an understanding of them and who they are. They have the personality of the Battle Droids of Star Wars, but don't talk.
Content:
I was pleased with the way this movie is appropriate for a younger audience. There was some mild language including the first half of Sh-, but it doesn't get finished. As an action film there was a lot of violence. Although our heroes seem pretty indestructible, a lot of civilians are not as lucky as New York become ground zero for the invasion. The Avengers is a non-stop adventure. It has themes of loyalty, redemption, hope, and patriotism. Just writing this review makes me want to go see it again!
This movie was fabulous! There were so many great one-liners and the entire theater cracked up laughing at so many parts! My sons favorite part would be in the short Hulk vs Loki part...wow but that was hilarious!
ReplyDeleteI was glad to see the little blip where Thor did not forget about his lady friend. I love that story line and can hardly wait till Thor 2 for it!
Do you think they will make a movie about Hawkeye and The Black Widow? They really seemed to play up that storyline in The Avengers. I would be interested in seeing a movie about them.
Ok...this comment is very long. I will stop now. :)
Long is good! I agree, I was a little frustrated that Hawkeye and Black Widow kept eluding to things me as an audience member had no insight to. I hope they explore it in another film. They have so much capital now they can basically make as many movies as they want. It seems like they are doing two a year, but they could easily squeeze in one or two more.
ReplyDeleteThe geek in me loves big story lines. I really liked the way the marvel movies sort on interlaced. Even though each character had a story, it was part of a larger whole. Very progressive movie making.