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 Robby Reviews The Avengers
PART ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE
The movie starts! Unfortunately, the opening scene is a dud. I found it boring, actually. We're told "The Tesseract" aka the Cosmic Cube (aka the Cosmic Plot Device), is active, and dangerous. Uh-huh. The cube flares up, and LOKI appears. He says, "Hi gang, remember me from the THOR movie?" (Not really.)
Weirdly, none of the SHIELD agents, Nick Fury included, seem all that concerned about Loki. They stand and gawk as he takes mental control of Hawkeye and several others with his magical staff, then he easily busts out of the place. He escapes in the back of a pick-up truck. A car-chase scene.  For real! How ridiculous. Loki escaping in a pick-up truck. What a BAD way to begin an epic superhero movie! I'm worried now. This is stupid.
Credit sequence ... this ought to be epic ... on-screen we see the title of the movie, THE AVENGERS. That's it. But sadly, it isn't Gaspar's famous comic book logo, or any version of it. It's apparently a new logo created just for the movie's title sequence. If you can call "writing something in Helvetica" a logo. If you can call "flashing a name on the screen" a sequence. BAD title sequence. Wow. They did such a great job of modernizing Gaspar's logo, and using it in all their promotions. Why throw it away and start from scratch in the actual movie? Oh well, it's a small thing I guess...
In the next thoroughly ridiculous scene, the Black Widow is shown tied to a chair. She easily fights her way out of captivity. She knocks off trained killers with a flick of her wrist. She has to. Since she has no powers, she must be portrayed as a "bad ass," even though in real life it would be impossible for a bored fashion model to knock out trained killers so easily. And that's what the Black Widow was like for me in this movie -- she came off as a very bored fashion model. A blank. No emotion whatsoever, at any time. Let the world burn, this woman is NOT going to get excited about it!
Next, more time is wasted as Nick Fury "recruits" Steve Rogers to join the team... |
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Hey Dude, Wanna Join A Team?
Despite the fact that Loki poses an urgent, world-ending threat, Fury is incredibly leisurely in recruiting a team of super-powered misfits to fight him. There is no urgency whatsoever. I'm getting more worried because we're like twenty minutes into the movie now, and this is boring. We all KNOW the team is coming together. These scenes where each member is "persuaded" to join are torture. We all know damn well they're going to say YES, so why bother? |
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More valuable screen time is wasted updating us on Bruce Banner's situation. Any time a "secret identity" is on screen is a WASTE of time to me. I'm there to see the superhero, not the secret ID. I think most of the audience agrees with me, and this poses a conflict with the actors. THEY demand FACE TIME on that screen, regardless. WE want them as the superheroes, regardless. Nearly every superhero film splits the difference by giving us SOME "mask time," and as much "face time" as possible. They find ways. Ever notice how masked heroes always get their masks ripped off for large portions of the movie?
At about the half-hour mark, we're treated to a scene with Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow. It's a nice tie-in, but it feels like an out take from Iron Man 2. Its obvious purpose is to placate the females in the audience by throwing them a romantic bone. See girls? We have ROMANCE in this movie! Don't walk out just yet! Please?
Punching-Bag Villains
Enter the bad guys: Loki is seen conspiring with dark, ugly aliens (pictured below). They're They're the Chituari, the Ultimate Universe name for the Skrulls, except they don't change shape in this movie. Their sole purpose is to serve as punching bags for the heroes. They're standard-issue ALIEN BAD GUYS, complete with the usual glass jaw and hopelessly bad aim. They couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a multiple-laser canon. And if you hit them with a fist, a shield, a hammer, an arrow, a widow-sting, or possibly a flower pot, they collapse like a house of cards. They DO look kinda cool-ish, though. |
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The SHIELD Helicarrier
Remember the first STAR TREK movie, when they undocked the new Enterprise in a scene that seemed to go on forever and ever? Well, in a similar scene, the SHIELD helicarrier lifts off, going from the water to the air. Although way too much is made out of it, it's an impressive scene. And it's cool that seeing it causes Cap to pay off his ten dollar bet with Fury (that he could no longer be surprised).
The helicarrier, first visualized by Jack Kirby, was re-imagined as a flying aircraft carrier in Marvel's Ultimate line, the same place black Nick Fury came from. The helicarrier is very big, and vital to this film, because almost the entire movie takes place inside it! |
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| In preparation for this review, I toured the Ultimate Helicarrier, and during the tour I accidentally fell overboard. I grabbed an engine and hung onto it for like an hour until Iron Man finally rescued me. Close call! |
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An Evil Night At The Opera
Now it's time to show Loki doing something really EVIL, so we can hate him. Attempting to add importance, they have him do it at a German opera house, so the audience can make comparisons to Hitler. They even throw in a possible Holocaust survivor (the man in the crowd who stands up to Loki).
As the horrified but compliant crowd watches, Loki uses an Asgardian Atomic Eye-Scooper to remove a man's eyeball from its socket. He plans to use a scan of the retina to break into someplace, I forget where. Gross! At least it happens off-camera. And it's the only really gross thing in the movie. Not counting Cap's uniform, of course. |
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| Hey -- it turns out Loki's a HAM! He seeks a stage on which to strut, and an audience before which to deliver his evil platitudes. So the sinister warlord of Asgard commands the crowd to KNEEL before him. WHAT?!!? Huh?!?! What is this? Is it supposed to be a homage to "kneel before Zod" from the second Superman movie? Why pay homage to a DC character like that, in a thoroughly Marvel movie? How bizarre. There was no need for the kneeling part. Weird. |
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Anyway, now that Loki's got the crowd's attention, and they're all kneeling, he delivers a properly despotic soliloquy, telling the crowd that "Freedom diminishes life."
Strutting around like a goth peacock, Loki says he's going to set the people of the world "free from freedom." Given the German setting, it seems that we're meant to compare Loki to Hitler, but if you're a comic fan there's a far more obvious comparison -- Loki is a total knock off of DARKSEID! |
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