Regal Union Square, May 11, 2012
Movie #19 for 2012
Take everything I said about Cabin in the Woods, replace “horror”
with “superhero” and it’s not a bad review for The Avengers*.
Especially the bit where it’s okay if Joss Whedon writes everything.
Despite not growing up with tights and
flights comics (and not having much time for them now), oh! How I love a superhero movie. I have the same blinkered affection for
the genre as if it had been meaningful my whole life, despite being fully aware
that is essentially very stupid. I
also, you may have picked up, have a deep and blinkered affection for Whedon.
I struggle to believe that anyone else
could have made this film: they would have added an unnecessary sex scene,
would have cut character development, wouldn’t’ve landed so many lines and
would have been condescending (at best, offensive at worst) to women and
probably every non-whitey.
I like that Whedon gives the supes here a
sense of vulnerability (either physical or emotional or, even better, both). It
feels like someone somewhere had decided that a real sense of danger for hero-characters
would somehow make them weak. Whedon
shows that it doesn’t - it makes them easier to like and barrack for. There is also a palpable sense of damage
and dysfunction. Which is right,
given the source material, and, above all, interesting
to watch.
As it is, The Avengers is big, fun, funny, surprising, and nowhere near as dumb
as its sibling superhero blockbusters.
It’s a challenging film to pull off - six headlining superheroes in a
dysfunctional super-group - and it has its flaws (notably Samuel L. Jackson who
misses the tone and timbre of Whedon’s dialogue and Agent Hill who, despite
early promise becomes a boring old sounding-board-in-a-skin-tight-jumpsuit). But the flaws are far, far outweighed
by good stuff: the other performances, dream cast and, yes, the writing.
*Which I absolutely refuse to call by its stupid
proper title Marvel’s The Avengers.
