Index:
As always, there may be minor spoilers below.
++ If you're anything like me you know these people, and the characters they play. So, this will be brief, and I'll try to focus on the newer characters. First, + Mark Ruffalo (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Shutter Island) replaces Edward Norton as Bruce Banner, better known as the Hulk. I am not, or should I say + "was not", a fan of Mark Ruffalo. But, he really proved himself in this film, playing a very nuanced, smart, and witty Bruce Banner. That guy can deadpan an insult + like nobody's business, and gets in several verbal sparring matches with Robert Downey, Jr.'s Tony Stark (as does pretty much everyone else... What can he say, its + what he does...). Also, for the first time in any Hulk production, Mark Ruffalo also plays the Hulk. They used Avatar's stop-motion capture technology to record + Ruffalo's performance, and then adapted the body of a bodybuilder (and stripper) named Steve Romm onto the frame. He played these scenes with a truly believable + ferocity. Also, Lou Ferrigno returns to voice the Hulk. I guess he's the only person Hollywood trusts to do it... they're gonna be fucked when he dies. lol ::knock on wood:: + Jeremy Renner (28 Weeks Later, the Hurt Locker), briefly seen in Thor, returns as Hawkeye, the "greatest marksman in the world" with his bow. He's the fierce warrior, + through and through. Stoic, hard-assed, and mostly quiet. Probably for the best, as, while he's not a bad actor, he was acting amongst greats. Comparatively, some of his + lines didn't come off as well as they could have... but, remember, this is "comparatively" to Robert Downey, Jr., so the fact that he can hold his own at all is great praise. +
++ Scarlett Johansson (The Island, The Spirit, The Prestige) returns as Black Widow, who appeared in Iron Man 2, but couldn't really have been said to be the Black Widow yet... + or really a fully fleshed-out character at all. Here she's a femme fatale badass, all charming deceit and ass-kickery. She's a girl with horrors in her past ("red in her ledger", + as she puts it, frankly an annoyingly large amount of times), who means to redeem herself. +
++ The others you know. Robert Downey, Jr.'s Tony Stark, the "genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist" and Iron Man, is as sharp as ever, but even brings in a slight bit more + nuance to the performance this time around, some real humanity. Probably due to expert guidance from Joss Whedon (who, btw, makes the whole thing a total Whedon-esque thrill ride). + Then there's the leader of the Avengers, Chris Evan's Captain America, a man out of time. Subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) hints of how little he understands the new time period + he finds himself in brings believability to the character. He's the moral center of the group, the greatest tactical mind, and the most fit to lead. When he steps up and gives orders, + not even Tony Stark questions it. +
++ Chris Hemsworth is Thor, the god of thunder (but not rock n' roll, that's Tony's department). His lines, being in High English, were hard to pull off, so I tend to try and cut + him some slack. But, amongst all these great actors, he really shows his ineptitude in certain scenes. Not enough to bring down the film by any means, but it is noticeable. Still, + he turns in a good performance, though he obviously doesn't have much experience with green screen acting (see "Visual Effects" below). +
++ Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury becomes a full character here, a man with a mission: to save the world, without destroying it in the process. It's Samuel L. Motherfuckin Jackson, + what more do I need to say? +
++ The most amazing thing about all of this is that not a single one of these can be said to be the main character. They're all the main characters of this movie. Not a single one of them, + not even the non-super powered Black Widow and Hawkeye, were left behind. Every one of them was not only useful, but integral to the success of the mission. It took careful balancing on + Whedon's part, but that's what the man excels at. +
++ Had to reduce the originality for being an existing property, but since it's reduced to 75%, it should be noted that that is the first perfect score I've ever given..., and then I decided to + add a few points, because this move truly breaks away from it's source material, and makes it something more. This wasn't just an excuse to have a bunch of heroes in a movie together, this was + the logical, organic conclusion to the individual story lines presented. This is, of course, due almost entirely to Whedon's masterful directing, since the studio obviously just wanted a bunch + of heroes in a movie together. +
++ At the start of the movie, Loki returns from he exile, and steals the tesseract. Nick Fury assembles the Avengers in preparation for the coming war... and, I won't give you any more than that, + as this is a story best left to unfold in the proper order. Suffice it to say that what comes next is one biggest, most badass battles of all time. But, when the Avengers aren't doing some + avenging, they're just being them. Bruce Banner and Tony Stark get into some intense conversations about the Hulk and what he represents for Banner. Steve Rogers does his whole "moral compass" + thing. There are some truly great scenes in there that don't have any action or explosions in them. This is, and I'm sure this will be said many many times by many many reviewers, a superhero + flick with true heart, and not just another throwaway morality tale. +
++ However, one small complaint: in all the character introductions (and rebuilding of old characters), and in those characters trying to figure out how to interact with each other, + there's not a whole lot of time to set up emotionality for the film (and it's a two and a half hour movie... there was just a lot of ground to cover), and so some scenes that should be + emotional fall flat a bit. But, this is a minor complaint, and maybe even for the best for the most part. +
+All in all, Whedon does his thing, and lets everyone else do their thing, and what comes out the other side is not just one of the greatest thrill-rides ever, but also just a masterpiece of cinema.
++ The effects were amazing. Scratches and dents on Iron Man's armor, the creatures from another dimension, even the Hulk (most of the time), all looked real, and believable. I say + "most of the time" on Hulk, because there was one scene I felt could have been done a bit better, though it's one of the hardest things to do in a CGI-heavy film: CGI characters interacting + with real characters. In one scene in particular, the Hulk takes a swing at Thor, and, I don't know what it was, though I'm thinking poor acting on Chris Hemsworth's part, but the whole effect + just doesn't work. +
+Really, just a beautifully real and gritty film.
++ Honestly, the sound production, of all things, was one of few downsides to the movie. An alien fires a gun that we humans couldn't even comprehend, powered by the tesseract, + an even more incomprehensible force and it sounds like... a large machine gun? Maybe I'm nitpicking, but it just didn't really work for me... however, oversights like that are balanced + out by a pretty great score (which I don't entirely remember, but I do remember being fairly impressed with what they did with it in certain scenes). +
++ Well, there you have it folks. It should be noted that, had this been a completely original idea, that number would have been closer to 90%, and would have certainly beaten Chronicle's record + of 88.5%. But, this is a system I've devised to reward originality, and so I'll stick with it, as that's how I would want my work to be scored. As it stands, it's the second best film I've reviewed + to date, beating out Primer for that position, which has the highest Originality score of any movie I've ever reviewed, no easy task. +
++ Truly a great movie, even from a non-geeky standpoint. It stands as a testament to raw storytelling potential, wherein action movies don't have to just be about explosions, and super heroes can + just be people too. +
++ Fans of this movie (and if you're not, you aren't my friend anymore lol) will be happy to know that Whedon has signed an option for future Avengers films. It's very possible that we will have a + second, at very least, though not until "Phase 2" of the Marvel entertainment cycle completes, starting with Iron Man 3 and including a Mark Ruffalo Hulk movie somewhere in there. Everyone gets a + sequel, and the fans rejoice. +
++ Also, I called this coming out of the theater, and I'm writing it here as proof: the words "Avengers, Assemble" were never once spoken in this movie, so they will be either some of the first + words spoken in the second one, the tagline for the movie, or maybe even the name of the movie itself. Officially called. +
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