Even the Dark Knight was no match for the box office might of The Avengers
Image: Graphic: Rebecca Fassola Film Features The Dark Knight
The Avengers (Screenshots)
In 2008, the year that the Marvel Cinematic Universe began, Batman ate Marvel’s lunch. Iron Man, the movie that kicked off the MCU, was a pleasant surprise, a film that completely understood what it was supposed to do. It was a critical and commercial hit, a zippy and delightful summer entertainment that generated a whole lot of goodwill. And yet for all that, the film was utterly eclipsed by a very different motion picture about a heavily armored billionaire superhero orphan. The Dark Knight, from rival comic-book empire DC, dominated popular culture the same summer, making a good $200 million more than Iron Man. Marvel couldn’t compete.
Four years later, things flipped around. Marvel had been steadily, carefully building toward a big team-up movie, gambling on the idea that an interconnected comic-book universe would be worth more than a bunch of different unrelated superhero franchises. It took five movies, a few recastings, and some messy character introductions, but The Avengers came out in the early summer of 2012… just in time to bury The Dark Knight Rises, the breathlessly anticipated Batman sequel that Christopher Nolan didn’t much want to make. The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises were both hits—the No. 1 and No. 2 hits of 2012, in fact—but the former outgrossed the latter by about the same margin that The Dark Knight had outgrossed Iron Man. It’s not difficult to understand why. The Dark Knight Rises was simply one more Batman movie. The Avengers was the culmination of something.
The success of The Avengers seems obvious in retrospect, but at the time, the obvious thing would’ve been to turn it into another Iron Man movie. The first two entries in the Iron Man franchise had both done huge business, even if the second one wasn’t nearly as well received. The other Marvel movies did well, but they weren’t globe-conquering smashes. At the time, you couldn’t just put the word “Marvel” on a movie poster and expect to pull in a billion dollars.
It’s hard to remember now, but the early Marvel movies really blurred in with the multiplex crowd. The Incredible Hulk came out barely a month after Iron Man, and I paid to see it—at least in part because I’d read that Iron Man showed up in the movie. This amounted to a generally boring, incoherent CGI splooge-fest with a deeply unsatisfying Robert Downey Jr. cameo at the end. Hulk stumbled at the box office, earning double its budget but taking in less worldwide than Slumdog Millionaire or Marley & Me. In 2011, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger both did well, but neither made as much globally as The Hangover Part II or, for that matter, Robert Downey Jr.’s non-Marvel vehicle Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows.
But in structuring The Avengers as a true team-up movie, Marvel essentially set up a whole new moviegoing reality where it was effectively the only game in town. These days, on any given night, you can flip around basic-cable channels and find two or three different Marvel movies playing simultaneously. That’s a direct result of the way the company used The Avengers to build a whole immersive environment.
Here’s where it’s necessary to talk about Joss Whedon. This has become an unpleasant thing to do lately. In the past few months, a number of actors have come forward to accuse Whedon of abusive, vindictive petty-dictator bullshit on film sets—a pattern that, to hear various Buffy The Vampire Slayer stars tell it, goes back decades. Whedon built a brand on snappy and self-aware back-and-forth patter and empathetic portraits of powerful young women—on being someone who, to put things far too simply, should know better. Because he’s also reportedly the guy who wasn’t allowed to be alone in the same room as the teenage actress in his TV show. These are the kinds of personal revelations that can’t help but throw past work into a deeply unflattering light.
Whedon has yet to address any of the accusations against him, which continue to pile up. He’s made a quiet exit from The Nevers, the Victorian-superheroes HBO show that he was making. (HBO replaced Whedon, and the show has since come out and become a hit for the network.) At the same time as all this has been happening, HBO’s recent release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League has made it obvious just how badly Whedon fucked up in his attempt to finish the movie that Snyder had to leave mid-production. Whedon was brought in specifically to inject fun into Justice League, to Avengers-ize it. Instead, he simply transformed it into into tonally jarring sludge with no weight or confidence. The theatrical version of Justice League sucks for a lot of reasons, but it’s clear that Whedon did nothing good for the movie. (The Snyder cut of Justice League is wildly indulgent and melodramatic, but there’s a lot of fun to be had in its grand spectacle.) It’s enough to make you wonder if he was ever any good, or whether he was just competently doing a company’s bidding when he made one of the most successful films of all time.
Well, no. The Avengers is still great. It remains an overwhelmingly enjoyable and influential piece of popcorn filmmaking. In picking a TV showrunner with a distinct personality and a sentimental attachment to the company’s heroes, Marvel found someone who could turn its multiple-franchise crossover event into something deeply satisfying. I probably gave Whedon too much credit the last time I wrote about The Avengers, two years ago. The movie’s faults have Whedon’s fingerprints on them, just as its strengths do. The look is basic and utilitarian, something that’s continued to be a problem for most Marvel movies. The exposition dumps, like the one that opens The Avengers, often really mess up the momentum. From time to time, the script can get a little too impressed by its own cleverness. But Whedon understood the task that Marvel assigned him, and he basically nailed it.
Whedon was set up to succeed. The timing was exactly right for something like The Avengers. In the decade-plus since X-Men and Spider-Man, multiplex audiences had come to accept dorky self-involved superhero stories as summer spectacles, to the point where superhero movies no longer had to apologize for being superhero movies. CGI effects had matured, too; it makes a huge difference that Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk looks like Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk, not like a more jacked-up version of the Mucinex snot-monster. Marvel had also made a series of smart casting decisions, coming up with clearly defined versions of the company’s characters and with actors game enough to inhabit those characters.
Going into The Avengers, Downey naturally assumed that he would be the star of the show, that all the action would have to revolve around him. And Downey is certainly a huge presence within the movie. He gets big action-hero poses, he riffs and ad-libs constantly, and he saves the world via a wormhole nuke at the end. (Because he was the only actor in the movie who got a cut of the film’s profits, Downey also made an ungodly amount of money on The Avengers—something on the order of $50 million once everything had been counted up.) But in The Avengers, Iron Man becomes just one part of the team, and the team is the star of the show.
Chris Evans’ Captain America might be Marvel Studios’ real masterpiece—an aw-shucks all-decency good guy who’s so sincere and well-meaning that he never even feels corny. Downey’s Tony Stark is a brilliant, arrogant asshole who treats all the other people in the room like they’re kindergarten students or hired help. Chris Hemsworth’s Thor would come a long way in later movies, but his sheer physical beauty and mass go a long way toward making the god real. Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury is all weary, pissed-off presence. And thanks to the convenient problems that arose between Edward Norton and Kevin Feige, Marvel got to jettison the one star of a previous movie whose performance simply did not work on any level, and plug Mark Ruffalo in there instead. It all works. Everyone pops. Marvel hasn’t had to recast since.
Whedon understood that the real drama in the first Avengers movie wouldn’t hail from putting the team up against a villain of overwhelming power; it would hail from seeing whether the team could come together and function at all. Loki, the villain, is an empty and theatrical fall guy, and the film turns that into a plot point, showing how he’s in over his head and being used by greater forces to be revealed later. Whedon knew that it’s fun to watch superheroes fight each other, so he put a lot of that in there, and he also broke his team off into different component parts to see how different characters would bounce off of each other, a trick that he’d picked up from making TV. He also turns the Black Widow from the sexpot of Iron Man 2 into a distinctly Whedon-y superwoman archetype—a stock character that’s aged terribly, but one that Scarlett Johansson is able to turn into something more layered.
With The Avengers, Whedon and Marvel were working toward the same ends, and that’s why the movie works as well as it does. Marvel wanted to communicate the comic-book idea that these larger-than-life characters lived in the same world, that they would have to reckon with one another’s existence. Whedon wanted the exact same thing. A few years later, with Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Whedon had ideas he wanted to explore, and Marvel had plot mechanics that it needed to move forward. Ultron made a whole lot of money, but the film only barely survived the tension between what Whedon wanted and what Marvel wanted. Then, with Justice League, Whedon’s version of the film was actively at war with what Zack Snyder had already done. That fusion was always doomed to failure. With Avengers, though, Whedon uses the machinery at his disposal, and he makes it run.
When The Avengers came out, the heavy solemnity of The Dark Knight was still all over blockbuster cinema. You can see echoes of it in other big hits from that year, like Skyfall or even The Hunger Games. The Avengers, meanwhile, zagged hard in the opposite direction. It was colorful and clever and at least half a comedy. (Meanwhile, the highest-grossing actual comedy of 2012 was Ted, so maybe the American public was just starved for cleverness.)
Whedon inherited the fast-talking style of The Avengers from Jon Favreau’s Iron Man, and the Russo Brothers’ later Marvel spectacles have inherited that sensibility, at least in part, from The Avengers. That style has continued through every Marvel cinematic product in the past decade-plus; the buddy-comedy zingers in The Falcon And The Winter Soldier, for instance, are warmed-over Shane Black through a Whedon-speak filter. Eventually, that style will get tired. Maybe it’s happening already. But with The Avengers, it worked well enough to depose Batman.
The runner-up: The aforementioned Skyfall, the No. 4 movie of 2012, is a Bond film rendered as a brutally efficient machine. The story weaves in ideas about trauma and builds on the whole mythology of Daniel Craig’s version of the character, but it also looks beautiful, and it makes sure to hit all the regular Bond marks hard: the exotic locations, the larger-than-life villain, the spectacular stunt-driven action scenes. At this point, Skyfall remains the most solidly rewatchable of the Daniel Craig Bonds, and maybe the best of the ancient franchise overall. Later this year, we’ll finally find out whether Craig can top it.
Next time: The post-Twilight apocalyptic-teen-lit genre gets its moment in the sun with The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.
296 Comments
I just wanna point out the fun fact that, in the first Avengers comic, the Hulk joins the circus and pretends to be a clown robot.
I suppose Hulk’s uncontrollable rages do make him similar to El Monstruo from Lowlife.
Plus the Hulk’s strangely enough a master of disguise. There was a storyline where he reverted to his original grey form and got a job as an enforcer for the mob in Vegas under the alias “Joe Fixit”. Also, Joe Fixit says Trans Rights!
Holy crap, I am ALL ABOUT Joe Fixit in the MCU!
I wanna see an adaptation of Future Imperfect, where Hulk goes into the future to fight a post-apocalyptic warlord version of himself who has an army of robot dogs named “The Maestro”.
Stuff like Joe Fixit and when Wolverine was running around Madripoor “disguised” as Patch, I just feel like no one around them is fooled but just don’t want to piss off the superhero cosplaying in their midst.
I love how secret identities in comics can be “put on an eyepatch” or “wear a hat”.
“I mean, guy’s got a match in his mouth, calls himself ‘Matches’! That’s good enough for me! Tell ‘im where our gang is striking next!”
Im a regular human being, known as Jackie Daytona.
Once it was established that all Clark Kent needs to do is put on some glasses and no one realizes its Superman, it just became part of the DNA of superheroes. Same with his wearing his underoos over his superhero outfit.
Yeah, Superman was the OG of shaky disguises, but you can at least sorta get it (and Christopher Reeve SOLD it) Hulk and Wolverine are each significantly more distinctive than Clark Kent. Logan didn’t even change his INCREDIBLY SPECIFIC hair style. And, of course, Joe Fixit is an entirely different eight foot, 700 pound ‘hulk’ who isn’t the actual Hulk.
“Hey, you went for the Wolverine ‘do as well? Yeah, Herb down at the barbershop says that’s a real popular look.”
There’s a Joe Fixit skin for Hulk in the Avengers game! (that I still don’t have enough credits to buy) Been wondering what the story with that was
I’d like to see how he got that job.
“A few years later, with Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Whedon had ideas he wanted to explore, and Marvel had plot mechanics that it needed to move forward. Ultron made a whole lot of money, but the film only barely survived the tension between what Whedon wanted and what Marvel wanted.”It also ironically had nothing to do with the event comic the movie was named after. It’s actually partially a loose adaptation of “Behold..The Vision!”. Hell, the event comic Age of Ultron barely even had any of Ultron and could be more accurately titled “Wolverine and Sue Storm’s Wacky Time Travel Murder Adventre”. The only long term consequence of the event is that Logan and Sue broke time so badly they retconned the Spawn supporting character Angela into the Marvel Universe.
Bendis was so burnt out on the Avengers by that point. I think his run (in concert with the big crossovers he or Mark Miller wrote during that time) largely works well and certainly revitalised the franchise, but he should have left with Siege. The profoundly dull Heroic Age period, the terrible Fear Itself (which he didn’t write) and those last two years on the books are not great.
Yeah Siege was a great event. It felt great having the heroes fight villains and not each other for once.
It also felt like a genuine end point to the story that began all the way back with Secret War/Disassembled
Overall, I love the MCU an awful lot, but I would argue that (even in WandaVision and F&WS) its biggest problem has been individual identify vs. the needs of the bigger universe.
With the destruction of an Eastern European country and the army of Ultron bots, the Age of Ultron movie owes a lot to the “Ultron Unlimited” story from the Busiek/Perez run. I hardly ever see anyone make that connection. An “Ultron” army was never the villain’s schtick before this arc, and that cover image was almost directly copied for one of the movie’s promo shots:
I can see Clint, Widow, Hulk, Wanda, Thor, Stark, and Quicksilver in that image, but where the hell is Cap?
Cap is towards the bottom center. Directly right of Iron Man and directly left of Wanda. Don’t miss Vision in the upper left- they were trying not to spoil his look at the time.
I wanted Thor to say “Ultron…we would have words with thee” the WHOLE DAMNED MOVIE
Loved that story- I was bummed we never got an “I would have words with thee” out of Thor in the movie
That’s a great ultra-comic bookish comic book cover. Reminds me of Stretch-Dude and Clobber Girl on The Simpsons (“tonight’s episode…enter the Collector!”)Age of Ultron reeked of ego when it didn’t reek of compromise. Could just imagine Whedon visualising the reviews; “in this multi-million dollar special effects extravaganza, the best scene is actually the one where the heroes sit around and talk to each other!”. Sadly, I bet some reviewers made that come partially true. Some truly terrible “I want a one liner here but can’t think of anything” moments too; “no respect for lawn maintenance” stands out in my mind.
Boy was the Age of Ultron comic a real stinker. OP I’m sure you know this, but it was also a heavily delayed comic so none of the characters fit in with their “Marvel NOW” reboot persona. Best example, Spider-man was actually Doc Ock in Spider-man’s body. Which we see in the Superior Spider-man tie in, but it is not reflected at all in the actual writing of the main book.
I remember the joy I felt watching the first Avengers. It was such an electric feeling in the cinema and the crowd went apeshit when Tony first turns up next to Cap.I haven’t watched it in many years but I appear to have liked Age of Ultron far more than most people. It’s still a bottom-half MCU film but it’s not like it’s Thor: The Dark World or anything.
There were at least half a dozen times in the theater during Avengers that the whole crowd was just electrified and totally on the same page with how awesome what we were seeing was. Off the top of my head:“he’s adopted”
“Banner, put down the scepter”“when they’re so busy fighting you”
“I’m always angry”the circle shot
“Puny god”Most movies are lucky to have one moment as good as any of those, and Avengers was filled with them.
I didn’t even get to hear “puny god!” in the theater because the audience laughter was so loud at the beat-down immediately prior. It’s such a great line, I’m still annoyed.
I also didn’t hear, it, but I can’t be annoyed since I was one of the ones laughing my ass off.
Exactly what I came to say. The audience was still in hysterics after that scene ended.
And the Ragnarok callback to the beating, years later, is about the best thing in that movie.
I sincerely believe that Hulk smashing the ever-loving shit out of Loki is my children’s’ generation’s “Indiana Jones brings a gun to a sword fight” moment. Just an absolute adrenaline/dopamine rush that comes from the good guy emphatically winning after getting kicked around for the whole movie.
“And Hulk…smash.” And Hulk’s grin.Hulk’s sucker punch of Thor got a huge laugh. It was great to see the Hulk having fun rather than just being tortured and angry as in his previous cinematic outings. The scene that still makes me laugh the hardest is the one where Cap approaches the cops and starts barking orders, and the lead cop’s like, “Why the hell should I take orders from you?” Then they’re assailed by a group of Chitauri, which Cap dispatches without breaking a sweat, and the same same cop gets on the radio and starts carrying out Cap’s orders to a tee. The comic timing of that was impeccable.
Hulk being overjoyed to finally have PERMISSION to smash is the greatest thing.
And when I saw it, I had been given a heads up by a friend who saw it early to stay all the way until the end of the credits. I loved the shawarma scene, and my favorite part of it was that as they’re sitting there silently eating, Banner chuckles softly to himself like he just remembered something. I think he was remembering something that he did as the Hulk, perhaps sucker punching Thor or throwing Loki around like a rag doll.
Finding out years later that Banner is still a bit embarrassed by that side of himself was a nice little callback, too.
For real though. Getting to watch Hulk smash and just not have it be some existential or moral quandary is the best part of the movie.
I remember Ruffalo saying that he built his portrayal of Hulk on the mentality of his preschool-age son. As a dad of three boys, I think that was a brilliant decision.
the best bit was when iron man meets thor: “doth mother know you weareth her drapes?”
The only movie in theaters where I saw a crowd go crazier then they did with Avengers was, ironically, Endgame with the “Avengers Assemble” scene at the end
Cap lifting the hammer was even bigger, really. But yeah, that whole sequence… I understand some of the problems folks have with some of it, but it’s an amazing sequence.
The whole stretch is so packed that it did a great job disguising the “on your left” moment. We know everyone’s back from the phone call Ant-Man gets, but from then until the circles appear is just so full of holy shit moments (especially the hammer) that the portals appearing still hit so hard for the first watch. Obviously it still holds up too but man that first time…
idk I was kinda burned out by the Marvel-verse by that point. Yes it was cool seeing Cap with Mjolnir, but the last fight had precisely no tension since I knew the good guys were gonna win, so I kind of checked out. It didn’t grip me nearly as much as anything in Infinity War.
I was not a huge fan of Infinity War per se, but when I left the theatre there was a group of Black kids geeking out and positing theories about what would happen next and I thought it was really cool that it was hitting them the way the actual comics hit me and my friends.
“Puny god” is an incredible line.
The audiences kept going so apeshit for Hulk-vs-Loki that I didn’t know he said “puny god” until the third time I saw the movie.
It’s a great summer movie, if I have only 2 criticisms of it is that Cap’s outfit looks terrible with the helmet on, and the opening action scene is pretty lackluster. Something about the way it’s shot and the bland sets makes it stand out from the rest of the movie.
Agreed on Cap’s outfit, although what’s funny is that it didn’t bother me at all when I first saw the movie; it wasn’t until his revised outfits in later movies (Winter Soldier and onward) that it became evident how much his Avengers outfit looks like a Halloween costume by comparison.
The opening scene looks more like something from a TV show than a huge expensive blockbuster. It’s odd, although you see a lot of other shots in the film that look more like Whedon thought he was still on a TV set. He got better about that in AoU, but then of course the Russos (and every other director) completely blew him away from then on.
One thing folks forget about Avengers is it’s shot with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio. On a widescreen tv that fills the full 16:9 image so it literally looks like a TV show. Whedon chose it because he wanted wider lenses and screen height for the third act. Now, years later, the flat lighting and pedestrian framing make it look less “cinematic” than a D+ MCU show.
A couple of years ago I took the movie and made a version cropped to 2:1 so it would look slightly more action movie-ish. It helped.
Interesting point – I happened to rewatch it this past weekend with my kids, and I think you’re right here. The lighting for a lot of scenes is definitely TV-flat. I found myself thinking that they should put the Russos in charge of a remake. 🙂
That opening sequence with the boring/indifferently shot chase in the tunnels had me legit concerned in the theater that Avengers was not going to live up to my own personal hype , but by the time that Cap, Thor and Iron Man first meet up I started to relax and realized the opening was an awkward outlier.
“Puny God” and “Mewling Quim”.
Yep. I truly hadn’t felt that kind of elation coming out of a movie theater since seeing Return of the Jedi when I was 12. It was the exact same joyful feeling.
I unabashedly enjoy Age of Ultron. I would put it in the middle for me. It’s not great, but it’s fun. Fun is good sometimes, y’know? And, I wouldn’t necessarily put Thor: The Dark World at the bottom (although it is VERY close); for me, that spot is reserved for The Incredible Hulk.The Avengers managed to hit the sweet spot, and I’ll always be grateful for seeing that on opening night.
I hadn’t felt so happy that a comic book movie hadn’t screwed up delivering on my expectations since the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man. The joy I felt after seeing the film was immense.If I have one nitpick I’d rather the deleted opening/end scenes with Maria Hill had been used instead of what we ended up with. Cobie Smulders was badly served by the Avengers movies. Granted not as badly as Jeremy Renner, though part of that blame can be lobbied at Sir Ken for not using Hawkeye more in Thor. At least then maybe Joss would have come up with something better than mind stone possessed Clint for half the movie.
For me, it was the fly-through of the final battle, when each of the Avengers is off kicking ass in a different part of downtown, that had me realize what a miracle it was that I was seeing; I remember sitting in the theater during that moment just in total awe of basically seeing a double splash page come brought to real life.If I had seen that when I was 10, forget it, I would have exploded on the spot.
Age of Ultron is fun and perfectly rewatchable; it’s just easily the least of the 4 Avengers movies, but that’s no great shame.
I think the biggest problem is that the actual plot and conflict of the movie clash with its light and fun tone. Tony creating Ultron seems like it’s going to be this very serious, deep thing, and then it just…never is that. So it makes the whole thing feel kinda empty and unsatisfying.
If you you think the comedy and plot clash in Avengers, just wait until Thor: Ragnarok. One of the funniest MCU films is the one where Thor loses his father, loses an eye, meets and kills his sister, and unleashes an apocalypse to cover the escape of the last refugees of Asgard.
Yes, that’s part of why I think Ragnarok is a bit overrated. Not to mention Valkyrie is a literal slave-trader and that’s glossed over instantly. But I think it works better as a movie than AoU because it has more a confident tone throughout, despite the moments of tonal whiplash.
Loses his hammer.
Having a quippy villain committing atrocities is a high-difficulty maneuver, and AoU did not succeed. Ultron needed to be “my life is falling apart” insane a lot earlier and a lot more frequently. Either that, or his plans needed to be way more of a slow burn. Of course, he was a one-off villain for a single movie, and maybe that was a mistake too.I can respect the nod to the idea of The Singularity, but sometimes neat little sci-fi ideas just don’t jibe with dramatic (or comedic) pacing. Well, that, and, Ultron’s daddy issues ended up conflicting heavily with the very idea of a Singularity intelligence, so it just ended up being a crappy excuse to have Ultron become a fully sapient entity ASAP.
Right, they couldn’t decide what Ultron wanted to be or who was responsible for him. If you’re gonna do the “daddy issues” thing you have to commit to Tony being responsible for him, and having a lot in common with him. A million different plot complications get in the way of the former and, aside from a few jokey lines, there is almost nothing of the latter.
I read an outline of a rewrite here where Ultron starts out trying to help the Avengers, but has no compunction about killing unarmed and defeated enemies, and ends up turning against them when they try to shut him down, and just that one change would have done wonders for the movie.
https://fixflickdotcom.wordpress.com/2016/01/04/how-to-fix-avengers-age-of-ultron-part-1/
It’s definitely a problem for the movie that far and away the best scene is the post-action afterparty at Avengers HQ, as wonderful as that scene was.
It almost makes me wish the whole movie had taken place in just Avengers Tower, a la Die Hard, with Ultron trapping them there, instead of being a globe-hopping adventure. The stakes were just so high they had to weaken Ultron at every turn (he’s locked out of the nuclear stations instantly!). Having him be a more personal villain only interested in killing the Avengers rather than humanity would have solved that problem and made the movie feel as intimate as it is often trying to be.
Hot damn, that’s a great idea.
For me, the highlight of seeing Avengers in the theater was the sequence during the final battle where, in a continuous shot, the camera flies through the city and focuses on how the characters who vary from “Thunder God” to “Archer with good aim” can work with each other’s strengths and their own limitations to effectively fight back a massive alien invasion. It was a moment that wasn’t hinted at in any of the trailers, and the audience went apeshit. It was like seeing a huge two-page splash panel from a Marvel event comic put on the screen, and it was glorious. It’s still the most effective nod to the medium of comics that I’ve ever seen in a superhero movie.
I recently rewatched Ultron and I liked it much more than I remembered. I think it has a similar issue Dark Knight Rises had in that it’s by no means bad, but very long and a follow up to a cultural touchstone. Another example is Return of the Jedi. Age of Ultron also stretches the limit of Joss’ dialogue-writing skills. Some of his problematic takes on women come through in that film and everyone just has to be sooo quippy while evacuating a city that they doomed to obliteration. The Russos did a better job of giving appropriate dialogue to each character based on what’s been established. But-it’s shot beautifully and really nailed Vision, that dialogue at the end was perfect. And the same goes for this one, some of it its a bit corny and too tongue in cheek, but it’s also what audiences wanted after years of grimdark Batman and James BourneBond
Vision is probably my favorite Avenger in the comics and he’s a really difficult character to get right, so I appreciate how the MCU mostly has done him justice.
Also once you’re aware of Whedon’s writing tics, it’s screamingly obvious Pietro was gonna bite it by the end of the movie. Which I’m still salty about; I like QS and thought this was a good take on him
Yeah I definitely saw his death coming from a mile away, but enjoyed him for what he was. The Fox version wasn’t THAT much better, he just had a better gimmick (that they used twice)
i still haven’t seen a good chunk of mcu movies but the first avengers is by far my favorite of the bunch. i didn’t even know this movie existed for a year or two after it came out because i was totally out of the loop for several years after i moved out on my own. i honestly don’t even think i knew the avengers were a thing cause i never read comic books and literally everything i know about them comes from 90’s cartoons so i know xmen, spiderman, batman etc. i ended up watching it after recommending a couple movies to a coworker so i checked out a few of his recommendations (just to be polite.) i had just recently started learning to use kodi and intended to watch a bit and then skim through but i was way surprised. i couldn’t even make it all the way through captain america 1 or 2 but after watching it a couple dozen times (especially since becoming ubiquitous on cable tv) it still remains an effortless watch. the humor and dialogue, pacing, and action seemed spot on which i can’t say about some of the other good mcu flicks like civil war and endgame/infinity, all of which feel seem to me to waste a lot of momentum trying to juggle the plot of a dozen movies. i gotta say it: smart hulk fucking blows. like, what’s the fucking point? if the hulk isn’t swinging an army tank at whoever pissed him off then it’s just bruce banner.
There are superhero movies I have enjoyed more since The Avengers came out, but I don’t know if a single moment has brought me as much nerdy joy in the theater as the “single shot” tracking from hero to hero in the Battle of New York that felt like a comic book splash page come to life. Age of Ultron tries to top it in the opening scene with a tableau that much more resembles an actual splash page, but isn’t as effective. Same with Snyder’s exact recreations of comic pages or panels. Some of that stuff is still cool, but that tracking shot in the first Avengers is more interesting because it feels like you are IN a splash page with all the chaos unfolding around you and giving you the focus to enjoy each character/beat, whereas the Ultron shot and the Snyder stuff feels like you are looking AT a whole comic page that just happens to be moving.
Agreed. They took the splash page concept far too literally post-Avengers
I remember watching it, I just couldn’t believe it was happening. I remember thinking leading up to it, “this won’t get made. One of the other movies will flop and derail the whole thing.” And when Thanos popped up, I freaked out.
AOU is a lot better on second viewing
I remember how excited I was to see The Dark Knight in the summer of 2008, but when I went to the movies with a friend, the affable middle-aged man selling our tickets would *not* shut up about a new film called Iron Man. He said it was the cinematic event of the summer and so on. We both sort of laughed him off, thinking he was just some quirky old guy, but his intensity struck me. Something about that movie was turning people into evangelists.
A while back The Dissolve posted a list of the fifty best summer blockbusters of all time, and The Avengers was the one glaring omission. I’m not a huge MCU fan (I liked Agent Carter, fight me) but The Avengers deserved a spot in the upper half of the list. It’s brisk, entertaining, and littered with great character moments. I think maybe people underrate the film because it’s so fun, but writing something this fun is *hard.*
the affable middle-aged man selling our tickets would *not* shut up about a new film called Iron Man
.. And that man was, you guessed it, Frank Castle. As portrayed by Frank Stallone. And now you know the rest of the story!
It’s weird to look back (cause it really wasn’t that long ago) and remember when this seemed like an absolutely crazy idea that would never work in a million years. I missed out on it at the outset precisely because my expectations were low – and then was absolutely blown away when seeing the final product. I still think it’s one of the most exciting pop culture shifts of the last decade.Imo, Chris Evans’s Cap is still too straight-laced here to be that interesting (though that just kind of comes with the territory). It’s really in The Winter Soldier that he becomes so much more interesting. And by the time Civil War rolled around, he was solidified as co-lead to RDJ’s Iron Man. Even though he’s not my personal fave, it was deservedly so.I don’t think it was just the studio that made Whedon work. And this is part of why it’s so hard to dismiss his legacy, for all that it is clear he is an absolutely horrid human being who is long overdue for a reckoning. He’s a narcissist and a misogynist…but he also happens to be a talented writer and director who knows his stuff, and made tv and film that changed the game.
I remember coming out of the film finally understanding that Cap’s superpower was ‘leadership’
The “good man” part over time becoming much more important to everyone, Cap included, than the “perfect soldier.”
As someone who grew up caring far too much about the back deals of moviemaking because all I wanted was a Spider-man movie (which I eventually got and loved with Tobey), seeing the MCU not only come together but be a massive success was both satisfying as a fan and as someone who found the business side almost as interesting. This was genuinely a huge leap of faith and it paid off spectacularly.
I expect the MCU being taught as case studies in business schools.
“Now, part two of the lesson. ‘The DCEU: What Not To Do’.”
“Now, part two of the lesson. ‘The DCEU: What Not To Do’.”A comparison case study would absolutely seem reasonable. You can throw in the disater of the Star Wars sequels for even more comparative info. That’s the most interesting one considering thet both the MCU and Star Wars sequels came from the exact same studio.
Spider-Man 2 and The Avengers are the two major superhero movies that everyone loves and I just can’t stand. Starting with that corny “There’s only one God, ma’am!” line from Captain America and ending with Loki calling Black Widow the old timey version of “whiny cunt”… everything about The Avengers made my teeth itch. Yeah yeah, big ol’ splash page fight, but it wasn’t enough for me to overlook everything else. Ultimately, I’d rather watch Thor and Thor: The Dark World than The Avengers and Age of Ultron.X2 is the ne plus ultra for me when it comes to superhero movies, so maybe it’s just that I’m chasing that high.
It sounds like you’re looking for a superhero property that will…go BEYOND, PLUS ULTRA!
MHA is a refreshing take on a teen superhero team because, unlike superhero comics from the Big Two, none of the main cast has been brutally murdered or dismembered.Though if it happened to Mineta I don’t think I would mind…
In fairness, Aizawa’s taken some vicious beatings…and Midoriya’s early injuries are genuinely gruesome.
shut the fuck up
I say this without a hint of irony or sarcasm: All Might is ten times the hero Iron Man is.
I’ll allow your opinions on The Avengers. I think it’s a fine movie, but nothing about it is amazing. As a culmination of movies and getting the characters together it works. As an interesting story, not so much. But, I would like to know what it is about Spiderman 2 you don’t like.
It’s really thoughtful about the nature of sacrifice and true heroism, but then it constantly throws that away in favour of excruciating comedy bits; there are quiet character moments that are fantastic (the choice to end the movie on Kirsten Dunst’s conflicted face is brilliant, and she plays Mary Jane’s love for Peter and doubt about her decision to choose him) but everything else is just so corny. And on top of everything else, it looks like a cheap 2000s era WB show! I hear Danny Elfman’s score over the opening credits and I get chills and want to love what follows, but it’s too schlocky for me.
For me the only part of Spiderman 2 that stands out is the train fight, the rest just doesn’t sit with me. I never really bought into Kirsten and Tobey in the roles and I think 2 makes things worse, as neither one really feels like they want to be there. The amazing spiderman series is a mess but I would argue the majority of characters feel like real characters inhabiting a world. I don’t get that from the Raimi series , Aunt May is a walking inspirational speech a day calendar, and Peter is a mopey sad sack dork. Raimi seemed to lean into one character trait and amplify it instead of making them feel like real characters. Having Peter lose his powers in the laziest way possible just made the movie boring.
Thanks for answering, it’s been awhile since I saw 2 but I really like it. I don’t recall any “excruciating comedy bits” I also don’t recall it being cheap looking but it was also released 17 years ago so it might not hold up in that department either. I do recall the original one looking a bit cheap, especially during the Green Goblin attack on Times Square. I guess I need to watch them again.
Well, like they say, there’s no accounting for taste. I wouldn’t piss on the X-Men franchise if it was on fire. Not that they’re bad movies, and X2 in particular is good, it’s just that something about the X-Men in general doesn’t do it for me.
I love it but the more I think about it the more I totally get where the humans come from. It makes a better gun control analogy than a civil rights one. In fact the gay rights allegories are extremely problematic especially for the first X-Men film.
It sounds like you are mostly disappointed by Whedon’s dialogue, which is more than fair. I like the one liners when they are relevant and work, much less so when they feel artificial and forced (which with every rewatch feels a little more). I feel like Whedon really didn’t understand Cap or Chris Evan’s performance in particular. Cap in both Whedon movies is a lot more impatient and dickish than in the non-Whedon written movies. Cap’s humor in Age of Ultron especially is totally out of character. I can roll with Whedon’s tics (even when they were annoying) because I was a fan of his TV work and could accept the style. What I got in return was the closest feeling I had to what I loved about reading these comics growing up, something no other superhero comic adaptation had really gotten right. Just the unique blend of humor, silliness, spectacle, action, world building, and drama from those original comics. Maybe watch it muted?
Cap in Endgame meeting Cap from Avengers was a great scene in showing how much he’d changed in the interim, I felt that contrast worked quite well. I guess I’m saying the Cap in Avengers being like that helped set up the degree of contrast and helped the Endgame scene work so well as it did as a result.
I would grant your point if Avengers Cap didn’t feel off from his First Avenger and Winter Soldier appearances. It feels less like he changed in the interim between the first Avengers film and Endgame and more like Whedon didn’t write him well. Like, I can see a better character evolution from his solo films to IW/Endgame (basically the Markus/McFeely written stuff). The Whedon stuff feels off.
Just a by the way- Whedon was brought in to do a final rewrite/ polish of Captain America: The First Avenger’s script and was credited by Feige with helping to ‘save’ a script that wasn’t working.
So he had at least some of a hand in Cap’s appearance in TFA, which is something that tends to be forgotten about when people critique how he wrote Cap.
(He also, in theory, had some say in his Winter Solider appearance as that was when Whedon was acting as the creative consult between all Phase 2 films.)
I remember that now! I think his major contribution was the “I don’t like bullies” angle, possibly the “I can do this all day”. I wonder if he actually rewrote that much or just helped with the characterization/plotting, because TFA and Winter Soldier don’t really feature his typical humor and dialogue stylings.
Yes, that worked really well! But that was really just a case of newer writers (who “got” Cap a lot better) contrasting their Cap with Whedon’s Cap. That it also worked to suggest a growth over intervening years was serendipitous.
For me, the success or failure of Whedon’s style and dialogue rests on the ensemble asked to perform it, and larger context of where it’s set. His original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie did suffer a bit from Donald Sutherland’s interference, but it also was crippled by the casting and need to tell the story in such a compressed time frame. The Buffy series was really only truly great for the middle seasons – it became great after the writers got comfortable enough with the cast to shift the focus more towards their relationships than the quippy Big Bad fighting, and it lost some of its greatness later thanks to both its trajectory hopping networks and the forced interjection of Big Themes as it wound down. Firefly benefited enormously from a great ensemble and the fact that Whedon’s production team had had time to work out the Buffy kinks.But I think you’re right – the Russos understood Chris Evans and Captain America much better than Whedon did. Whedon’s solution for Cap was to take the cornball, All-American Man With A Plan archetype and try to humanize him strictly through one-liners and fish-out-of-water tropes. The Russos realized he was basically a regular human whose artificially-enhanced abilities were balanced by fundamental decency and the propensity to make the right decision at the right time.
The Big Themes were always there, though.
I agree. Whedon never got Cap. And I think it’s honestly because, if you look back over Whedon’s work (and I watched Buffy and Angel all the way through, and am still a Firefly fan!), he has no REAL place for that kind of sincere earnestness. I don’t think he thinks someone can BE a hero without some snark and reluctance or dickishness, or *something* to undercut the idealism. A lot of people have spent a lot of time analyzing why Chris Evans’ Cap *works*, when there are so many reasons he shouldn’t. I don’t think Whedon really tried, though. (To analyze him, I mean.)I also think that the thing with Whedon’s tics is that they have compounded over time. When Buffy was airing, they were fresher? He was younger. The landscape of TV was different. Even with Firefly, years later, I felt like… hmm. I felt like he was trying really, really hard to make that show work. (And that show does have issues! I love it, but it does. Also, I want to give at least half of the credit of Firefly to the cast he assembled. There’s talk of a new Firefly coming, and I hope they wise up and just create a whole new group of characters, and then cross their fingers that they get anything like the cast they had for that show.)But as time went on, Whedon runs into the same kind of problem that we talk about successful writers (like JK Rowling, mentioned in the HP entries in this series) running into — becoming too big to edit, or in the case of tv/movies, becoming too big to say “no” or “that doesn’t work” or “dial it down a little” to. And Whedon’s older, and the landscape of entertainment has changed. He’s no longer a fresh, hungry young writer, and it’s no longer the 90s. Anyone who sticks to just one schtick for so long eventually loses that spark. I think his work in the last few years is both a combination of that, and that audiences find it too familiar.(Notice I’m not even evaluating him in light of the revelations about him. Because apparently he was a dictatorial asshole even back when we were enjoying Buffy. It’s probably all a part of how he became too big to edit, too big to say no to. But it’s definitely not a case where he “became” a dictatorial asshole and predator, and that diminished his creative ability. That was there all along.)
That Whedon does not know how to write a character with sincere earnestness is very spot on. It’s sort of a problem of his, even worse in Age of Ultorn, that EVERYONE talks in one-liners and jokes all the time. I’m also wondering if Whedon’s take on Cap is influenced by who he grew up reading. Based on Whedon’s age, I’d say that maybe Jim Shooter’s Avengers run was formative for him. Now there have been plenty of writers for Cap, both on his solo title and in the Avengers, but I have to say that Shooter’s take on Cap is one of the more unpleasant characterizations I’ve read, despite whatever else was great about his first Avengers run.
Did Tony Stark ever end up re-instating prime nocta?
Man, on my most recent rewatch that line was still a groaner but just stood out that much more for how gross it is.
I feel like Whedon really didn’t understand Cap or Chris Evan’s performance in particular. The original draft of my comment referred to Whedon making it clear that he did not understand Captain America, but I took it out because I didn’t want to deal with “What are you talking about? He NAILED the character!!!”Maybe watch it muted?Imagine your parents walking in on you watching The Avengers on mute, and having to convince them that you were not masturbating.
At the time I don’t recall feeling this way about his Cap, but after seeing what Evans and other writers were capable of for the character in his solo movies and IW/Endgame, it just makes his Whedon showings seem even more off in retrospect.
I have never been able to deal with Whedon dialogue. Several friends of mine tried to get me into Buffy and I just couldn’t do it. I tried Firefly. It’s much more my thing but it’s all so twee and thinks it’s so clever. I just watched Ultron and it’s not sooo bad. I meant to watch this this week and might do so tonight. I don’t remember the dialogue bugging me and I did like the shawarma line. Also, everything he added to Justice League to lighten it up that was recently removed from The Snyder cut was really, really bad.
I missed some of Whedon’s humor from JL. (Definitely not the Flash-WW joke, which he reused from AoU). While I appreciated the grandeur Snyder was going for and would prefer a movie length edit of his cut overall, some of the Whedon humor was a nice humanization. I think I mostly missed it from Aquaman, who is such a sour puss in the Snyder cut and doesn’t resemble his solo movie characterization.
To be fair, impatient and kind of dickish was the predominant mode of Cap (or at least Avengers Cap, I avoided Cap’s solo title like the plague) when Whedon was growing up. There was a lot of Cap yelling stuff like “Listen up, mister!” and other stuff the writers thought sounded like drill sergeant dialogue. The solo movies soften Cap a lot—they lean into the idea that he’s a man of quiet strength and not so surly—and that’s a much more appealing look for him, but Whedon’s take was still legit. Glad the Russo Brothers (and the Cap movie writers whose names I can’t remember) take on the character won out, however.
I agree. I theorized on another comment around here that Whedon’s formative Avengers experience was the Shooter run, which was very striking to me in how unpleasant Cap was when I read it. You’re not wrong about the drill sergeant aspect to his earlier appearances, but all these characters were written in more one note fashion during those years yet Whedon was able to successfully modernize their appeal for the film. (Stern and Grunewald, who I think are some of Cap’s best writers, wrote the character more empathetically close to 40 years ago, so it’s not like a softer Cap is a newer development, either)I think he just missed the mark a bit. I love his first meeting with Banner in the movie. His easy authority in breaking up the Thor-IM fight and leading during the Battle of NY work great. But he comes across a little too petty and naive in his arguments with Stark and Fury, and his humor isn’t quite right for his character.
Ah, Jim Shooter. Once you notice his use of exclamation points, you can’t unsee it.Anyway, I agree with you, just saying that as someone whose first impression of Cap was the shouty drill sergeant guy from 80s Avengers comics (which was the characterization that carried beyond the title into most of his guest appearances in other comics), not the more nuanced warrior/sketch artist featured in the solo book’s better runs, that I got where Whedon was coming from. Another Angry Cap portrayal that might’ve influenced Whedon was the Ultimate Universe’s ‘roided-up “Do you think this ‘A’ stands for France?” Steve Rogers, since the original MCU pitch was supposedly strongly based on the Ultimate Universe (very glad we did not actually get Ultimate Cap in the MCU). I suspect the Russo’s greater affinity for Cap is at least partly based on them being a bit younger than Whedon. In the world of comics, someone who starts reading five or six years later can encounter a radically different character.But yeah, Whedon’s best work in this movie is with (pretty much in this order) Natasha, Banner, and Stark. He has a decent voice for Thor, but not much idea what to do with him, and he has that inconsistent tone for Cap. And then there’s Barton, who only has one real scene in the movie, but it kind of pays off in Age of Ultron.
Millar’s Cap is the worst I’ve ever read. I was so happy that his blatant edgelord cynical commercialization of the property (including changing their name!) was practically ignored in favor of honoring the inherent optimism of the classic source material.
Dude it is the nec plus ultra not ne without the c
O que? Nec plus ultra is the Latin term adapted into French; it’s ne plus ultra in English.
Agree with you on Avengers. I get the aspect of the culmination of the characters, other side of that it is just not a good movie. If that is all on Whedon I do not know, he did not help that is for sure, in fact i think his introduction marked the start of the downturn of the properties as after they all started to become the snarky, quippy, smarmy with he scripts. No characters have any real conversations it is all quick one lines back and forth at year other. The acts are very distinguishable, and it disrupts the flow of the movie, to make it seem like they shot three different films and tried their best to make one out of them. I am not sure what they were trying to accomplish with some of the shots in the film, but there are a few times where i have to wonder why Whedon was trying to Michael Bay certain scenes with the camera work. Unfortunately it is almost impossible to evaluate the movie for its technical movie making aspects, as everything about it gets tied up in “but these characters, together, on screen, that’s all that matters”
I think the big problem with Avengers, Ultron, and Endgame for that matter, are the big climactic fights with anonymous low level cannon fodder.I get why they exist — moviemakers want characters like Hawkeye to have something to do, and swarms of robots or aliens at least fills that function.But they suck all of the drama out of the big finish. The stakes feel artificial, and the chaos becomes confusing. All of the time building up characters is wasted — you might as well show them struggling in a vat of molasses for ten minutes.Marvel movies can have good villains — Thanos, Killmonger and Loki worked well on their own. But they struggle to come up with teams of bad guys to fill out the roster of antagonists, and 10,000 minions don’t cut it.
The third act in almost all the Marvel movies are an absolute chore to sit through. Even the better films, like Black Panther and Guardians of the Galaxy, end with globs of boring CGI.
That Cap line worked for me perfectly, he JUST woke up from the 40’s so some things would be a bit bothersome to his era’s values. I kind of wanted to see more Cap being “out of time” and saying or reacting to things. I actually groaned more at the “I understood that reference” line. And when he exclaims “language!” in Age of Ultron, as he was in the army and they showed a million other people swearing before that momentIt is odd that Joss knows what quim means. I guess now we know why.
I love Spider-Man 2, but I also totally get why someone wouldn’t. It tries to have its cake and eat it too with Peter deciding he’ll just date MJ anyway, and also I kind of hate how little empathy EVERYONE who knows Peter has for him, They know he’s living in poverty struggling to make ends meet, but get on his case anyway. Peter also just has the most awkward dialogue, like out of nowhere he desperately tries to read poetry. While it is all in his character it’s just weird how people react or don’t react to him (also him “bolting” during the bank robbery albeit for good reason but May doesn’t know that, I think they wanted to imply May figures out then he’s Spider-Man and gives the pep talk, but it’s a bit too ambiguous)
I was obsessed with it back when it came out but I agree, especially now that they have so many other outings, that the original Avengers feels a bit unwatchable in retrospect.
It’s the dialogue, I hate it. Takes me right out of the experience.
As long as we’re being honest, I’m…still trying to figure out what people saw in X2. It’s probably the peak of the “superhero movie that’s embarrassed to be a superhero movie” era, with its drab leather non-costumes, humorless self-importance, color palette of greys and blacks, and its completely wasting Nightcrawler because it doesn’t seem to want anything to do with a character as over-the-top as Nightcrawler. It feels like the whole production is held back by its refusal to embrace the absurdity of the X-Men as characters (and as a premise) even though that’s the most fun thing about it.
Come to think of it, the first two Thors aren’t really superhero movies either (they’re much more interested in Thor as a god than Thor as a hero) so maybe you just prefer comic book movies that aren’t really concerned with being superhero movies. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just an observation.
On board with your “Avengers” hate, not with your SM2 hate! Pick a lane! Either be like me or don’t!!
I liked *some* of the dialogue, but there were so many places it just felt injected.That said, I’m apparently the only person I know who thinks Buffy seasons 1-3 are the best ones, and Firefly kinda sucks.
I recently rewatched the Raimi Spider-Mans (1 & 2), and it’s so strange, because it’s like 50 % aged beautifully and 50 % aged terribly. All in all I think they’re better movies than most modern superhero schlock, but some is definitely tough to watch now.I fully agree about Avengers though. I loved Iron Man when it came out, and was definitely excited for this. But aside from the Hulk, which Whedon definitely got right, this movie is dumb as fuck. The humor is forced (as is a lot of Whedon humor), most of it looks like a video game cut scene, and the scenes where the Avengers fight each other so we can play an RPG to see whose powers beat whose is one of the stupidest scenes ever. I didn’t get it when I watched in theaters, and I don’t get it now.And yeah, X2 is amazing. Bryan Singer is clearly awful, which is probably why it doesn’t get mentioned more, but that really is one hell of a movie, a fantastic ensemble piece with the best superhero acting you’ll see, really funny scenes, excellent action, actual pathos. No Marvel movie has approached that to me.
Gotta say, I always considered The Avengers to be the worst-written movie I ever saw. None of that dialogue sounds like something an actual human would say. I never understood what anyone saw in Joss Whedon.
Everything else needed notwithstanding, there was a pretty terrible shooting in Aurora that probably affected The Dark Knight Rises.
First MCU movie I felt my son was old enough to see (he was almost 9 and already a big Godzilla fan). We went on Free Comic Book day the day after it came out and we wound up seeing it twice that weekend and 4 more times over the course of the year. It kicked off his love of comics and superheroes and I was so over the moon to get to experience that with him. He’s almost 17 now and we still get geeked to go together, I’m just glad my son wants to do anything with me at that age, remembering what an asshole to my folks I was then. Having watched it again recently, there quite a bit of dialogue that’s just bad. Also Renner has no idea how bows work. But they made it work, it’s still a lot of fun, although it’s for sure been eclipsed by later movies in the MCU it remains an awesome achievement. Marvel made us care about what were at the time secondary and even tertiary characters in the comics. If you’d told me when I was a kid that we’d get 3! Ant Man movies I would have said you’re off your nutter.
For me, the first Avengers film hasn’t aged well. Most of the dialogue are one step away from making me cringe. Most scenes seem set up and superficial. That scene between Widow and Loki, especially. Also, Cap’s PSA clown costume. I do remember the big appeal at the time was the team-up factor. It was pretty surreal, yet cool to see these characters come in from their own movies. That was such a first. It overrode any other issues I had with it at the time. To watch it today, though? Unfortunately, no thanks.I don’t think I would have kept following the ensuing MCU movies if it had kept going on that Whedon-esque trajectory with that tone. It can’t be understated just how much the Russo brothers set the standard with the Winter Soldier film. James Gunn’s GotG as well, but he had the luxury of coming in from a sci-fi angle. Winter Soldier straightened out the path of Cap and the MCU in two hours, and got things moving.
I loved the way that Widow subtly manipulated Loki into giving up the goods, even after she was genuinely hit hard by Loki knowing her secrets thanks to Clint.
What I found really great about that Widow scene with Loki is how it was set up in her opening scene. She pulled exactly the same trick, get some megalomaniacal bad guy monologuing about how he’s so much better and smarter than she is. Play weakness until he triumphantly tells her everything she wants to know.
That’s why I didn’t like Widow fighting with the Avengers in the forest in the opening of Age of Ultron. I know Whedon wanted his Awesome Slo-Mo Shot, but Widow should have been inside Stucker’s fortress, doing deep cover work & bringing the shields down from the inside.
Not so sure about doing deep cover work, but I think at least having Widow suddenly appear in an enemy uniform tearing up the bad guys from the opposite direction would’ve been cool and would have kept up the breakneck pace of that opening scene (and still allowed for the big splash-page group shot).
But AoU always struck me as a movie that needed some refinement on the script. It feels rushed, or that Whedon was either checked-out or exhausted. (Irrespective of his personal faults, I’ve long thought that the Russos probably should’ve been given AoU ahead of Whedon.) The beats are all there, but all of the emotional and character motives, conflicts, and connections just don’t quite connect or land as well as they did in Avengers.
For example, the Natasha/Banner burgeoning romance is a cool idea that doesn’t really have a narrative function. It’s just some stuff for those characters to do. But with a little bit of tweaking it could’ve been a much more important part of the movie. If, for example, with all the “Code Greens” the Hulk is both more in control (and controllable), but has also developed his own personality (and one that despises Banner, at that) that could’ve opened all sorts of doors and set up Thor: Ragnarok. Banner admits during their little bedroom chat that he’s remembering being Hulk (with all the Banner-loathing that entails), and he’s afraid Hulk is getting stronger and he doesn’t have many more Code Greens left in him before Hulk takes over completely. He’s been hesitant with Natasha because he doesn’t think she could set aside the mission if Banner had to stop being the Hulk for fear of not coming back. If she had to choose, would she choose Banner, or the mission?
Natasha, for her part, drops the whole forced-infertility bit (like, it’s not even in the movie, even the Scarlet Witch flashback is changed) and instead focuses on the cold-blooded assassin she was before Barton spared her life, and how everything from then until now has been an attempt to redeem herself, and that maybe, if someone like Banner can see her as something other than a fighter/spy/assassin, she could be that person. And she floats the idea that, once they get rid of Ultron, maybe they leave the Avengers together.
With that little bit of groundwork laid, it makes the bit just before the big Sokovian fight a big moment. The “I adore you” kisses him, pushes him off a ledge, “but I need the other guy,” becomes a tragic (but necessary) betrayal instead of a gag. She chooses the mission, and it creates a whole new emotional layer when the Hulk flies away at the end and creates an emotionally resonant reason for Hulk to remain dominant for the years leading into Ragnarok.
MEANWHILE, the same Banner emotional crux could give him much needed agency in the creation of Ultron. He’s now invested in Ultron, because he doesn’t want any more Code Greens. Instead of being bullied by Tony, he’s active and complicit in creating Ultron.
ANOTHER problem with the movie is that they never answer WHY Ultron goes evil (somebody asks and Tony acts like a dick and the question is never answered). Figuring that out should’ve been a key character moment. Something along the lines of reading Tony’s mind for the Ultron AI and learning that Tony has a very dim view of humanity, and that translated to Ultron. Like, Tony has to come to terms with the idea that, deep down, he doesn’t believe humanity deserves to exist (or something like that) and that was transferred to Ultron.
I did like the goal of the scene, but it felt staged. Nothing related to BW’s bluff tactic.It’s like I could almost hear Whedon on the side yelling, “Aaaand….. action!”.
literally the only thing loki talked about after he got captured was the hulk
I think you nail this squarely on the head. I’ve been slowly rewatching the MCU on Disney+ lately, and the majority of Phase 1 and early Phase 2 films, while tying together mostly nicely, have some pretty jarring shifts in tone and character usage and development … and then “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” and “The Guardians of the Galaxy” roll in and firmly establish what the future tone of the entire MCU will be. Nuance and inner conflict, within both self and team, become better defined and expressed in the presentation of the characters and storylines. “Ultron”* is the one obvious exception in everything in the MCU since “Winter Soldier”, and that kind of steadfastness speaks to an entirely different kind of production maturity than anybody should or would have expected when “The Avengers” dropped.
* For all it’s difficulties in finding balance between Whedon and Disney execs and suffering on the whole, even “Ultron” has some great bits. Steve maybe almost possibly lifting Mjolnir. Spader’s voicework for Ultron. Steve and Tony bantering about Vision casually lifting Mjolnir, and Paul Bettany’s performance as Vision. All top notch.
My issue with Age of Ultron was that it was too short a film. Deliberately so, as revealed by Joss on Empire magazine podcast years ago (along with hints of tensions between him and Marvel).
There’s too much going on that doesn’t get enough screen time. I’d have preferred Strucker not to have been killed off and maybe have some sort of alliance with Ultron, a better plotline for Black Widow that didn’t see her paired off with Banner, more screen time for Ultron (it’s sort of surprising how little he’s in the film) and maybe not shoe horn in the Infinity Stones. They still hadn’t figured out what they were doing with them nor how Thanos fitted into the ultimate erm…..endgame (that stinger is hands down the worst of MCU).
Granted two and a half hour superhero films weren’t the norm in 2015, but AoU could definitely have used an extra 30 minutes.
I definitely don’t want to be the #WhedonCutGuy, but I would have loved to see a version of this movie that wasn’t brought down by the creative committee.
That slo-mo group side shot in the opening snow forest battle in Ultron was pure comic book perfection. And Steve and Tony’s chopping wood conversation scene.There was an interview with Chris Evans in the time between WS and when pre-production was ramping up on Ultron. He said the main thing he requested of Whedon was to just make sure Cap didn’t regress.
“Language.”
Its funny because I think you are right, but I also personally think Age of Ultron despite it’s flaws, did the “nuance and inner conflict” better than either of the Russo Avengers movies. More specifically End Game, which is a real fun ride but ultimately I think kind of drops the ball with the original Avengers story beats/endings.
This needed so much more stars.To be honest, I still love The Avengers film for its great set-up and execution, earning my monikers of Best Pure Comic Book Movie of all time.I agree that standing up to other films in the franchise as well as other comic book films of new and old, it had indeed showed its age. At least the actings are earnest and the script kept things moving at solid pace, which definitely helped the film.Yes, Russo Brothers have earned much more credits for establishing the template that almost every other films has followed to the letter with more grounded presentation and clever scripting and less-hokey acting. That’s after Wheldon teased such potential with his Avengers’ film and Russo Brothers hit the right notes with The Winter Soldiers. Marvel Studio saw that and rightly gave them Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. Those three films are still among the best in Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Totally. I remember some of the Winter Soldier reviews from critics at the time liked the fact that the Russos made every scene important.
Totally agree that it hasn’t aged well. It’s really hard to watch Infinity War or Endgame and then go back and watch The Avengers. The characters, humor, and effects are all worlds better in the later Avengers installments. It’s actually kind of amazing how bad the 2012 Avengers effects look compared to those in subsequent Avengers films that came out just a few years later. Everything is so obviously green screened in the 2012 Avengers.
For as much as Whedon is (or was) lauded for his oh-so-clever dialogue, some of the dialogue in “Avengers” is awful, warmed-over Buffy-style bullshit. The most egregious example being “Earth’s mightiest heroes type of thing,” which was so jarryingly buffy-eque that it took me completely out of the movie.Bleh.
I actually just happened to rewatch Avengers last night, going into it I thought the same things as you. Really didn’t think it would hold up. But honestly if you can still kind of transport your mind to 2012, still kicks a lot of ass.
I’ve never been a huge stan for Whedon but, leaving aside the truly horrendous behind-the-scenes aspects, I feel like it’s been a bit too easy to make him the scapegoat for Justice League. The man was basically parachuted into a near-completed film and given the instructions to not only finish it but finish it in such a way that the final product was practically a complete 180-shift tonally, structurally and more besides from the original director’s intended vision. I can’t think of any director, much less a director willing to do a gun-for-hire job like that, who would be able to take on the Justice League brief and not struggle to come up with an even half-decent silk purse from that sow’s ear.And I also can’t help but suspect that if Whedon had been given an extra few millions of dollars, no creative limits and a four-hour cut to play with, he also would likely have done something good with the movie.
I still haven’t watched the Snyder cut because I really like the theatrical version and almost no movie needs to be 4 hours. Give me a light two hour romp over something straining to be huge and epic any day.
“I still haven’t watched the Snyder cut…” Your instincts were correct.Don’t let this statement in the article fool you, “The
Snyder cut of Justice League is wildly indulgent
and melodramatic, but there’s a lot of fun to be had in its grand
spectacle.”Fun? The only way I can reply to Tom is:
And honestly, if you compare the two cuts, Joss’ version has the characters play off what has come before (especially Bruce, Clark, and Diana) a lot more than the Snyder Cut. And despite Jason Momoa insisting his film takes place after the Snyder Cut, his movie fits in better with Joss’ League than Snyder’s.
“Joss’ version has the characters play off what has come before (especially Bruce, Clark, and Diana) a lot more than the Snyder Cut”Agreed, and an underrated point is that the Snyder Cut actively undermines Snyder’s own previous movies. The entire point of MoS and BvS was Clark earning the trust of himself, society, and Batman. This wasn’t done well, but it was done. Then in Snyder’s JL, he has the team spend most of the movie trying to bring Clark back to life—only to end on a note that says “Well, all of that was a mistake, because Superman is just going to turn evil anyway because I think it looks cool.” It’s despicable.
Aquaman does not work with Superman alive, period. I withhold commentary on whether it works less-horribly with one JL cut or the other.
I also suspect that Whedon probably didn’t even want to do it (only speculation on my part). If I recall, about the time he did this, he got Batgirl. I wonder if a condition to him getting batgirl was…fix this for us and you can have Batgirl. Then Whedon comes on board for a project that he likely didn’t want to do, takes it out on the people he’s working with, and then loses Batgirl after executives get wind that he was a terror on the Justice League set.
In addition to the requested tonal changes, Whedon also had to cut it down to a 2-hour runtime, and the release date couldn’t be delayed because Execs might miss out on their bonuses.
Agreed. Nobody could have achieved what they wanted him to do, especially with a tiny budget and timeline, and he was too full of himself to say no. Relatedly, I also think it’s weird that the consensus now is that the theatrical cut of Justice League is an irredeemable mess, but, when it came out, people thought it was fine but not particularly impressive or memorable. The whole Whedon fiasco and Snyder Cut business seem to have completely rewritten the story of both the Avengers and Justice League, even though those stories are not very old.
The man was basically parachuted into a near-completed film Yes. I never did see the whole movie, and have not much interest in seeing the Snyder cut (I’ll get around to it someday).. but I don’t see how Whedon could have won on that assignment. Even if he wasn’t busy behind the scenes, allegedly being a horrible monster…Mentioned elsewhere on here is the lack of Firefly cast corroborations of Whedon’s behavior, and I guess there’s been no defense from them either? I think we’ll never know the full story but it’s odd to me that the alumni of one of his shows hasn’t chimed in.Not that I want them to, one way or the other, since I love Firefly and want to always think of the show as a blissful and stress free set. (Which I don’t NOW, but I guess I used to.)
“Whedon is bad” is now one of those pieces of groupthink that will prevent anyone from coming to his defense. They’re going to be savaged by the anti-Whedon mob for going against the approved narrative. No publicist would allow a client to do that, even for a friend.“a number of actors” Four. Four actors out of the hundreds that Whedon has worked with over his career. And Ray Fisher’s and Michelle Tractenburg’s accusations aren’t even specific, just the kind of nasty things someone would imply when they want to hurt something but don’t have the evidence for it. Most of Fisher’s allegations come third-hand, things that he heard from people who heard it from someone else.But if everyone can blame Whedon for the JL shitshow, they don’t have to reflect on their own involvement, and that’s the point of the dogpile.
When the Ray Fisher allegations first came out- Alan Tudyk made a comment on twitter about not being able to even imagine Joss was capable of this behaviour. (This comment was also liked by James Gunn…and possibly Jewel Staite as well, but I might be misremembering re-Jewel.)
Alan then got ripped into on twitter for that tweet…so it’s possible that as the allegations against Whedon grew the Firefly cast decided it was better not to say anything and stay out of the conversation. (Firefly was around for less than a year and by all account the cast had a great time on set, and part of the Whedon allegations is that he would play favourites, so it is likely they never had any issues with Whedon.)
It’s the actors who had their parts cut or characters killed off that seem to have the biggest problem with him. I’m not sure why Charisma Carpenter worked with him on two different shows if he was such a monster. It doesn’t forgive any bullying on his part though
Yes, I have to really disagree with the reviewer that Whedon added nothing good to the movie. The Superman scenes in his JL are (dodgy CGI face aside) miles better than any Superman scene in Snyder’s.
Superman being a more positive figure (yes, I enjoyed his rapport with The Flash) is the only think I even liked about the theatrical cut. So with the Snyder Cut excising all of that and going back to a murderous Superman, I have a hard time saying it’s the version I prefer, even if it’s objectively better in some respects.
Snyder got $70 million and a year to complete the Snyder Cut. Whedon got half the time and less than 40% of the money to try to completely alter the tone of the same movie. Plus Whedon had a hard running time cap, and the character he was most interested in rehabilitating had an unshaveable mustache. It should surprise no one that the person who was given more time, resources, and fewer constraints–along with the benefit of hindsight–produced a more coherent movie.
Again, I forget who wrote this about Raiders of the Lost Ark — in that it’s a perfect movie because for almost two straight hours you’re told that the Ark is “unspeakable power,” etc. and then they finally open it and… it really is the Wrath of G-d, kills the Nazis, etc. It’s almost a perfect catharsis for what we’ve seen before — but that’s The Avengers.I know people shit on The Incredible Hulk, and it’s not the best movie, but it’s important for what we see in The Avengers and the catharsis later. The whole point of the end is that Banner is learning to control his transformations, but he’s petrified for two years that once he’s transformed he can’t control it (his worst nightmare like we see later in Age of Ultron)… everyone else in The Avengers is already a hero, or a co-opted hero (in Hawkeye’s case), but we need The Hulk in order to get the full team-up. Thor, Cap, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Iron Man — they’re all ready, but Banner isn’t. Until you have maybe the best, most overqualified cameo guest star since Charlton Heston showed up in Wayne’s World 2 — Harry Dean Stanton. After seeing the devastation on the helicarrier that an injured and mind-whammied Hulk can do, he’s landed in an empty warehouse where Harry Dean Stanton tells him he didn’t hurt anyone — and it looked like he was controlling that.So, cut to The Battle of New York and after two hours of build-up, that the cage was designed for The Hulk, and that The Avengers “brought the monster with them,” Banner talking about his “secret” to stay Banner, and that Tony thinks The Hulk saved Banner’s life from the gamma radiation… we get this:And it’s perfect.
Fun fact: Hulk says ACAB!
Why does the Hulk look like the Grinch in that one panel?
Because The Leader sucked out Banner and most of the Hulk personalities out of Banner’s body (Banner has DID and it manifests in different versions of the Hulk) and absorbed them into his being. Leaving only the Joe Fixit, the Grey Hulk, and Savage Hulk, the “Hulk Smash!” Hulk, personalities. The former stuck in Banner’s form and the latter reduced to a emaciated state but still retaining most of his strength.
Good point. He’s like if Chekhov’s Gun was a character.
This is the best Avengers movie because it’s just having a good time. All the others get tied down by the weight of being about the entire MCU and have to be “important”, this one is mostly just around to have some heroes meet, fight some and stop a bad guy. One big reason I never saw Endgame in theaters is it was only selling me how big and important it was that these characters got snapped and how deep it all was, not actually attempting to show any actual movie.
One thing overlooked is that it is Black Widow who figures out the villain scheme (twice!) and closes the wormhole. This version of the character is straight out of Whedon, but without him she probably isn’t the one to do that.
I never understood why MCU Black Widow doesn’t have her widow’s sting in any of the post Iron Man 2 movie appearances. The sight of her reloading a gun for the big climatic scenes always looks stupid to me.
? She uses it repeatedly in Civil War, Infinity War, and once that I can think of in Endgame.
Hmm for whatever reason I’ve blanked those instances. Maybe the grand hero shot from Avengers is clouding my memory and all I can think of is her reloading her gun while we get the swirling camera shot?
I mean, she uses guns too, but off the top of my head – zapping at least one (and maybe more than one) of the Chitauri in Avengers, zapping both Ant-Man and Black Panther in Civil War, blanking on Infinity War at the moment but I feel like I remember her using them during the Battle of Wakanda and maybe in the Glasgow train station scene, and then hitting Hawkeye with it during their tussle on Vormir.
I don’t doubt your recollection. It’s mine that are the issue, as I totally forgot those.For whatever reason I’ve felt that Black Widow seemed less her comic book self than she is. In my head she was just shooting guns, which isn’t gripping/interesting/whatever to me.Anyhoo no harm. I’m the one with the bad memory 😀
No worries! (also, now that I think about it, I’m also pretty sure that she used them on at least one Ultron-body during the climax of AoU.)
I feel like she also uses it at least one point in Avengers 1 to take out a Chitari?
I think it is related to an interview I just read with the actor who plays Nate in Legends of Tomorrow, who said they avoid using his powers because they cost money. A prop gun is cheaper than an effects shot, so the stingers get minimal use.
This movie was absolutely nuts to see in a theater. I went with my Dad who I’d seen every other marvel movie with and it was pretty cool to see the culmination of all these movies. Of course, it really just set up another 5 years of movies, but those were fun too
While we’re speaking uncomfortable truths about Whedon, it should also be mentioned that he wrote X-Men, basically setting the template for superhero movies for the next 2 decades.(I’m totally fine with him never working again, but just like Polanski & Allen, that doesn’t invalidate his past work)
I heard he was one of many people who rewrote it, depending in who you ask, it was whittled down to as little as one line (“You’re a dick.”), the much ridiculed Toad struck by lightning line and I also think at the very least, it’s a room it’s a big round room had to be him as Spike says a similar thing (“It’s a rock, it’s a big rock.”) but mystifyingly, X-Men didn’t have the punchline (“I can’t wait to tell my friends, none of them have a rock this big.” – obviously if they had, they would have said room, not rock).Also, if he didn’t give X-Men 2 “Have you tried not being a mutant?” from Buffy’s “Have you tried not being a slayer?”, then they totally stole it.
Yeah I thought that Whedon was only involved in X-Men regarding sprucing up the dialogue and maybe also insisting on the dull leather jackets?
put some respect on david hayter’s name!
The studio didn’t use Whedon’s contributions to X-Men other than a couple of lines of dialogue.
I didn’t know about X-Men but he was also involved in Alien Ressuraction which I thought had a few good lines from Sigourney and ROn Pearlman. “I can get you off. Maybe not the ship” I paraphrased that good enough.
This came up in another Whedon-related thread; I wondered why we haven’t heard from any of the Firefly cast about issues any of them had with him. Someone wondered why I cared, that it didn’t negate anything any of the other actors have accused him of, and I’ve been sitting with that since then. I think I finally know why it matters, to me at least: a part of the “myth of Whedon” I think is that his casts and crews were supposed to be families – that they were close on and off set. The Whedon regulars would go over to his house and do Shakespeare readings, even filming Much Ado About Nothing.
What I’m trying to reconcile is: given that Whedon was apparently consistently rotten and abusive, not just on one project but on most/all, why did these people still socialize with him? I’m not just talking about collecting a paycheck for the day’s work, I’m talking about hanging out regularly at his house, speaking glowingly of the familial conditions on sets. Clark Gregg, Nathan Fillion, Amy Acker, Alexis Denisof…did they all know about Whedon’s behavior and still be cool enough with it to hang out with him?
From the way Whedon (and the rest of the cast & crew) speak so highly of Firefly I imagine that he kept his worst, most tyrannical instincts at bay. Whedon seems like the prototypical “Best boss ever…when he’s in a good mood” type, and he was probably in a great mood when he was working on that show.
I think some people are so used to tyrants, especially in acting that they just learn to deal with it. It becomes part of the toxic culture
I always felt the opposite about the Whedon home-hangout stories, even back when I was a Whedon show stan. It made me think he was encouraging a weird cliqueishness on set, and I thought the people who *weren’t* part of said hangouts was kind of glaring. It reminded me of a charismatic HS history teacher I had who was good at teaching history but always seemed to engender a kind of clique/personality cult around himself among a smaller group of students to whom he dispensed his wisdom/attention (though nothing creepy at least). If you ask anyone in the clique a few years later they would all wonder why they hell they were so involved in this drama.
I hear you, but I guess my point is that if that’s the case then not only is Whedon a crappy person, but a lot of the folks around him were as well – people I thought better of – for not speaking out against it or giving their implicit approval by socializing with him.
Oh, agreed. There’s something about these kinds of charismatic people that make folks gloss over it I guess. I found out years later my sister-in-law, who was not one of the inner-circle of this teacher, often went home in tears after getting unsolicited/excessive blunt feedback from this guy on her work. We just never saw it because we were the golden kids blinded by his halo. At least we had the excuse of being dumbass teenagers, unlike the adults on set there.
Yeah. There is something very “Prime of Mr. Joss Whedon” about the whole thing.
Like a Slug Club for history students. I would’ve been totally about that in high school.
“It reminded me of a charismatic HS history teacher I had who was good at teaching history but always seemed to engender a kind of clique/personality cult around himself among a smaller group of students to whom he dispensed his wisdom/attention (though nothing creepy at least). If you ask anyone in the clique a few years later they would all wonder why they hell they were so involved in this drama.”How do you know my co-worker? Oh, to answer your question about why any of them were so involved in the drama. High school kids feed off of drama, it’s who they are. Plus,
What Whedon did reminded me of George Romero and Nick Cassavetes (sp?) when they directed movies; invite the actors to their house for a week(end) of getting to know each other.
From what I’ve read, it seems like Joss Whedon is very much a ‘plays favorites’ employer, and with Firefly he pulled together a bunch of favorites. So they were probably all getting the good guy version of him.Plus, it doesn’t sound like he was a jerk in public – like the whole ‘Not allowed to be alone with Michelle Trachtenberg’ deal. He’s smart enough to realize that it’s hard to be the good guy if you’re berating a teenage girl to the point of tears in front of everyone.
‘Not allowed to be alone with Michelle Trachtenberg’ deal. He’s smart enough to realize that it’s hard to be the good guy if you’re berating a teenage girl to the point of tears in front of everyone.Yeah, so many people took that as a Weinstein-like creep hitting on a teenager, but Whedon isn’t that kind of creep, it’s because he was fucking mean to her. He didn’t agree with her casting so he was just fucking cruel.
You have to wonder if we’d have had more accountability at the time, if people like Whedon would’ve been told to “knock that unprofessional shit off or you’re fired” early in their careers, then maybe he would’ve learned not to be such a raging ass. People’s behavior isn’t set in stone, and I a big part of the reason so many people in positions of authority have been such astonishingly shitty is because they’ve been allowed to be.
What I’m trying to reconcile is: given that Whedon was apparently consistently rotten and abusive, not just on one project but on most/all, why did these people still socialize with him? Because in all likelihood he wasn’t consistently rotten and abusive. Very few people are, and if he had been, we’d have heard stories about it long before now.
And with all the stories I’ve heard, he was a guy who played favorites, heaped praise on those actors he liked, and was very frequently a great guy to work for and be around. Until something didn’t go his way, at which point he went full vindictive asshole, either in subtle or extremely unsubtle ways. You were either “in” or “out”, and if you were “out” he made things hard at the best of times. And God help you if you did anything he really didn’t like (like, oh, say, get pregnant at an inconvenient time for his vampire detective TV show).
That means there are a lot of really good reasons to want to be a part of that in group in on a Whedon show, because that’s a great place to be. So it would naturally lead to a lot of people trying very hard to please him (which has some Stockholm Syndrome vibes) because you don’t want to risk being one of those people on the outs.
This is it in a nutshell.
Seems like Whedon was very big on playing favorites. Which is not an indictment of the actors who were his faves, since a common tactic among abusive people in authority is to make sure the favorites never see the shitty treatment he gives to everyone else.
Firefly was over just when it got started. Buffy and Angel ran for years.
Buffy started in 1997 and ended in 2003. Angel started in 1999 and ended 2004. Firefly ran 2002 – 2003, well towards the end of Buffy and at least halfway through Angel.
Which was my point. The Firefly cast worked with him for a few months. The Buffy and Angel casts worked wiyh him for years.
Buffy started in 1997 and ended in 2003. Angel started in 1999 and ended 2004. Firefly ran 2002 – 2003, well towards the end of Buffy and at least halfway through Angel.
Maybe Whedon was able to keep his monster relatively hidden and then hos rise to the top let his inner narcissist free. The thing about work bullies is that they often pick on one person so Charisma Carpenter getting the worst of it during Buffy while nobody elese complains fits that M.O. He just decided to make her life miserable for some probably insignificant thing that offended him.I loce that Gal Godot went to his bosses during the Justice League reshoots. That’s the kind of thing I never would have imagined happening on a major motion picture set. Israelis don’t take shit from their bosses and everybody is allowed to speak up. Even on the army it is totally ok to criticize your commanding officer if it’s constructive or a real complaint. I did a project on work in Isreal. I thought this was fantastic. I miagine No passive-agressiveness. Maybe reduced work politics, but Gal Gadot going over Whedon’s head to complain is awesome.
I can’t explain it but Nathan Fillion kinda gives me possible creep vibes.
I was at the Austin sneak-preview screening of Serenity where Nathan Fillion and Ron Glass showed up and did a good hour-long Q&A after the movie. He seemed charming, humble, and hilarious. If he’s a creep, he covers it really well.
A) I guess I’m getting tired of hearing the excuse that Whedon is terrible ( he may very well be ) because he wasn’t allowed in the room alone with teenage actors…because that’s pretty much a film production standard for every Hollywood production.B) There is not “a lot of fun” in watching the Snyder Cut Justice League. It may be more coherent, but it’s a 4-hour slog of a director waggling a hot dog in slomotion on the viewer’s faces without the viewer knowing.
A) It was not a film production standard, it was specifically a rule developed because of how Whedon had behaved toward Trachtenberg.
nah snyder’s justice league was better. it’s still a c+ movie, but it went from a c- to a c+.also pretty much every moment i assumed was whedon’s was actually still in the snyder cut, so more credit to snyder. the only choice whedon made that i liked was recycling the old batman movie theme music.
Not a Snyder fan, but the theatrical verson was clearly a movie made by committee. One with warring passive-aggressive factons. Snyders at least had a consistent tone. If you hire Snyder, go full Snyder.
Nothing had ever been quite like the MCU, before the MCU. Its style appealed to a wider audience than something like the (fantastic) Dark Knight, and it built up a whole universe larger than any film franchise before it. All that = this.
I’d not seen an MCU film before this one but I figured it’d tell us enough to help us catch up and leap in at this point. I also figured a lot of other people would be doing the same thing and it’d be a huge hit. For once, I wasn’t wrong.
The Avengers is still my #3 favorite MCU movie, just behind Infinity War and Endgame. It’s basically everything I had ever wanted out of a superhero team up movie. The cast worked well together, it built off the previous films, it had a lot of fun action scenes, and a ton of really cool moments.
In one of the earlier AV Club articles about Joss Whedon, someone replied to my comment about Zak Penn getting a writing credit despite Whedon tossing out his script and rewriting it is that they knew (or knew of someone who knew) that actually a ghostwriter was called in to then radically rework Whedon’s script (and maybe also either them or someone else with at least some of the directing at least). I may never know to what if any degree that’s true or who that person or people were if so.
I really liked and appreciated the film given us the gag which culminated in Steve Rogers just quietly slipping Nick Fury $10 and his just as quietly taking it. I especially appreciated there being no big flashback or other big pointer saying “See what we did there?” and their trusting the audience to work it out, especially since it’s a split gag and you don’t even know it’s a gag until you get the punchline.The Galaga joke was good too, especially for those of us who grew up in that era of arcade machines and especially that one (my specialty was Gyruss, though – the music and the illusion of 3-D gameplay made that one).
That “bet” payoff is easily my favorite little moment in the movie.
No matter how much of a dick Whedon may be in real life, let’s please not go back and retroactively strip him of his considerable talents.
I’m going to disagree on Skyfall, Casino Royale is the best of the Craig Bond movies.
So the Avengers are basically the Warriors recruiting Kevin Durant to beat Lebron James.While Marvel characters spilled out their unfunny one-line jokes (except a few ones), Nolan directed Interstellar and the masterpiece Dunkirk.Also Logan has a thousand times more depth than all Avengers movies united.
I’m going to argue that Skyfall is good on the first viewing…but terrible on second viewings.So much of the villain plot requires him knowing that A) he’ll get captured at the right time B) that they will take him to an exact known place C) that everyone in research division screws up at the right time enabling him to escape at just the right time for his D) goons to meet up with him at the right time because E) the real target is at a hearing at the exact right place at the right time.It’s one thing to have a villain plot where the villain has concocted a string of events that must happen which the villain has control of. But so much of his plot is based not only on certain people expected to do something at the right time, but countless hordes of people in entirely different divisions of the government doing things at the exact time.I mean, sure he can expect Q to plug in the computer to experiment with it. But the plan requires Q to plug it in to the A) the government network B) plugin it it unsecured C) and at the exact time the hearing starts. If Q decides to plug in the computer after lunch or something instead of a 10AM, the whole plot is essentially foiled.I think if I remember the movie correctly, MI5 had just moved to a different location…there’s no way of the bad guy even knowing exactly where he would be taken prisoner.
Casino Royale works much better for me too, precisely because of the ‘Joker got caught on purpose’ plot ripoff. And all they had to do is set up Silva’s actual preparation skills a little better and the suspense would have been more intense and airtight.
yeah, for the most part Casino Royale works very well ( even though I can’t quite remember what happens at the end). I don’t even remember if there was a villain plot in Casino Royale, it was just “let’s bankrupt this bad guy.”Granted, the climax of the poker game requires the good guy to get an amazingly lucky hand at exactly the right time without any cheating shenanigans.
The poker game looks like it was written by a 8-year old who just saw the first WSOP tv coverage, and there’s about three separate endings after the nut-scratching scene, but it somehow works.
I hated the fact that the game was Texas Hold ‘em. I know it’s the cool hipster game or whatever. I suppose in real life the game might not really be out of place in a multi million dollar foreign casino. But it sure seemed like it to me.I admit I don’t know the rules to either Hold’em or Baccarat. But Baccarat is so much cooler.
The American World Series of Poker uses Hold ‘em almost exclusively, but I don’t know about fancy European casinos.
I saw it as a kind of the rich having a bored interest in lower-class society. Like they play it to feel like they too have struggled in their lives
Texas Hold ‘em is the game all the highest stake players played then and now.
Bond plays Baccarrat not poker. Maybe they should have had him play a video game instead about nuclear missiles?Just kidding. American audiences wouldn’t have known what baccarrat is.
At least for the final hand, you can see how they tried to devise hands that would’ve kept everyone in until the river and go all in, but there’s a reason they skipped all the betting before that. I mean, the Black player flopped trip 8s (and LeChiffre flopped aces and sixes actually) and he apparently bet so little that Bond and the Asian player were able to stay in with potential flush draws on a table of four players with an ace on the flop. Then the turn gives Bond a straight flush and the Asian player a king high flush. I can see Bond trying to trap at that point but the Asian player doesn’t try to push everyone out at that point? He’d never want to see the river. At the same time, the other two players are sitting on trips and two pair with an 8-6-4 suited sitting on the table and their only out is an ace on the river. They would’ve had to fold to a big bet. Instead the ace does come on the river and THEN the Asian player follows an all-in with his own? When it’s obvious that ace made full houses very possible. He would’ve had think the Black player was straight up bluffing in a very stupid position to all in bluff. There’s just no way all four players should’ve been there at the river if anyone had bet correctly. Particularly Bond with his 5-7 that should’ve never made it past pre-flop betting when two of the players had aces and the other had K-Q suited.
The thing I absolutely loved about Casino Royale was that Le Chiffre wasn’t a Goldfinger-esque supervillain. He was just an asset that MI5 wanted to turn: a smart man who’d made a few risky decisions and was getting more dangerous as his options narrowed.And my personal head canon is that Bond bribed the dealer for that last hand.
What happens at the end of Casino Royale is that it surprisingly goes on for another 25 minutes.
If we’re bringing real-world logic into it, MI-6’s whole plot in Casino Royale is unnecessary.
I like Casino Royale but I always giggle during the poker scene insert shots where René explains to Vesper what’s going on or how much the bet was for. It screams pick-up shoot 3 months after wrap because they discovered in editing the card game was confusing.
This is the one that ends on the moors, right? I just don’t see the point of “gritty” Bond. I love Bond when he’s going to exotic locales and getting into places I can’t, even if they don’t actually exist.
it’s hilarious because his grandiose plan relies nearly entirely on luck, and all it gets him is like 10 seconds to take a shot at M from across a crowded hearing room. like, when he whiffs his shot, his face fucking crumples because his years-long plan just completely failed
I don’t think they’d figured out Thor’s look yet in this movie.
I’m just astonished how well Thor (the character) turned out. I’m a comics fan and I had no issue with any of the other characters but I really thought Thor was not going to work, and the first film really did nothing to allay those concerns. I didn’t even see Dark World, but Ragnarok is one of my favorites and I thought he worked well in Infinity War as well.
I know I saw this, but the only thing I remember is some flying space squids. I think? Definitely not one of my favorite Popcorn Champs.
You should see a doctor about your memory loss.
Not surprising, The Avengers was the culmination of a good few years of world building. TDKR was a film without its real true star in Heath Ledgers Joker and it really showed in a poor set of villain’s and a pretty bad story.
I just now realized that Avengers was the last non-Guardians MCU film that I have seen in the cinema. Which is interesting, in a way; both me and Ms Hacksaw liked the movie alright (same as both Guardians films), but it still was the point when Ms checked out completely from the MCU, and I stopped watching the movies until they showed up on D+. (Where I limited myself to what is considered “the best” movies.) I still read reviews, mind you, and “followed the conversation”. But it was a sort of end-point to my interested anyway.Which makes me wonder why this was the case? And I think the answers is simply that Avengers was the point where it was clear that the MCU was less interested in thinking in terms of individual films, and more in terms of a narrative tissue. Which is fine in theory in my book, but in practice is often very… tiring. I’m mean, I’m not a big Marvel comics reader, but I do remember getting annoyed so annoyed when reading Gillen’s Journey Into Mystery (which I read because I liked him as a games journalist before) whenever things too obiously crossover-y. So much so that I haven’t bothered with a Marvel series until The Immortal Hulk got praised everywhere, and I really enjoyed that one, except for, would you know it, the crossover-y parts. (Which were thankfully pretty rare in that one.)I think it ultimately comes down to what somebody further up wrote: That the MCU is often not entirely successful in balancing the individual interest of one particular movie with the interest of the franchise. And the more entries the franchise got, the more difficult it got for a “casually interested” viewer to hold on. Which is fine, of course — there are enough people who have waited for this kind of experience and seem to be willing to invest and re-invest themselves in that universe 100 times over.
For, me though, Avengers was the point were I realized that, well, I am not that kind of fan, but more of a pick ‘n chooser (which, to Feige et al.’s credit, is a perfectly valid way to watch those movies — I even watched Endgame and Infinitey War before Ragnarok, and it was no problem whatsoever.)
There’s definitely a core B-C+ness to the franchise as a whole that few of the films can escape in retrospect, even when my initial response to them was more enthusiastic. There are a few which transcend that core, but the vast majority do not.A few caveats on my part:a) Although, as a Shane Black mark, one of my favourites was Iron Man 3, it wasn’t really until Civil War that I started to find Tony Stark remotely likableb) I just don’t find long “CGI hits other CGI” battle scenes very engaging, no matter how well they’re donec) I’ve only seen each film one time. To their credit I don’t believe I ever felt lost.
I had the same thing happen. But it took a little longer with Ultron, Civil War and Infinity War being the point where I really just gave up on the universe and stopped caring about most of the characters. The last one I saw in theaters was Captain Marvel and all I wanted from that was a Captain Marvel sequel, not to see her shoved into a larger story I had stopped caring about.
I was in my late 20’s when Avengers came out. Mid-20’s, then, when Iron Man burst onto the scene and I started remembering just why I liked comics so much. How enthusiastic I could be about media.Starting to figure out my life. Starting to realize my flaws, my strengths, trying to plot my trajectory. It’s a scary, but exciting time. And I think for a lot of people that same age, we tie ourselves a bit to the media events that come out around this period.So going back, I recognize the flaws of the movie. The dialogue maybe not being as crisp (or TOO crisp, even) as I remember. The action scenes being a little more choreographed than I recalled.But.Those scenes, linked above, and others (there’s too many to even list in one article really). Every one of them. They bring a tear to my eye. Not just because of the movie itself – but remembering who I was back then, and the utter relief to not have to worry about a job, or my future, or anything like that. To just go to the movies and feel fucking unbridled JOY at seeing good guys beat bad guys. To see some of the heroes I grew up with as a kid finally be on screen together.The MCU was never perfect and never will be. But it’ll always be one of my favorite things because it’s not what I grew up with – it’s what I matured with. And while I can appreciate retrospectives further down the line that point out its foibles, and flaws, and problematic issues (and there are many) – I’m still going to watch them, and smile, and cry, and remind myself that it’s okay to find comfort in ephemeral things like this because you take comfort when you can get it.
Not only was it a good movie, but it was the first successful superhero ensemble movie that actually worked. Up to this point, most superhero movies were about one person and maybe a sidekick – the fact that these big actors/characters came together as an actual team was borderline mindblowing.I enjoyed a number of the Fox X-Men films, but even those really seemed more like “Wolverine and Friends” more than actual team movies.
The theatrical version of sucks for a lot of reasons, but it’s clear that Whedon did nothing good for the movieNo sympathy for the devil, but I’m not sure what Whedon could have done with what was, in retrospect, an impossible assignment. Here’s an in-the-can movie that’s clearly incapable of being cut below three hours running time: your job is to get it down to two hours and not a minute more, the release date is carved in stone, and your only tool for trying to salvage a workable narrative out of this is a month of reshoots with a bunch of actors who have other obligations and a sense of personal loyalty to the guy you replaced. Oh and your lead actor has fallen off the wagon. Good luck.Being an absolute raging asshole probably didn’t help matters, but I’m not sure anyone could have produced anything watchable out of that situation.
And let’s be honest, aside from the last act, Whedon didn’t really do that much other then shoot a few scenes to gloss over what had to be cut. His inserted humor was bad for sure, and stands out like a sore thumb. It really surprised me after watching the Snyder cut , that Whedon’s cut was just a cliff notes version then anything like a totally different movie, we were led to believe.
This. I found it weird after the Snyder Cut came out when there was this talk (by fans) about how it was ‘a completely different movie’…then when I watched it, it was basically the same movie, but longer.Much less quips and gags, sure, and the broader Darkseid plot was cut out but it was still very recognizably the same film. (I was also surprised at the gags and scenes that were in the film that I had assumed were Whedon additions…like turning Wayne Manor into the Hall of Justice and Bruce buying the bank at the end.)
Also in defence of the TC, I prefer that versions approach to Superman and feel it was a better payoff to what Snyder setup than the Snyder Cut version. (The obvious fault being the awkward CGI on his face.)
there was this talk (by fans) about how it was ‘a completely different movie’
Same thing happened with the Ultimate Cut of Batman v Superman or whatever. They do this. A lot.
this was the last movie i ever had to line up for to get a good seat. i think i showed up 3 hours early. after that, opening night all became presale assigned seating.
That style has continued through every Marvel cinematic product in the past decade-plus; the buddy-comedy zingers in The Falcon And The Winter Soldier, for instance, are warmed-over Shane Black through a Whedon-speak filter. Eventually, that style will get tired.
Going by the circles I run in online, the opposite seems to have happened: people are watching more for the interactions and ‘ship implications while the action setpieces come off like homework or PSAs for whatever military branch offered cooperation for a project. If the Sam and Bucky show had spent more time on Sam dealing with institutional racism post-Endgame and Bucky getting actual help in therapy, there’s a bigger contingent of fans who might have preferred that instead of what we got.
Dark Knight Rises wouldn’t have beaten Avengers but it’s Box office was hurt because of the fucking shooting on opening night and people being a little scared that weekend after the shooting.Avengers was way better than it had any right to be but even thought the Dark Knight Rises wasn’t perfect that ending always makes me cry as it was the perfect way to end it with Bruce happy, Alfred Happy and Robin and Gordon still protecting Gotham.That is the shame of End game, they should have rebooted or something else because the ending isn’t really a ending…. we get to see this story contiune on and it won’t be as good as Avengers 1 or Avengers Infinity War.
Maybe its just because I didn’t like most of the movie overall, but as soon as we saw JGL was “Robin” all I could think was “he doesn’t have years of ninja training/a Batman to train him, this kid is gonna get merked on his first night out!” Suspension of disbelief falls apart once a movie is disappointing or boring you.
I’m in Denver. I had tickets to see it the next day. I remember we were apprehensive but had the whole, “If we don’t see this movie today the terrorists will win!” mentality. It was a strange feelng going to the theater and it was empty.
Not to make light, but “If we don’t see this movie today, the terrorists will win!” is perhaps the best excuse to watch a thing, that I’ve ever heard
Not to make light, but “If we don’t see this movie today, the terrorists will win!” is perhaps the best excuse to watch a thing, that I’ve ever heard“We face our fears and triumphed in the face of madness induced mass shooters everywhere!!!!”I don’t know if you ever saw The Onion followup to 9/11/2001. It made light. It made a lot of light. Some critics even said this issue made it OK to laugh again. Readers loved the opnions 911 issue even though it wasn’t funny. https://www.poynter.org/newsletters/2011/readers-loved-the-onions-911-issue-even-though-it-wasnt-that-funny/
American Life Turns Into Bad Jerry Bruckheimer MovieHijackers Surprised To Find Selves in HellNot Knowing What Else To Do, Woman Bakes American-Flag Cake
Yeah I think some people forget that had a lot to do with the opening weekend box office not being as huge as it could have been even if it was large. I came out of the Thursday showing at midnight and people were still buzzing and emotional at the ending but then you could see people getting word about a shooting that happened.
I was really disappointed in this movie. I thought the villain was obnoxious and the plot (hatched by the villain) was stupid and mostly just a waste of time. Ultimately, it just seemed like so much filler until the final battle. All the snappy dialogue got tiresome pretty quickly too. I remember giving it another shot thinking I’d like it better, but nope. Still, I’m glad it was successful, as I thought a lot of what came later from Marvel was really good.
A worthwhile (but oft overlooked) side note of this movie is that its heroes had public safety in mind a full year before the Man of Steel fiasco. Oh sure, there’s TONS of destruction in the last half hour, but Cap’s overall plan is built around containing the attack and getting citizens to safety. It’s a bit of cake-and-eat-it-too, but when the public perception of superhero movies shifted to “holy shit, how many people are dying during this?” shortly afterward, Marvel was able to say “hey, we had that in mind already. “
I think you are right that Nolan didn’t want to make The Dark Knight Rises. The movie it most closely reminds me of is Godfather Part III. Batman/Michael Corleone are completely different characters at the start of the movie, previous supporting characters are sidelined, ie. Gordon, Alfred/Tom Hagen. Production design is blander, Gotham no longer looks like a distinct city, but just barely disguised Pittsburgh/New York, Godfather III had the same lazy aesthetic as opposed to the production design of the 1 and 2. Nolan has never been one for great fight choreography but Dark Knight rises looks like outtakes at times.I just find it a frustrating movie, I think the biggest mistake is having Batman incapacitated at the beginning only for him to come back get beat up and come back again. Bringing back the league of shadows seemed like a lazy 3rd sequel type of trope.
Chris Evans’ Captain America might be Marvel Studios’ real masterpiece—an aw-shucks all-decency good guy who’s so sincere and well-meaning that he never even feels corny.Whedon’s take on Captain America is the weakest part of the ensemble. As a character he doesn’t act at all like did in The First Avenger or how he would in subsequent movies not written by Whedon (Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely scripted almost all of Steve’s MCU appearances). The running gag about “Language!” in Age of Ultron is Whedon at his worst; the character had already appeared in three movies at that point and had no problem with people swearing. At times Whedon was actively undermining the efforts of Markus and McFeely to ground the character.
In hindsight, it’s crazy looking back at The Avengers and remembering that I almost skipped out on seeing it in theaters because I didn’t care that much. Despite being a fan of Iron Man 1, Captain America 1 and Thor 1, I had no interest in it. My buddy saw it before I did and thankfully convinced me to see it. Now, like so many others, MCU movies are a must see for me, though I skipped out on seeing Spiderman: Far From Home in theaters due to bad timing.
Avengers is a great movie by itself, but I also think it’s a perfect example of Marvel’s ability to set the stage for long-term, serialized storytelling and character building.The future conflicts between Captain America and Iron Man are all set up in this movie, and in a way that’s totally reasonable and organic. Of course someone like Steve Rogers would think that Tony Stark was a selfish, amoral hedonist with no honor, and of course someone like Tony Stark would think that Steve Rogers is a self-righteous prig and a relic of a dead past. So they don’t like each other at first, but they gain a mutual respect upon seeing each other in action (and I’ve always loved the fact that Rogers, even with his newfound respect for Stark, is still willing to close the portal with Stark still in space, because he’s a soldier and there’s a job to do and men die in war). But all that underlying stuff is still there, plus the family dynamic of Rogers being basically the best friend of Stark’s estranged father. You have this arc between the two characters that both starts and ends in a totally reasonable place.
What is their last scene together?
I grew up with Marvel as a kid and spent years watching poor direct to video representation of my favorite characters. Even after X-men , Spiderman and Iron Man came out, the moment I felt like Marvel was finally honoring it’s comic book roots was when the Hellicarrier emerged from the water.
At this point, Skyfall remains the most solidly rewatchable of the Daniel Craig Bonds
oof, calling skyfall maybe the best of the franchise? i rewatched all the craig bonds fairly recently and i was baffled that everyone, myself included, thought it was so good. the plot doesn’t work on any level, q is horrendously miscast, the dialogue is thuddingly obvious, and since it was the 50th anniversary it does all that winking self-aware callback shit that’s just excruciating to deal with. it has its good parts — it looks gorgeous, javier bardem’s having fun, the opening chase in turkey whips — but it is very much the exact kind of movie that would lead to the creation of spectre, the nadir of the franchise
This movie takes the #4 spot on the MCU movie list, with one of the biggest reasons being that the success of this movie led to “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” which led to the Netflix tv shows. There would be no “Jessica Jones” or “Luke Cage” without this movie.
https://www.stitcher.com/show/arts-review-commentary/episode/arc-59-my-top-23-mcu-movies-so-far-73557626
I have a very strange relationship with this movie for personal reasons: it was right when this movie was coming out that my girlfriend (who was already battling chronic illness) got inexplicably much worse like overnight and still hasn’t recovered. We were supposed to see this together, and I wound up seeing it alone. I liked it then, and I still like it now, but every time I think of it or watch it, it just reminds me of how much time she’s been battling this. It’s like a marker. So, the movie is always tinged with some sadness.
Guardians of the Galaxy was the first movie I saw in theaters just a few months after I lost my mom to cancer so I probably would have already associated the two, but then the escapist sci-fi action movie I was watching to distract me from my mom dying had a main character who became a sci-fi action hero to escape thinking about his mom dying and yeah… the bit where he sees her again while he has the infinity stone fucked me right up, and still hits hard every time I watch it. She’s also the reason I love sci-fi, so I was also thinking “man, she would have loved this.” That STILL happens to me, she also loved action and kick-ass women (like herself), the only problem I had with Mad Max: Fury Road was that I could not share it with her. Furiosa would have assuredly joined Ellen Ripley, Sarah Conner, and any role where Milla Jovovich kicks people in her movie-character-spirit-animal pantheon.
I went to to see T2 with my dad and had a great time laughing and cheering at all the great scenes. After my father died, I would catch certain scenes on cable and remember the fun experience.
When they recently re-released it to he theaters, I initially thought about going to see it in the theater. Then decided against it because I liked the fact that the only time I saw it in the theater was with my dad.
“The Snyder cut of Justice League is wildly indulgent and melodramatic, but there’s a lot of fun to be had in its grand spectacle.”Oh hell no. The Snyder cut was just as bad as the theatrical release and twice as long. It was boring and bombastic.
The Avengers is a great film. It balances the narratives of the principle characters, mostly. Except Hawkeye, who of course, gets to go rogue (against his will) early on. it’s best watched on a widescreen television.After having to suffer through the late 70s through the late 90s (until Blade’s release in 1998) almost-exclusively relegated to television with no major films based on their characters, Avengers felt like a love letter to that fanbase that non-comics folks could at least kinda-follow enough to enjoy.The intramural bickering among protagonists helped to maintain a humorous bent that likely helped audience reactions.I guess a director’s cut is out of the question, now that Mr. Whedon is revealed as severely problematic. At least we have some cut scenes to watch on a Blu-Ray.The Cabin in the Woods is a Whedon production (directed by frequent collaborator Drew Goddard) and also features Chris Hemsworth in a lead role. It explores a subversive dynamic regarding horror films and why they play out the way that they usually do.
Obligatory Top 10 Highest Grossing Movies Of 2012 Post: The Numbers1. The Avengers, Disney, $623,357,9102. The Dark Knight Rises, Warner Bros., $448,139,0993. The Hunger Games, Lionsgate, $408,010,6924. Skyfall, Sony/Columbia/MGM, $296,804,3665. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2, Lionsgate, $289,133,3566. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Warner Bros., $263,834,893 7. The Amazing Spider-Man, Sony/Columbia, $262,030,6638. Brave, Disney/Pixar, $237,277,0719. Ted, Universal, $218,665,740 10. Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted, Paramount/DreamWorks, $216,391,482Wikipedia1. The Avengers, Disney, $1,518,812,9882. Skyfall, Sony/Columbia/MGM, $1,108,561,0133. The Dark Knight Rises, Warner Bros., $1,084,939,0994. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Warner Bros., $1,021,103,5685. Ice Age: Continental Drift, 20th Century Fox, $877,244,7826. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2, Lionsgate, $829,746,8207. The Amazing Spider-Man, Sony/Columbia, $757,930,6638. Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted, Paramount/DreamWorks, $746,921,2749. The Hunger Games, Lionsgate, $694,394,72410. Men In Black 3, Sony/Columbia, $624,026,776
Obligatory Every Movie Featured In These Articles Ranked From Best To Worst Post:The Godfather (1972)2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)The Exorcist (1973)Jaws (1975)Saving Private Ryan (1998)The Dark Knight (2008)Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981)Blazing Saddles (1974)Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)Star Wars: A New Hope (1977)E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969)Rocky (1976)Jurassic Park (1993)The Graduate (1967)West Side Story (1961)The Avengers (2012)Toy Story 3 (2010)Beverly Hills Cop (1984)Back To The Future (1985)Batman (1989)Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King (2003)Spider-Man (2002)Toy Story (1995)Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi (1983)Spartacus (1960)Titanic (1997)Rain Man (1988)Kramer VS Kramer (1979)Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011)Harry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)Top Gun (1986)The Longest Day (1962)Aladdin (1992)Independence Day (1996)Three Men And A Baby (1987)Billy Jack (1971)My Fair Lady (1964)Cleopatra (1963)The Sound Of Music (1965)Avatar (2009)Star Wars: Revenge Of The Sith (2005)Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999)Spider-Man 3 (2007)Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006)Forrest Gump (1994)Home Alone (1990)Grease (1978)Shrek 2 (2004)The Bible: In The Beginning… (1966)Love Story (1970)How The Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)
Home Alone at #48 eh?
My head scratcher is Billy Jack at #38.
The list is great, except that the more movies you add, the wronger you get about Sound of Music.Ah well. At least it tops Avatar.
Not trying to stick out with a “contrarian” (ugh) hot take here, but what a mediocre movie this is. Often boring, always heavy handed and as we can expect from Whedon, filled with cringy corny one liners and the look of a TV movie. Loki is an unexciting villain and while the Hulk is admittedly a highlight, Whedons version of Bruce Banner is an insufferably smug douche canoe. It’s also so…. did I mention heavy handed?
This was my favorite moment:God let there be a Hulk vs Thing moment.
You don’t get to the Avengers without the style set up in Buffy/Angel. It was fully embracing the corny elements and melodrama while being funnier and sharper than almost any out and out comedies. Avengers shouldn’t have worked, it was blending too many different styles together but it did and because it did then they could go in almost any direction, just like the comics.
Skyfall (which I enjoyed a lot) felt like the point at which the villain-actually-wanted-to-be-captured trope became mandatory in action films, as part of the basic grammar as guns and killers who get to be redeemed because they discover qualms about killing children quite late in the day.
This article seems to forget about the horrible mass shooting that seriously messed up the release of Dark Knight Rises.
“Avengers” was always stunningly mediocre. Horrible opening twenty minutes and a final thirty minutes that’s about as much fun as watching someone play a video game, watching CGI characters blow up one anonymous gray blob after another.I acknowledge the extreme degree of difficulty in even making this movie and points to Doucebag for giving us at least a mildly entertaining movie, instead of a trainwreck (though he’d give us one of those with Age of Ultron.) Sure, it deserves points for finally bringing to life something comic books fans had craved for decades and not completely ruining it.But, judged on its own merits, it’s truly just “okay” at best.
Leaving the cinema
-What’d ya think, Rob?“Well, for what they were able to pull off, I think that’s it. They did it. The Dark Knight is the best comic book movie ever made. DC wins.”
A few years later.Leaving the cinema-What’d ya think, Rob?
“Well, for what they were able to pull off, I think that’s it. They did it. The Avengers is the best comic book movie ever made. Marvel wins.”This would happen at least one more time, but the point is, I have a very high opinion of this movie. It’s mathematical: Entertainment value divided by degree of difficulty, etc. Bottom line, The Avengers made some really smart choices and hits all my sweet spots.
But even though Nolan couldn’t hold on to his crown, I still enjoyed The Dark Knight Rises, too. Anne Hathaway was a scene stealer, and some parts are downright chilling. Before Thanos came along, Bane felt like the first villain to ostensibly beat the hero and “win” for a large chunk of the story. And before Logan came along, Batman felt like the first superhero to get a satisfying goodbye (and this is probably still the best comic book trilogy out there).
I doubt if ANY adult would be allowed to be in a room, alone with a 14 year old girl. Seems like some sections of the media are trying to insinuate sexual reasons. Nothing like a bit of sensationalism, eh?
I think that one of the things about this that made it such A THING at the time and where it doesn’t necessarily hold up as well now was that it was the first time this big team-up on the big screen, after it had been built up with the individual heroes, happened and worked. Marvel’s plan was proving a success, which was in no way a given. And they’d managed to turn all these individual heroes ultimately into a team, which can be hard to do.There’s also the fact that this huge movie on which all the hopes and dreams of the MCU sat was only the second feature film from Whedon. I used to be a huge Whedon fan, and I remember going in deathly afraid that it wouldn’t be good and would tank his career as well as the franchise. (Oh, sweet summer child I was.) It was after Avengers when I started to be excited for new MCU movies to come out. I certainly saw all the others prior to Avengers, but they weren’t events the way they’d come to be. Avengers made them events.How will this movie age in the long run? No idea. But it will forever hold the place as the movie that managed to cement the MCU as a successful endeavor.