Category Archives: Movies

Avengers (comics) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Caution: If you haven’t yet seen The Avengers, you may not want to read further as I will be spoiling the movie!

First, let me say that I enjoyed The Avengers. Marvel has been building up to their Super Team-Up movie for a while now, introducing core characters and dropping not so subtle hints after the credits of their previous movies. Overall, I’ve been very happy with Marvel’s productions ever since they began producing them in house with Iron Man in 2008, with Captain America: The First Avenger being my favorite of the bunch.

Here’s my ranking for the Marvel Studios movies so far.

1. Captain America
2. Iron Man
3. The Avengers
4. Iron Man 2
5. Thor
6. The Hulk

As I said, I did enjoy this movie, but it was just a bit off of the bullseye for me. I feel like it boiled down to an awkward, non-cohesive buildup to one hell of a great extended action sequence.

It’s been very hard for me to figure out exactly what it was that bugged me about the first half of the movie, it just felt awkward. The individual vignettes that caught us up with our heroes were all well acted, entertaining and showed off Joss Whedon‘s penchant for witty dialog. A few of the story points used to bring the team together just felt too contrived.

I have to agree with my buddy Adam who mentioned Whedon’s talent for featuring female posteriors in his shots in his post. I greatly appreciated that… err… aspect.

As for the individual actors and characters, I’m still not completely sold on Samuel Jackson‘s Nick Fury and I think that his performance was a bit flat here. Mark Ruffalo did a great job as Dr. Bruce Banner and I particularly liked his interaction with Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark. Hawkeye, played by Jeremy Renner was very weak and little more than a background character and villain’s foil.

Once the alien invasion and subsequent battle began, I really enjoyed myself. The sequences were well filmed and edited together to make a very cohesive and fun battle. It captured the Team-Up comic book feel very well. My son and I exchanged several high fives and fist bumps throughout the second half of the movie. Again, Whedon’s humor was prevalent throughout the fights.

Oh, let’s talk about the alien invaders, the Chitauri. I had no idea where in the Marvel Universe these guys were from, so I had to look them up. They are an alien race that aided Hitler in an attempt to take over the world. Another name for the race is the Skrull, a very well-known alien race in the Marvel Universe. So why not just call them Skrull? Or if you’re going to use a name connected with the Skrull, at least make them look like Skrull. If you’re not going to bother with either then just make something else up. Throughout the movie I felt that the creature design of these guys was a bit uninspired.

If you didn’t stay for the during and after credits scenes, SHAME ON YOU! You should know by now that Marvel always gives you a little something extra at the end. If you didn’t know, the villain at the end is Thanos. I’m excited to see him as it hints at future Marvel movies pulling more from the Cosmic side of the Marvel Universe.

I don’t want to give the impression that I hated this movie. I just felt that it was missing something. I really enjoyed the second half, and not because I only enjoy action, but because it just felt like a better movie.

Share your thoughts with me, I’d love to hear why I’m wrong about this one.