AVENGERS: Grade, Reviews, Discuss, DVD & Sequel **SPOILERS**

Overall the Marvel characters have been treated well in the movies whatever studio they're from. Yeah, there have been some clunkers but the big names have been generally decent.

Pity DC has only got Batman going for it, live-action wise anyway. Their animated projects have been generally good.

 

Well if I were ranking...

1. The Avengers

2. Iron Man

3. Thor

4. Captain America

5. The Incredible Hulk

6. Iron Man 2

Please note that I truly do enjoy Iron Man 2. I enjoy all of them. But IM2 is probably the weakest just because it's carrying so much setup on it's shoulders.

 

That idea has been doing the rounds for weeks. I'm keen on the Ant-Man movie teasing Ultron, giving us our Avengers 2 baddie.

 

I would dearly love Clark Gregg as The Vision. Of course The Vision is nothing without Wanda.

 

I did have trouble hearing a lot of the dialogue, but I swear it looked like Iron Man cut away part of one of the rotors. I also swear it looked like the rotors were grinding sparks against the walls when he pushed them up to speed. Why the red lever did what it did (I couldn't believe my ears, I must have misheard) is mysterious enough, but why it and any control panel aren't in the control room is really hard to understand. It's not that these things are so impossible to accept. My nostalgia fest pushed me through after all. But they do detract from the whole sequence by making it all feel arbitrary, a fake problem solved by script.

I suppose it's possible that Natasha Romanova wants to be accepted by Middle America and ditching a feminine inflection might be easier. Or that she wants to sound to Middle America that she might be a relation to the Romanovs. But these character attitudes didn't fit with my personal preconceptions of an ex-Soviet spy.

I just checked the imdb for the writing credits since I missed some of the credits (people were leaving and blocking my view.) I see that Whedon wasn't just the director but also screenwriter. He really didn't do a very good job. Some of the difficulties were inevitable in a movie with so many characters to service, but there were some major structural problems any decent writer really should have fixed. And worse, there really wasn't much emotion to this.

I really wanted to not just enjoy a couple of hours with The Avengers, a tribute to teen years of enjoyment, but delight in, even in a way respect the movie. Iron Man vs. Thor, Thor vs. Hulk for basically no reason isn't delightful, nor worthy of respect.

 

It is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Widow_(Natalia_Romanova)

 

I also enjoy Iron Man 2, but it really does drag a lot. And it's especially disappointing that we don't really get a whole lot of Stark as Iron Man, which was definitely made up for in The Avengers.

I recently watched all five of the previous MCU films to prepare for Avengers, so I'd rank them something like this:

1. Thor

2. Captain America

3. Iron Man

4. Iron Man 2

5: Incredible Hulk

I want to see The Avengers again before I decide where I'd put it. But as for my rankings, I really enjoy both Thor and Captain America, with Thor being my favorite. Both films I could rewatch a lot, I feel. I do love the Iron Man films, but feel they aren't as good as they could be. With the Hulk though I just kind of felt it was missing something, I dunno, perhaps I'll have to watch it again too.

 

She's a little young to be an ex-Soviet spy by a couple of decades.

 

Yes, Steve/Captain America gets to utter that line.

He doesn't "get" who Stephen Hawking is when Coulson mentions him.
He doesn't get what Yoga is when Tony says it, explains it as calisthenics.
Then, when Nick Fury mentions "flying monkeys", he sits up and says that line "I get that, I get that reference!"

Also, another good line that got some laughs in both my viewings was:
"Clench up Legolas"


RE: The love interest discussion
I was fine with the explanation for Jane Foster getting an urgent request for help in some remote location. Because too many love interest and/or tangents into personal stories might bog things down it's why Joss cut out the Peggy scene it seems.
I do think it would've been interesting to have Betty Ross in there somewhere. Perhaps already on the Helicarrier, part of a lure to get Bruce to come if Natasha couldn't persuade him with just the data?


Re: Should I see TIH to help with this film
Sadly I wouldn't say so, the ties are thin. The film is good though on it's own. The only solid reference in The Avengers to TIH is when Bruce says "The last time I was in NY I kinda destroyed Harlem". IMO, Bruce's control over the change is highly evident in this film as TIH ends with Banner showing a growing control over the beast inside him.

Re: Ms.Marvel
It's mentioned that the "other realms" are now aware of Earth's new standing in the universe. I'd say that awareness could be why Carol Danvers ends up in SHIELD. She's an agent in waiting for the Kree but becomes loyal to humanity. Seems an easy enough fit tweaking her story as necessary, slimming it where needed cause her entire backstory is a bit full.

Re: Thanos/Vision and sequel discussion
So with Thanos on the horizon I think we can rule out Vision showing up. Sticking with more cosmic characters seems likely. If for no other reason you technically need Ultron before you get Vision since Ultron created Vision as a tool to get revenge on Pym and the Avengers.
Which brings us to Pym/Ant-Man/GiantMan, if he's brought into the MCU in the next few years Ultron could be teased post credits of Avengers 2 I'd think. Thus allowing for Vision easily.

I mean with Thanos I can imagine a scenario where since we have other worldly visitors in Thor and Loki we might could see Adam Warlock dropping in on Earth to appraise our readiness. With dialogue informing us that the Chitarri invasion was nothing compared to what Thanos will do, or some such speech.

 

Decent. The end battle over New York was far too drawn out, I found myself getting bored.

 

Isn't she like 90 or something? I'm pretty sure that's the case in the comics.

 

I never cared in teen years for the Hulk, so the stuff about "my secret is that I'm always angry" rewriting what I knew about Hulk didn't make an impression. And I haven't seen any other Hulk since Bixby. It did contradict what seemed to be established about the Hulk in the Avengers movie itself, revealing that Banner was always in control. Or to put it another way, that the Hulk was never Banner's loss of control, indeed that Hulk was not actually The Other Guy.
I haven't read all this thread, but it would seem a point worthy of discussion by people more familiar with and interested in the Hulk, no?

PS Good point about Black Widow supposedly being in the contemporary world, and therefore too young to have spied for the Soviets. SHIELD was such a big presence that I unconsciously slipped into thinking of the movie as a period piece. Aircraft carriers instead of drones; Empire State Building; the Russians in the beginning sequence.

 

I don't know, that's one sequence that didn't really work for me. I realize thousands of lives were at stake and everything, but it still felt to me like an inordinant amount of time was spent watching Iron Man simply... do repairs.

It just didn't seem like the most exciting use for him (and the final visual of him spinning around inside the blade seemed a little too cartoonish as well).

 

I'm probably being generous because I'm a big fan of the Hulk character. In all honesty I probably should rank it at the bottom as well.

I never cared for the casting of Ed Norton as Bruce Banner. He just seemed too... emotionally secure... even serene.... to be the Hulk. He lacked the damaged innocence of Eric Bana or the world weariness of Mark Ruffalo. He was likeable but bland.

I also thought LivTyler was weak as Betty. But then I really liked Jennifer Connolly in the part. Bill Hurt, Tim Roth, Tim Blake Nelson and CGI Hulk were all outstanding. The action sequences were also top notch. It was a fun little movie. But not the Hulk movie of my dreams.

I prefer the Ang Lee version and not even that was the Hulk movie of my dreams. I'm hoping maybe Mark Ruffalo will star in the greatest Hulk movie ever. In a way he already has.

 

In the 616 comics, yes, she's running one of the zillion modified supersoldier serums and was born circa 1928. They haven't said whether that's the case with the movie version or not (it's not necessarily needed; in the comics it basically developed because of Chris Claremont's flashback story with Wolverine, Captain America, and a preteen Natasha in World War II, though subsequent writers have obviously done a lot with it).

 

Is she? I was never a big reader of the Avengers comic, so that's a revelation to me. Looks good for a woman her age though.

 

Just got back from a matinee.

Must. See that. Again.

 

It brought the two of them together for a comon cause, that of saving the helicarrier and it happened right after their argument, it took a measure of teamwork to bring them together.

 

Clearly if it has occurred to others then it is as genius an idea as I think it is. MAKE IT SO!

 

In an early Nineties story featuring Wolverine and Captain America, she's depicted as a child in 1941. Therefore her age in any given Marvel story set in te present day is constantly being dragged upwards. The current explanation is that some kind of biotechnology has made her resistant to ageing. Of course, the movies aren't bound by that and so Natasha as played by ScarJo is probably 25 to 30 years old.