The reviews are intriguing, but I'm still waiting for something that says anything deeper than "I liked it, the characters did cool things." I have yet to see a single review that says anything about the cinematography, the visual effects, the direction, the actual filmmaking. I keep going back to that clip of Thor and Captain America fighting in the street, which breaks the 180 rule so hard that it makes my head spin. It all feels like a bunch of inconsequential, weightless action which exists for the sole purpose of arranging the titular characters in poses that make for good posters. All that it has going for it, so far, is, "Damn, wow, if you would have told me you'd see professional actors cosplaying and doing Jim Lee poses 10 or 15 years ago, I wouldn't have believed you! What strange times we live in!"
Maybe that's what people want, I don't know. But, again, all of the reviews that have come out since the embargo was lifted feel horribly superficial, much like how all the released footage of the film feels.
So even with the unanimous praise for the film so far, that's still not good enough for you?
I think you're just determined to hate this film, and nothing you hear will change your mind.
I
could say, "I think you're just determined to like this film, and nothing you hear will change your mind," and it'd be just as empty a jab.
Near-unanimous praise means nothing to me, and pointing to the Tomatometer or whatever is meaningless. For example:
Toy Story 2 is rated as a 100 percent "Fresh" film, which means it's perfect, right? Not at all.
Toy Story 2 most certainly has its flaws, though it is an absolutely marvelous piece of work, particularly when looked at in the context of its ridiculous production history. What you're really looking at here is a survey of 146 critics, all of whom rated the film above average (in the subjective opinion of Rotten Tomatoes' editors). 72 percent of "the audience" liked it and that's out of 890,698.
There is no such thing as objective quality in film, and aggregators like that are rather toothless tools to use when trying to prove a point. It's okay to use as an example of how critical response are shaping up and get a
very vague idea about what one might loosely expect, but that's about it.
I'll be there in the theater, and there are bits and pieces I've seen that have interested me (Ruffalo's Hulk, Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., and the effects work in general seems pretty solid). All I've been saying is that what we've seen of the overall direction of
The Avengers hasn't been impressing me. I'm sure it'll be fluffy and whiz-bang action stuff, but when I leave the theater, I don't think I'll have much to take away.
In any event, I hope to be pleasantly surprised by the film.
