The Avengers

I have been happily married for more than 30 years; I have had been blessed with two wonderful children and a job I enjoy; and I have seen The Avengers. The worst thing I can say about the film is that it does come last on that list of blessings.

I was an avid reader of comics in my early teens and a fierce partisan of Marvel. Spiderman was unquestionably my favorite, but The Avengers was a close second. Recently Hollywood finally figured out how to translate comics into film in an effective way. Spiderman 1 and 2, Ironman, and the two Batman features were all fine pieces of film making and, more amazingly, satisfied almost all the comic book nerds who saw them.

It is always perilous to pronounce judgment after seeing a movie for the first time, but I think that The Avengers is by far the best of the lot. The film spins around the "tesseract," a mysterious, luminously purple box-thingy that everyone wants but no one can control. Thor's brother, Loki, comes to earth with help from a shadowy alien race, bent on acquiring the box. SHIELD (kind of like the Department of Homeland Security only with ray guns, and the "homeland" is planet earth) assembles the Avengers.

We get Ironman, Thor, and the Hulk, followed by Captain America (the leader), The Black Widow, and Hawkeye. I put the heroes in two groups because one of the problems that this movie handles well, but not perfectly, is their incommensurate abilities. The first three heroes are what I call class one superheroes. Their powers are way off the human scale. They are more than a match for ordinary weapons or even giant robot slugs and gravity is no limitation. Captain America is class two: superhuman abilities, but just above human scale. The Black Widow and Hawkeye are well trained soldiers with really cool weapons. Keeping both groups in the action plausibly was quite a challenge, but the movie generally met it.

The single best thing about the movie is its dialogue. It is consistently clever, crisp, and funny. When someone insults Loki, Thor objects that Loki is his brother and a homeboy from Asgard. A SHIELD agent says dryly "he's killed forty people in two days." Thor responds: "he is adopted." When Captain America is advised that Thor and Loki are gods, he responds "there is only one God, sir, and I am pretty sure he doesn't dress like either of them."

All the characters are well crafted and the actors seemed born to play their respective roles. Tom Hiddleston's Loki supplies one of the most important elements in any superhero drama: the compelling villain. He is beautiful to look at and listen to. He is capable of arousing some sympathy, but when the evil face emerges it is plenty evil. Robert Downey Jr.'s performance would have stolen the show if the show hadn't been so bloody good.

Mark Raffalo as Bruce Banner is simply brilliant, hitting the mark in each scene by skillfully underplaying it. He is helped by the fact that the characters around him treat him the way they would a case of TNT. Everyone knows that will happen if this one explodes into the Hulk.

In spite of the large number of characters, neither the action nor the stories ever get crowded. The film consists almost entirely of set pieces of action, every single one of which is delicious. The Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) appears first tied to a chair, apparently being interrogated and slapped around by a trio of Russian thugs. One of the thugs answers his cell phone and announces "it's for her." For reasons you will learn, she gets to take the call and we find out in short order who is interrogating whom.

There isn't much about the film that is serious, though it does touch on the ambiguities of war and national security. What is SHIELD hiding from its heroes? The touch is light and will offend almost no one. The theme of freedom and submission is prominent and very healthy. The Avengers are a typically American set of heroes: diverse in origin, almost ungovernable, but able to come together for the simple reason that we need them to.

The movie does heavily employ that charm of competent authorities that is conspicuous in a lot of espionage movies. SHIELD has powerful weapons and better yet, it has its act together. One wonders how a world drowning in debt manages to produce a gigantic, flying battle platform. Happily, that is ignored. The Avengers is merely and every bit a comic nerd's dream come true.

Apparently, we comic nerds were on to something. The Avengers has already broken the Harry Potter record. The secret behind the movie's success is simple. Josh Whedon. Whedon is not incapable of producing a flop, but he is incapable of producing something that does not glow with genius. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was one of the finest TV shows ever produced. One of my happy thoughts when I left the theater was that Whedon can now do whatever he wants to do. That can ruin a genius, but at this point I have faith.

Go see The Avengers. Oh, and wait through the first listing of credits for the Easter egg. It reveals a future villain. I think I know what that thing was that revealed its face. It was a Skrull! Am I right?

Comments

[Avengers Assemble]

I normally find the Hulk boring. They need to make Mark Ruffalo play all the things. Like woodwork and cricket. Then those thinsg will also cease to be boring because of Ruffalo's amazingness. Please make it so.

I was so upset about Phil ("His first name is Agent") that I cried. I loved him. He always made me smile, way more than Sharkbait Jackson did. Sigh

[Comic Theorist]

Skrull would be the logical conclusion from the furrowed chin, however the red eys and devilish grin say Thanos to me. Thanos literally loved Death and wanted to show his love by destroying all life.

[Ken Blanchard]

AA: I am with you about Phil. He was one of my favorite characters in the films. I also agree about Ruffalo.

CT: While I love Marvel, I am not expert. I don't even know who the Thanos are. I still vote "Skrull".