I know Ken mentioned this earlier, but I feel like it's worth clarifying; Watchmen was originally released as a twelve issue series. Maybe you know this, maybe you don't, but I just think it's a little silly to say they aren't the same thing. And yes, I know Watchmen was self contained and Avengers keeps going and going in one form or another, but even then, Watchmen was originally going to use existing characters. And the line is further blurred now that it's currently getting several offshoot stories.

As I said in my initial post, I think there's a whole lot of dialogue that either directly or indirectly supports my analysis, as well as quite a few scenes. I didn't touch on that for a few reasons: 1) I'm not about to start picking apart the screenplay without a copy of it sitting in front of me and 2) Knowing your film tastes, I thought you'd appreciate a more visual analysis. My point is, I don't think it's just minor parts of the movie that support what I'm saying.



I think you're a tad harsh, but what you say here does have merit. I do think you're taking things too literally and not really looking at the allegory behind what's taking place, but I'm not going to preach to you how to look at a movie. Your issues here are valid. They don't personally bother me much because I look at them less literally than you do.

As far as the suspense in Whedon's film not matching the suspense in Spidey 2, I'm not really sure what you're getting at. I don't think The Avengers really attempts to be a suspenseful movie. It's too self-aware and interested in entertainmening than it is in keeping people on the edge of their seat. I try not to fault movies for things they don't attempt. I try, as much as is possible, to judge movies based on what they attempt and how successful they are at what they attempt, rather than what I think they should be. Naturally, that isn't always possible, and I'm not saying it's the correct way to look at movies, but that's what I try to do.



I think that's such a small misstep that it hardly matters. I took it as Whedon setting up the themes and story of the sequel (it wasn't just praise on the monitors, it was criticism as well) and didn't really think too much about it. I'll grant that it isn't the most clever or original way to do that, and I suppose some of the praise might be a little cheesy, but again, it's a very slight mistake to me.

Here's the damn near 2000 word blog entry I wrote on the movie if anyone is interested.

Some of it is rehash from my previous long post in this thread, but there's other stuff too.

Your analysis is solid, but I don't think it cuts to the heart of this film, and therefore not the basis on which it should be judged.

Most people seem to judge a movie on the simplest terms: is it fun to sit through? Well, yes, it honestly is pretty fun to sit through. The crowd pleasing moments come at a steady pace and there's never any real reason to get bored. But look, if movies were as simple as all that, it seems like there would be more good ones made, right? Movies have always been judged for plot holes, haven't they? I remember when that was the foremost method of attack on a film for most people...at least I think i remember. But anyway, not this time. Nobody cares that Hulk's resolution for his secret to being angry came out of nowhere, and was ultimately a giant red herring. Nobody cares that Hawkeye hardly registered as a person or as a character because of his role in the first half. Nobody cares that Thor was given the cold shoulder in favor of most of the others, including Black Widow.

And for the love of God, why does nobody care about the enormous gap left by the presence of Thanos and his henchman? We're way beyond the days when you had to wait six years for Anakin to become Darth Vader, and while Lucas's series offered a definite promise that that would in fact happen at a certain time, we can't be certain of anything with Avengers. This movie feels like a pilot for a show whose next episode will take years to come out, and who knows what promises it will fulfill? The current Avengers movie feels formulaic in a way that reminds me of Saw. They could just keep doing the same thing forever and ever. Not only will it never get old in the sense that it will never be boring, but it will never really have to go anywhere either. Hell, they could probably bring Loki back for the next one without any complaints if they wanted.

And this is what I meant when I originally said Avengers was not really a movie. 2.5 hours of fair entertainment does not make a good movie. A truly good movie has to be a self-contained entity which feels purposeful in and of itself. It has to have a vision behind it that's clearer and sharper than this. I read a Whedon interview in which he talked about trimming 45 minutes from his original cut; I think it shows pretty badly. The film we got seems to draw its excitement more from the edit itself than from the story or production. That's why they never feel the need to return to the evil realm after that first snippet in the very beginning. That snippet provided an exciting hook for your movie experience, it served its purpose, and Loki would suffice from then on. There's a very dense craft to making an exciting, slick, and punchy edit, and this film has that in spades. The problem I have is that it doesn't feel as though that edit was conceived in the development stage. In fact, I think it obviously wasn't, which in my opinion means that the entire creative process of this movie was backwards. I feel that Rise of the Planet of the Apes had a very sharp, well defined vision of how the story should be told before they started shooting. And that film really did feel like the culmination of a vision...maybe not a deep vision, but still a vision. Avengers just feels like the culmination of its own hype and a few solid weeks with the cutters. I think it's really just an issue of the filmmaking process being tackled from the wrong direction.

The thing is that ultimately, I could go on forever, someone could read all of it, but still enjoy the film for what it is. I'm just not comfortable when that mindset becomes such an aggressive, overbearing consensus. It takes individual judgment out of the equation, which I think is a big part of what the art form is built upon. You go to a movie, think about what you're seeing, try to absorb what's unfolding on the screen, then see what you think about it. The Avengers, for me, takes judgment and criticism out of the equation; it just wants you to be entertained. I don't think that's enough for a good movie. I think it's enough if that's all you get out a film, but in terms of the conception itself, there needs to be something more going on. Ian Fleming's books are about the shoddiest pulp novels you can read, but there's a reason they stand out over so many others. I think it's because Fleming's aspirations run just a little bit deeper than, "I hope they enjoy this." I think he's hashing out very personal elements from his own life and his own private fantasies, his own existential awareness. The silly entertainment that comes out of it just happens to be the dividend of his personal vision. And that, I think, is how the creative process should work.

The Avengers is entertaining in the same impersonal, casual way that a trailer is entertaining. It gets the same laughs that a good trailer might get, as well as the same thrills. And like a trailer, it feels like it's merely about itself and its own hyper-charge. All the political allegory and subtext in the world can never make me forget about that fundamental problem. Even if I really just want to have fun, deep down I feel like I still long for a personal vision in any movie I see. Whedon does not provide one, and I feel like I've been cheated.

This is likely where we'll just have to agree to disagree. I think it is the heart of the film. You later go on to call it the subtext of the film, but I don't really see the "sub". To me, the movie is fairly obvious in it's intentions. If you disagree with that (which is fine, by the way), then we likely aren't going to see eye to eye on much regarding the film.



The movie isn't perfect by any means, but with a large ensemble cast, I think a few instances of unevenness were inevitable. For the most part, Whedon does a great job of balancing all the characters and giving them legitimate motivations and agendas. I'm not saying what you say isn't valid, just that the amount of good character development outweighs the bad.



I think this is a pretty large reach for a criticism. I mean, you're condemning the sequel which hasn't even come out yet for being rehash. Thanos was in a post-credits scene. I don't really see how any of what you say here pertains to the actual movie that currently exists.



Again, since I see the movie as the culmination of an artistic vision, we're just not going to agree here. Different strokes and all that good stuff. I can't make you see the movie my way, and I don't think what you say here is anything outlandish given how you see the film.



Oddly enough, it's this notion that partly made me write about the film. I couldn't agree more with what you say here, except that I see it from the totally opposite direction. It seems to me that people are going into it expecting your typical, mindless summer blockbuster and don't entertain the idea that the movie could be about something a little more substantial. It's close-mindedness that we're both fighting against here, just from opposite ends.

There were still two scenes early on in the film which featured Loki speaking to his alien boss; they're still a part of the movie we got.



I'm not sure this movie is going to get any backlash against itself anyway. People love it, they think it's awesome. In terms of reception and box office returns, its success is more on the Avatar level than the Iron Man level. So I think it will just be the other big films of the summer that will suffer. Battleship is an easy jab. But I doubt Prometheus is going to do much. Spider-man will likely be forgotten in a second, a'la First Class. And Rises...I think there's a good chance Rises will suffer. Even though JB insists it's a totally different ball game, I think people may become disillusioned with Nolan's overbearing seriousness after Avengers. I may be wrong, but I doubt this is going to be what The Dark Knight was 4 years ago.

This is how I feel as well

I'm not so sure about this. I have a feeling that Rises will at least do nearly as well as the Avengers although it likely won't ascend to the box-office of its immediate predecessor. That film had the trump card of containing Heath Ledger's last fully-completed role (and arguably his best) so the furor surrounding it was much more intense if only for that reason. Anne Hathaway and Tom Hardy are strong actors but they still have some pretty big shoes to fill in this film. Even with that consideration though, I'm sure that enough people are curious to see how Nolan is gonna wrap things up with the trilogy that Rises should do well enough to at least match the box office gross of The Avengers but I don't expect it to be the runaway success that The Dark Knight was.

It might be worth pointing out though that Avengers is probably about to outgross The Dark Knight, and maybe by a pretty decent margin.

Avengers passing Dark Knight is a mathematical certainty. It only dropped 47% this weekend, already has made 457 mill. Dark Knight made 533. Avengers has a good shot at passing Titanic as well(658)

3D has really changed box office, so many have joined the billion dollar club since Avatar came out. Really surprised no one at Warner insisted on Rises in 3D. it makes a big difference in box office.

Yeah, when I made that previous statement, I was under the impression that The Dark Knight was the third highest grossing film of all-time, behind the two most recent James Cameron films. That is the case if you only consider the American box-office but not when you take into account worldwide grosses so forgive me for basically talking out of my ass!

That's correct, & I referred to this in my previous post. Avengers will pass Dark Knight for #3 in North American box office(its at 457, Dark Knight made 533)

as far as worldwide, Avengers passed Dark Knight in that last week. It will pass the last Harry Potter for #3 very soon on that list as well.

Dark Knight is only #12 on the worldwide list.

I really don't see Dark Knight Rises topping Avengers in any of its records(esp since its not 3D)

And esp not in international box office, Dark Knight, despite being #3 in North American box office, was way behind Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Alice in Wonderland, Pirates, Transformers 3 & even 2012(!) in int'l box office. I guess this franchise seems to skew unusually more to US audiences than most other huge box office hits for some reason.

These mega releases can only go on for so long before the trend implodes on itself. Might take a few more years, but it will happen eventually. As it is, they happen both too often and not often enough.

Too often in the logical sense: how many times a year can records be broken, and for how many years in a row, before they become trivial and meaningless?

Not often enough because the kind of excitement behind them isn't remotely sustainable. In movies, cool things are supposed to happen all the time, not once every 4 years. MI4 was so good, and the great part about it was that with the right creativity and passion, so many movies just like it could easily be made. And Tintin proved that cinematic ingenuity can be contained inside a computer. I'm not saying I want every film to be animated, but Tintin opened up enormous possibilities for action/adventure films that everyone chose to ignore. It was also an amalgamation of a large portion of the greatest talent this industry has to offer right now. Not only Spielberg as director, but also Edgar Write and Joe Cornish (Attack the Block) as writers? And we all know Peter Jackson is just about the most impressive producer around. As an adventure, I think it outdoes all 4 Indiana Jones movies in every way, and it also outdoes War Horse in terms of both entertainment and artistic value, even though I like War Horse a lot. Tintin is the perfect escapism, and truly, truly inspirational to aspiring filmmakers. I might do a video on it one of these days. Anyone who's frustrated with the thrill ride elements of Avengers should check out the Spielberg movie.

Aren't they already? As calvero pointed out, 3D makes a pretty big difference on box office numbers. Is it really that impressive that a blockbuster like The Avengers that was well-received by critics and audiences has broken records? The raw numbers are always going to go up, up, up for a whole bunch of reasons, so I don't really see a whole lot of value in these "records". They're all inevitably going to be broken, right?



Is this true? I haven't seen it, but I plan on it this week or early next. You go on to call it escapism, so is the artistic value you speak of purely technical, or does the movie have something to say? I know people who like the movie, but I haven't heard anyone call it anything other than a fun adventure movie. I'm always up for some good analysis, however.

I *hated* Tintin personally, because I thought the technical elements tended to distract from the characters and story. Should have been traditional 2D animation.
-Jeremy