No daft pre-amble today. Let’s crack on, here’s what I think of ‘Marvel’s Avengers Assemble’ (just ‘The Avengers’ from this point on because that is a bloody stupid name).
Our story begins in a S.H.I.E.L.D base where Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård) has been enlisted by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) to help on a project to harness the power of the Tesseract (previously seen in ‘Captain America’).The Tesseract activates, opening a portal to another world through which Loki (Tom Hiddleston) falls. Loki steals the Tessseract and places Selvig and some of the S.H.I.E.L.D agents, including Clint Barton (aka Hawkeye played by Jeremy Renner), into a trance where they will do his bidding. Loki and the brainwashed S.H.I.E.L.D agents escape with the Tesseract forcing Fury to re-open the ‘Avengers Initiative’ in order to track Loki and retrieve the Tesseract.
Wow. Just WOW!
For starters, someone give Josh Whedon a medal; so many plates and 143 minutes in which to spin them, he does a fantastic job.
Let’s break it down: It was one thing to have to deal with three established characters making sure their respective fans were happy, but it’s quite another to also have to develop Hawkeye and Black Widow into fully formed characters and build the ‘Hulk’ into the franchise after two previous attempts to launch the character, both of which had limited success. You’ve also got to juggle Loki and the Chitauri making sure their motives seem believable, reinforce the character of Nick Fury, make sure you give fan favourite Agent Coulson a fair amount of screen time and introduce Maria Hill to the series. That’s just the characters; you have to make sure the script is funny and has purpose, make sure it looks amazing, sounds amazing and has just the right amount of teasing for further forays into the Marvel universe… Whedon manages all of this with aplomb.
The cast is on fine form. Chris Hemsworth, Robert Downey Jr and Chris Evans pick up their roles from the previous Marvel films with the greatest of ease and the three actors bounce off each other really well, balancing the comedic and more serious elements of the dialogue really well.
Tom Hiddleston is great reprising his role as Loki. There’s a definite step-up in the character’s motives from ‘Thor’ to ‘The Avengers’. He descends into full on, world-conquering megalomania quite nicely!
Black Widow and Hawkeye are developed well. Both made cameos in ‘Iron Man 2’and ‘Thor’ respectively and both prove their mettle in this as fully rounded main characters. I like them a lot and hope they get their own spin offs.
Much has been said about Mark Ruffalo's performance as Bruce Banner and (as the Banner calls him) "the other guy". I really liked it and there's no doubt that his is the best interpretation of the character to be put on the silver screen in recent years. He delivers some of the funniest lines whilst keeping a real sense of inner-turmoil.
The action set pieces are, predictably, amazing. They’re big on spectacle and edited really well. It never descends into not knowing what part of what belongs to who but they still manage to make everything look epic. Having said that my favourite fight scene is between Black Widow and Hawkeye and in that there’s no big effects or explosions in that; it’s just well-choreographed, close range fighting that shows exactly why the newcomers are on the team.
Granted the plot is a little bit thin, in the immortal words of Bilbo Baggins it’s “like... butter scraped over too much bread”. Basically the team have to stop Loki making a thingy that will open a hole in the galaxy and bring about the enslavement of the human race… and that’s about it. Suffice to say creating a labyrinthine plot of twists and turns is not the film’s priority.
Even though the plot is a bit non-existent, what I really like is the dialogue. Never has the script of a Superhero film been so witty and fun. Not every comic book adaptation is light and fluffy but also not everything has to be 'The Dark Knight'. It is so much funnier than I thought it’d be and the film is better for it.
I hope this is taken on board by the entire cinematic world. Big Blockbusters don’t have to be lowest common denominator trash. They can be bright, funny, well rounded, well executed films such as this. It’s so awesome it makes me smile just thinking about it :-)
If that's not enough to bring a smile to your face how about some...
Reasons to be Cheerful
1. The new series of Doctor Who will be premiering at the Edinburgh TV Festival this summer. This isn't the biggest shock in the world because it's exactly what happened last time, but hey, now it's official.
2. Kevin Feige has said that of all the upcoming Marvel sequels "Captain America 2 will be most closely associated with Avengers.". It makes sense if you think about it. All the other characters have their own people to deal with but poor, gorgeous, lonely Captain left all his friends back in the 40’s, the only people he knows were in ‘the Avengers’ so naturally they’ll be quite closely linked.
That’s all I’ve got for you today!
Expect to be seeing a few posts over the next few days, I’ve been distracted so I’ve got a few waiting to go up!
Goodbye till next time :-)
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