Marvel's "The Avengers" has set the world on fire recently, drawing in more than $468 million dollars domestically and more than $1 billion worldwide, according to boxoffice.com. The movie marks the culmination of a five-year, five-film project by Marvel Studios to bring together the superhero team of Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and The Hulk. Two other heros, Hawkeye and Black Widow, join to complete team.
The first time I saw "The Avengers" was the midnight showing with the theater packed with fans - several of whom dressed up - that made for a very enjoyable atmosphere to watch the movie in.
Now that it has been two and a half weeks and the initial hype and frenzy has died down, I believe it is appropriate to take a harder look at "The Avengers" and what it does well and what it doesn't.
The movie - for the five of you who haven't seen it yet - tells the story of a superhero team that bands together to try and deflect an alien invasion. The movie is based off the Marvel Comics team that brought together some of their powerful superheroes.
One reason I believe "The Avengers" works well is that it's fun. It very much represents Marvel's legendary editor Stan Lee's vision of superheroes. At a time when edgier superhero movies, such as Christopher Nolan's "Batman" franchise, challenge our conventions of superheroes, "The Avengers" sets out to reaffirm our belief that in times of great peril, incredible individuals will always be there to save us. While this may make the story ultimately more conventional, it provides a refreshing antithesis to other superhero movies being released.
The film itself is also fun. The dialogue is funny, the action is constant and though the stakes are high in the film, it never takes itself too seriously. The film seems very aware that it tells the story of a giant green man teaming up with a Norse god to help save the world from oblivion at the hands of invading aliens. The movie represents some of the most fun you can have at the cineplex right now and probably for a long while. The film even finds a way to make Hawkeye, whose ability is that he is incredibly accurate with a bow, into a very interesting and entertaining character. In short, "The Avengers" is the definition of a great summer popcorn movie.
Now, having said all of this, "The Avengers" is a very good superhero movie, but it falls just short of being a great superhero movie for two reasons: the villain and the pacing. Both of these elements take back a lot of the fun the movie establishes early on.
The film's villain is Loki, Thor's adopted brother, who decides to invade Earth as retribution for his defeat in 2011's "Thor." My main complaint about Loki is that he isn't interesting and he isn't threatening. Every time Loki is in a physical confrontation - sans his opening fight with the superpowerless Hawkeye - he is soundly defeated, exhibiting little or no God-like powers. It gets to the point where you want a more threatening super villain to step in and at least cast a small seed of doubt in our mind that our heroes may not prevail.
Loki also isn't interesting because his motivations seem to be purely conventional; he wants to rule the world because he's bad and bad guys do that sort of thing. We never get any interesting angles on Loki and are just asked to accept that he is the bad guy and this is what he does.
The film also suffers from the stop and go pacing it has. Either we're watching superpowered beings kick the snot out of each other, or we're in for another long discussion of what Loki's plan is or what the Tesseract is capable of. During my second viewing of the film, about two days after the opening, I actually dozed off about midway through because the film just drags at times or speeds at 100 miles an hour at others. More care probably could have been taken to make the little moments matter more and make them less of mere stepping stones for another set piece.
Overall, "The Avengers" is a successful experiment by Marvel and is a lot of fun. It is not a great film, but it also doesn't need to be. It tries to remind us of the superheroes who are undefeatable and inspiring, and it succeeds at that.
"The Avengers" receives a 7.5/10.
-á
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