Thoughts on The Avengers


I have not been to a midnight movie in ages. But my lovely wife agreed to act like kids and see the new Avengers movie at midnight last night. It was well worth the lost sleep.

Midnight openings have a feeling of enthusiasm, especially for long awaited movies like this one. As each new character made their appearance, the crowd cheered; as each battle was won, we applauded again.

It was that kind of movie.

The story is well know, and the plot is predictable (for a more detailed summary, see Derek’s notes at SFSignal). Loki, Thor’s miscreant brother, is freed from his prison in space when Earth scientists fool around with the Tesseract (an alien energy source). Loki calls in an army of out-of-this-world baddies, and Nick Fury, leader of SHIELD, played by Samuel L. Jackson, assembles the Avengers.

Some small spoilers after the break:

The back stories of Thor (played again by Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and the Hulk (this time played, very well IMHO by Mark Ruffalo) were told in other movies. Black Widow (red headed Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) are thrown into the mix, and the team is born, wise cracking their way to an obvious large battle with Loki and his army.

The interaction of the characters is excellent (wise-cracking, as with any Joss Whedon work), each character has their moments and the big battle scene delivers as they work separately, in pairs and as a group to fight the villains (the end of the Thor / Hulk pairing made me laugh so hard my wife had to shush me).

Besides the inevitably predictable plot, two points bothered me:

  • At the end of the Thor movie, Thor was stuck, unable to get back to Earth. How exactly did he return? Maybe since the Tesseract opened up a path for Loki it opened up one for Thor as well?
  • Hulk is out of control on the plane/flying ship, chasing and knocking around Black Widow (bad Hulk!); but for the final battle, he is able to control himself and communicate. That transition happens too quickly; when and how did he gain control.

All in all, a great movie, one that we are looking forward to seeing again on the big screen when our son is home from college exams.

 

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2 Responses

  1. larry says:

    I’ve also heard that there are TWO clips after the credits; we only saw the one, with what we assume was the next movie’s villain (details at http://www.nextmovie.com/blog/avengers-after-credits/). Will have to watch closer for second credit clip!

  2. Jay Garmon says:

    Both plot points are (vague;y) addressed in the movie.

    Loki remarks that he can “only guess how much dark matter energy the Allfather had to gather” to sned Thor to Earth without the Bifrost bridge. Travel between realms isn’t impossible, just very difficult. Also, it was a plot point in Thor’s own movie that Loki could get people in and out of Asgard without using the Bifrost, and without Heimdall knowing.

    The out-of-control Hulk chasing Black Widow through the Helicarrier is somewhat assumed to be a byproduct of Loki’s manipulations. Also, the Hulk acts out at what angers him, and in that sequence, Banner/Hulk was angry at the Widow for manipulating him onto the Helicarrier. In the final battle, Hulk was angry at Loki and his Chitauri.

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