Originally Posted By: Lilo

I best know Whedon as director/creator of Serenity/Firefly. He brings some of that trademark humor to The Avengers. Look, this is an enjoyable film but it's not by any means one that is plot driven.


It's not plot driven as much as storytelling-driven. Big difference. People reguarly confuse the two, but I would complain that many movies suffer from having too much plot at times. (Depp's PIRATES movies immediately come to mind. Jesus they're overcomplicated.)

What do I mean exactly? AVENGERS as a movie plot is very streamlined, almost this side of an excellent saturday morning episode if stretched to 2+ hours. Whedon was able to sport what, 10 or so major characters and nobody gets slighted? Everybody has their moment and nobody come off as rather useless, not even a guy who brought a bow & arrow to an alien gunfight. The alien invasion is a generic plot device, but that's not a flaw since their leader does all the work as their spokesman.

Because Marvel already did several "solo" movies culminating together into these Nerd Olympics, they got the origins stories already disposed of so you don't have to bother with that bullshit again. And yet the remarkable thing is, you don't necessarily need to have seen them to enjoy THE AVENGERS. Even though I would argue that it adds to the experience. (Think of them as foreplay.)

Consider Whedon's clever writing in regards Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo being BFFs. If you saw those pictures, it makes logical sense. But without those movies, you absolutely buy that connection because of their great chemistry together. Two scientists (if completely different personalities) bond over their private well-founded reasons for distrusting the government/military. Not to mention nobody else around them "gets" their technobabble.

It rather reminds me of comic books in the pre-digital days when characters would make references to a previous adventure or villain, and this passage would be marked with a big black "*". The characters won't go into detail explaining that background (i.e. plot), but at the bottom of the page would say "*=As seen in Amazing Spider-Man #337!" or something of that ilk. You don't need to know the specifics to enjoy that current issue, but hey if you want to know the specifics you're given a reference point to check the backissues.

In that regard, Marvel has done that with their controlled properties. For AVENGERS, you don't need to more than that Captain America is a soldier stuck out of time or that Thor is an alien demigod (and his brother's an asshole) or that Iron Man is a smartass, etc. If you didn't already know the backstories, well you have their movies to go rent.

(Well except for Black Widow and Hawkeye, but I suppose that'll be remedied with a SHIELD movie. It could even be Marvel's MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, a spy thriller set in a superhero world.)

Originally Posted By: Lilo
However there are "realistic" (to the extent that you can talk about realistic anything in a comic book film) female characters who are not sexpots nor are they just there to be rescued by male characters. You simply don't do the kind of business this movie has done just by appealing to boys.


AVENGERS has gotten much heavier female traffic than such comic book adaptations tend to draw, and even considerable repeat business with them. It's rather popular too with folks who've never read a single Marvel comic (much less seen the other movies) or even know what a SHIELD is.

As summer spectacle entertainment, it's top flight. Good cast, good action, good SFX, friendly to imagination and intelligence (broadly) instead of insulting either as Michael Bay tends to do with his stupid crap. But you want to know what I think the secret recipe for this billion-dollar hit is? The humor. My audience was cracking up at the appropriate spots and punchlines, including the best smashing scene (literally) in the movie which brought more laughs than the last few comedies I've seen.

Originally Posted By: Lilo

The movie runs a tad long at roughly 2 hours and 22 minutes but I don't think it's all that noticeable.


Oh I disagree. Storytelling wise, you can tell how Whedon introduces the set-pieces, the audience even anticipating them and their entrances because they're fans or they've seen the ads. Then you see how he sets those pieces into line which pays off with that finale. It takes awhile to get there, but I didn't mind because I thought it was paced very well.

That's another reason for AVENGERS' success. Alot of summer movies in recent years lack that magic of suspenseful anticipation when you the audience are ahead of the characters and know their future destination andencounters, which the characters might be ignorant in the dark about. Way too many movies go autopilot and have the audience/characters share the same knowledge.

(STAR WARS comes to mind as a classic example of that sensation. Empire captures Leia, takes her to the Death Star. The droids escape, land on Tantoine, meet up with Luke Skywalker. He meets Obi-Wan, they meet Han Solo and charter a flight. They don't know it yet until it's too late, but you just know they're gonna end up at the Death Star, kick ass, and save Leia.)