Avengers Movie Alt - TOTALLY SPOILER-Y (And/Or MHRP-Related)

[Supplanter]

Ian Grey has a fantastic piece on Black Widow's function, Scarlett Johansson's perforrmance, and who noticed and who didn't, from a feminist perspective. Locates BW firmly in the tradition of Whedonesque heroines and gives Johansson credit for the best performance of her career. He basically unpacks the subtext of my declaring her MVP of the movie and adds considerable additional insight.


Jim

[ClausLars]

Just saw it a SECOND time with a couple of friends from MHRP Playgroup A. In fact, we caught the late show after our gaming session. And got out of the theater at 1:37AM local time. The bad news: I have to work in the morning! The good news: I have a legal prescription for daily long-acting stimulant medication!

To my mild surprise, I liked it even better the second time around.
Jim

Heh. Shift work?

I'm still waiting for my second time. First was unfortunately a bootleg, but that was because the wife shot down going to see it herself...and I just can't bring myself to go to the movies with a guy.

She did a 180 the other day after hearing so much good about it though. Time to find a sitter and a day off of work.

Yeah, I agree. Leave the character development for individual films; unless it's character conflict. That fits into a team like the avengers. Team comics are usually less about development when the characters have their own books, and more about action.

That is actually one of the things I liked most about the movie, it jumped right into the action and stayed with it for the most part. It still kept a decent balance though, I still feel that if you haven't seen the other movies you'll be able to follow most of what's going on and walk out with more than enough Marvel knowledge.

PS.
I totally missed Maria Hill. I was doing some work when she was introduced, and the guy I was watching it with didn't follow comics so when I asked who she was he said, "Ah, some other SHIELD agent."

Yeah, no kidding boss.

[Supplanter]

Since more than one of you claim to have seen it, I'm willing to believe there's a version of the Avengers movie out there that's just an action movie with no character development. But I'm glad I saw the other one.


Jim

[mouthymerc]

I think there was plenty of character development as far as the characters as the Avengers, but less so on individual development. Which is good as this was a movie about the team. Loved the fights between Iron Man and Thor and the Hulk and Thor and Black Widow and Hawkeye. Very comic booky. Little bits like Captain America leading and inspiring were good touches. Hawkeye going bad was also a nice nod to the actual character.

[MidnightBlue]

Oh there was definitely character development, especially with the characters that didn't get their own movies...i.e. Black Widow, Hawkeye and even a bit with Agent Coulson. But we didn't have to sit through learning what makes all of the main characters tick...Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Hulk and Loki were pretty well covered with romances and origin stories and buddy tragedies and finding the hero inside and what not in their individual films.

That's what I'm refering to.

The wife and I went to see the Avengers again last night (2nd time for her, 4th time for me). FINALLY, I got to hear what Hulk said to Loki after HILARIOUSLY pummeling him..."Puny god." The theater was too crowded and laughing too loudly (me included) for me to make it out the other three times.

[ClausLars]

Oh there was definitely character development, especially with the characters that didn't get their own movies...i.e. Black Widow, Hawkeye and even a bit with Agent Coulson. But we didn't have to sit through learning what makes all of the main characters tick...Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Hulk and Loki were pretty well covered with romances and origin stories and buddy tragedies and finding the hero inside and what not in their individual films.

That's what I'm refering to.

The wife and I went to see the Avengers again last night (2nd time for her, 4th time for me). FINALLY, I got to hear what Hulk said to Loki after HILARIOUSLY pummeling him..."Puny god." The theater was too crowded and laughing too loudly (me included) for me to make it out the other three times.

What he said. There was character development, but it was too much. I felt like the movie had a much better blend of action/development than most of the other movies. Point is, I hate the finding the hero in themselves/fighting underpowered angle you get in a lot of movies. Hell the end fight of Iron Man was only a fight cause he had a crappy power core (actually kinda the same thing in the second). It's not like that giant Iron Monger suit was better, give him his regular core and he'd have torn him to shreds.

Yeah, surprisingly Hulk was some of the best comedy in the movie. "Puny God." was classic, but I got a huge kick out of the scene when Hulk and Thor land side by side in the building while working together...then BAM Hulk decks Thor into next Tuesday.

PS. Why is my default color red?

[MidnightBlue]

PS. Why is my default color red?

I'm not sure if it is a timing thing or what, but it should turn white eventually.

Yeah, mine and my wife's two favorite parts of the movie are:

1) Hulk cold-cocks Thor.

2) Hulk puts an end to Loki's villain-speech with a savage beatdown.

Both are classics.

My other favorite moments:

-Hulk getting the "Smash order" from Captain America and then doing just that.

-Cap giving the police commands and then showing why they should listen to him.

Some great stuff.

My heroes got to BE Super and Heroes!

Now...if Marvel could just get the movie rights back from Sony and add Spider-Man to the team...and get the movie rights for the X-Men back from 20th Century Fox and put out the REAL X-Men First Class (with an awesome Cyclops and Marvel Girl), then all will be well with the Marvel Comics world!

[Dunlaing]

And don't get me started on the team name "Avengers." What exactly are they avenging again?

That's why The Ultimates wasn't called Ultimate Avengers.

Have you read Avengers #1? (the original) I don't have it handy, but basically someone (the WASP?) says "we need a cool name,... Like the Avengers or something." and someone else (Ant-Man?) says "not 'or something', we should be the Avengers!" So, in the actual story, they don't really put any thought into it and just name themselves the first thing someone thinks of that sounds cool. They could just as easily be the Awesomes.

[Supplanter]

I'm wondering how much of this "action versus character development" kerfuffle is just a terminology problem. Some people talk about how it doesn't have character development but does have character "conflicts," others have referred to "relationships" instead of character. Someone else mentioned that there seems to be character development for the heroes that don't currently have their own movie series - first and foremost Black Widow; also Bruce Banner.

One thing I want to leave aside is the idea that "action" and "character development" are necessarily distinct - I think that's only true in bad movies. And this movie is very, very good. But since one of the reasons it's so good is that the action is extremely well-staged, the action scenes are all genuine pleasures in themselves, so I'll just note that and move on.

One of my biases as a journeyman improviser is that so-called character just is relationships. That's something of a simplification, but it's a simplification that will take you pretty far when you have to make stories in theatrical media. From that perspective - mine - if there are relationships and those relationships change, there's "character development." (And if there are relationships and they don't change, there's boredom!)

As for classic character "arcs" as such, on one level, "non-solo" characters having the arcs is a classic of the team-book genre itself, right? Captain America and Thor hang around the Avengers. Vision and Scarlet Witch fall in love. So Banner, over the course of the movie, dips his toe into the notion that maybe, just maybe, there are circumstances where becoming the Hulk isn't the worst thing. And Black Widow tries to put her very dirty past to use cleaning up the present, and discovers the joys and the limits of that. (Remember, it's pure luck that she doesn't, in the name of the mission, trap Tony Stark on the wrong side of the barrier forever.)

But as for classic character arcs, Tony Stark has a huge one! He goes from Kirk to Spock over the course of the movie, from the guy who doesn't believe in the existence of "the sacrifice play" to the guy who's willing to make it.

Finally, I want to call your attention to the coolest bit of the script I've noticed so far, in two viewings. Natasha is interrogating Loki (though Loki doesn't realize this), and pressed on how she feels about Hawkeye responds, as you know:

"Love is for children."

A classic tough-broad response! Except not. She means it to sound that way. But it's a callback to her very first exchange with Banner in the house at the edge of Calcutta to which she's paid a little girl to lead him. They start that young, spies? Banner asks. And Natasha says:

"I did."

So, wow. Loki's not the only one revealing more about himself than he intends in that scene.


Jim

[MidnightBlue]

Yeah, I'm not debating you Jim. I can only speak for myself, but yeah, there is definitely character development in The Avengers.

What I'm saying is that I love how Marvel has structured these movies. We got Iron Man I & II to see how a billionaire playboy turns into a hero...what makes him tick...what romances are popping around his world. We got Hulk to see the man behind the monster, his romances and what challenges he faces on a day-to-day basis. We got Thor to show us how a spoiled god became a hero and how he learned more about protecting people (and a romance worth protecting) than just the joys of battle. We got Captain America to show us what the true heart of a soldier...a hero...looks like before he was even more than a scrawny boy.

All of that happened "off-screen" from The Avengers. Sure, we still got to delve into nuances of the characters, but the bulk of the origin/character creation happened in their solo films. We didn't need a 12 hour Avengers movie to really get to know all of these characters. We knew who Iron Man, Hulk, Thor and Captain America really were deep down inside before we even saw them on the screen in The Avengers.

What The Avengers got to add to the mix in character development for these guys was in building a team dynamic. How do you take a room full of the most powerful divas in the world and turn them into a team. That's what the team movie added...turning solo characters into that team.

I just hope things continue to progress that way.

Iron Man 3, Thor 2 and Cap 2 can give us more personal tragedies and romances and what not for those individual characters, but when Avengers 2 comes out, keep the character development team-centric (except for those characters that are only getting screen time in the team movie...keep developing them).

That's what "I" want to see anyway.