Hey Readers,
Be warned, the following post is extremely geeky, so... if you consider yourself 'too cool' or 'grown up' to think about things like comics and comic book movies, stop reading now. Ok, still here? Great, read on.
So in case you hadn't guessed from the title this particular piece of prose will be dealing with the cinematic masterwork that is Marvel's 'The Avengers' or 'Avengers Assemble' if you come from the UK, because y'know, i'm sure a great deal of the intended audience for the movie were fully aware of the completely unrelated 1960's British spy series that shared it's name and thus as a result would thus be terribly confused... But I digress. If you haven't seen it yet, why the hell are you sitting at home reading a sporadically updated blog? Go watch it already! Go on, i'll wait.
Seen it yet? Since you've not stopped reading i'm going to guess that you have so... no apologies for any spoilers, sorry.
The Avengers, a culmination of four years worth of interconnected films and a grand experiment in continuity, nothing like this has ever been attempted before, ever. Sure other film series have had their own self contained continuity, that's how sequels work, certain films are very concious of this, like Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Back to the Future (somewhat obviously in the case of the latter,) but never before has there been an attempt at a single interconnected continuity between different film series, each in an entirely different sub genre of an overarching theme. Why? Well for a long time it simply wasn't possible, comic book movies just didn't do that well, the financial risk alone would have been unthinkable, that and the special effects required for such an undertaking have only really just recently become available. So what happened? Well in 2002 Sam Rami's take on Spider-Man came out, the 12A rating came into force and BOOM. All of a sudden studios had a much larger audience to reach in cinemas without worrying so much about their content. That and Spider Man was pretty good and ended up making money hand over fist. Travel a few more years forward in time and by the mid 00's we've had Batman Begins, the Spiderman 2 (3 does NOT exist) Some watchable X-men films and even attempts at some more obscure characters. All of a sudden the superhero movie is a worthwhile investment. The runaway success of the Dark Knight pretty much cemented that fact. But even before then, Marvel started to wise up, they could control the production rights to these films THEMSELVES. I mean heck, they've all made enough money so far right? So in 2008 came the release of Iron Man, recieved with much fanfare from critics very little complaint from the comic fan community,
It was awesome, Robert Downey Jr was perfectly cast, the Suit looked like it should, there was flying, and lasers and all that good Iron Man stuff. I remember my thought process at the end. It went something like this: Yay he beat Iron Monger! Roll credits, huh X-Men 3 had an extra scene, yeah that movie sucked but I wonder if..? Ok wait who's this gu...oh my god that's ultmate Nick Fury! What's he doing there? Hang on, S.H.I.E.L.D was mentioned earlier then that could mean, nah, no way... Wait what did he just say? AVENGERS INITIATIVE? BU- HOW? WHAT?
Yeah, my little 17 year old nerd brain pretty much exploded at the mere idea tht this could possibly happen. I didn't quite believe it yet of course but those little nods just kept on coming! The Incredible hulk (the good one, not the Ang Lee one known simply as 'Hulk') of course Included a cameo of Tony Stark at the end, alluding to a 'super soldier' programme, ding! Easy, Captain America! Oh wait, COOL! Iron Man 2 of course had it's own references to that with a neat little appearance of the famous sheild in a scene taking place in Tony's house, then... BAM Thor's hammer shows up after the credits. Wow what? Thor? Ok sweet!
So the Marvel Cinematic Universe was established, some of the movies were better than others sure, but they were all entertaining in their own way... and for geeks/nerds like myself the little nods and winks were the icing on a rather delicous comic flavoured cake... Yet still after so much success the Avengers' looming arrival was treated with trepidation from the fan community. Surely it couldn't work! We'd been promised so much before and let down! Fantastic 4! Daredevil! Wolveri...Wolv... no I can't say it, it still hurts too much. But the point stands! If production teams couldn't get smaller projects to work, how could something this unimaginably huge possibly work? 4 Huge egos on screen plus Black Widow and Hawkeye? Who the hell was going to juggle all of that?
Joss Whedon, that's who, to top it off he co-wrote the script too. Why is this a big deal? His experience with characters in ensemble shows for starters, take Buffy for example, that show was all about snappy dialouge and great character interaction, Firefly was too (we'll never forget you oh sweet serenity, more on that another time) Angel, Dollhouse... the man's resume reads pretty much perfectly for a job like this. Then to top it all off... Joss Whedon writes comics. Yup, he's done it for Marvel too, he had an incredible run on Astonishing X-Men a few years back that- well it was good, what really matters about this though is that Joss Whedon understands how comics work. He's had to make them himself, he knows how to pace them, how to handle the characters in the correct fashion, he knows what hardcore fan's like myself want, and yet he's got enough experience in the mainstream entertainment industry to appeal to a wide audience also.
That my friends, is why the Avengers was so damn good, because the man holding the reigns knew EXACTLY what he was doing. why he was doing it and who for. My fears were great up to the moment of the film starting, but as soon as i realised that Maria Hill (Fury's right hand girl, she's gonna become a big deal trust me) had just stepped off a S.H.I.E.L.D helicopter without any unessecarry introductions... they just melted away and in it's place sat a grin, one that refused to leave my face for hours afterwards. Joss knew we'd know who she was, he knew people like me would laugh at the life model decoy joke, we'd cheer out loud at the moment when Tony used Captain America's sheild to reflect his attack into enemies, every moment every line, every shot could have been taken from a graphic novel. After a decade of good, bad and indifferent comic book movies, I was actually watching one that felt like a comic book.
After all this praise i've heaped upon the film you might ask: 'Why is this annoying?' Well (un)fortunately it's horribly simple, if this could be done, why isn't it always done? Why did Green Lantern suck? Why have none of the X-Men films been anywhere this good? Why hasn't there been a proper Punisher movie yet? Why does Sony INSIST on keeping the rights to Spider Man after the last abomination they turned out? (Well actually its because of money more than anything, and with they year they've had they need all the revenue they can get...) But I would hope that you're able to see my point, for a fan such as myself, seeing something this wonderful, this well put together, this near perfect example of comic cinema... may make everything else in the genre pale in comparison. Let us hope that the bar set by the Avengers was not too high so that others might reach it also.
Also finally... *deep breath* OHMYGODTHANOSATTHEENDOFAVENGERSWHAAAAAAAAT?
Anyway thanks for reading as ever,
Wheelchairman2
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