Avengers Review Take II

I woke up remembering something I wanted to say. Continued from the first entry about this movie... Sleep does wonders for the brain!


When it comes to Superhero movies, there are some very formulaic elements which have become cliche and almost ruefully expected by moviegoers. Whedon managed to avoid them all, I think. 

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For example, many movies suffer from "damsel in distress" syndrome, where the hero's love interest or elderly aunt is grabbed/captured/endangered directly by the bad guy. In "The Avengers", all the love interests are conveniently unavailable for perilous life-threatening. And it isn't done in an overly dramatic way, it's just the way things are. My son mentioned that he would have liked to see the men reunited with their ladies at the end, but I liked the fact that they weren't. It kept the movie feeling fresh, genuine and not syrupy.


Another thing we didn't have was outer-space alien goo. Most alien and sci-fi movies have an unbelilevable amount of goop, slime, and schloky-sounding muck. But our heroes fight aliens that are mercifully slime-free. 


In fact the only thing I can think of that is remotely cliche about this movie is that the bit battle/attack scene happens in New York City. Though, with 9-11 for evidence, maybe that's realistic enough to not really be a cliche. There was one moment, when a woman runs to look out the cafe window after being saved by one of our heroes, her hair is disheveled and her face is dirty, and she looks up and out with a look of awe on her face. I felt like I had seen it before in Superman, Spiderman and maybe even Batman movies before. But it also almost felt like a tiny homage that any comic fan would appreciate. It was short and sweet and over before I had time to process the feeling of familiarity.


Most importantly, Whedon never stops surprising the audience (or at least me) by doing the unexpected. The characters say and do things that are both natural and real and completely surprising. That makes a movie move so much faster and keeps you riveted, waiting to see what will happen next. I don't want to give anything away, so I can't say much about this, but more than once Loki has confrontations that end in completely unexpected ways. Brilliant.

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If I didn't say it last night, let me say it now, "The Avengers" is the best movie I've seen in a very long time and I think Joss Whedon is a genius. Fa-bu-lous.