Saturday, May 5, 2012

Reading Penguin Goes to the Movies: The Avengers

Those of you who have been reading for awhile know that my fiance is a big Marvel comics geek. The Avengers, which was a movie many years and 5 previous movies in the making, is something he looked forward to, possibly more than our wedding. That's what happens when you agree to marry a nerd.

We went to the midnight showing, of course. For those of you who have never done a midnight opening: It is a masochistic endeavor in which you buy tickets way the hell in advance, get in line with a bunch of other nerds where you stand or sit on hard tile for 2-6 hours, chug several energy drinks, and generally question the direction your life has taken. All so that you can see the movie the minute it is legally possible to do so.

Worth it?

The Avengers are a team of six ridiculously attractive superheroes who come together to fight Loki and his alien army. Or at least, that's what they do in this movie. You really do need to have seen all of the lead in movies to fully appreciate this one, though it's still a good movie on its own. Continuing the character arcs of Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, and Captain America, which began in their own movies, and introducing a bit of back story for Hawkeye and Black Widow, this movie is full of likeable and familiar characters. The actors really own their parts, and I had no solid complaints about any of them. Chris Evans is particularly spot on as the strictly patriotic Steve Rogers (Cap), and as always Robert Downey Jr. Is brilliant as the sexy, snarky playboy Tony Stark (Iron Man). Mark Ruffalo, new to the part to of Bruce Banner/Hulk, pulled it off effectively, and had great chemistry with the rest of the cast.

I loved the dialogue and the character interactions. You could tell the writers had a firm grasp on each personality and the ways they  would clash and work together. There's a lot of unexpected humor, and also a lot of heart.

The action was spot on, if for no other reason that you could actually tell what was happening the entire time, and it looked good. Too many movies (Transformers) lose their action to too much chaos and too little focus.

Comic book fans, superhero movie fans, all of you need to go see this movie. It's such a big, brilliant, well executed project. I had an insanely good time at this movie, and I think you will too.

8 comments:

  1. My boyfriend is also a geek, he's been counting minutes for the last month or so. I get that part :D And in the middle of so-anticipated movie, the power went out due to a major storm outside.
    I wasn't able to see it with him, but I've no doubt we'll go see it next week...and then again...and again, as long as it's playing :)

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  2. Oh I need to go and see thos one, I just hope I'll have the time to do so. I'm glad you enjoyed it. thanks for the nice review.

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  3. I loved marvel comics when I was a kid. I even collected the marvel comic cards and still have my batch from the early 90's.

    I want to see this one so bad but I think I should wait to see the individual movies first so I'll have a good background. Glad to see you enjoyed it.

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    1. See, I NEVER encountered comics when I was a kid. Josh has been trying to fix that with some of the better examples from his collection :)

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  4. This was an absolutely amazing movie. :) Like, I'm so happy with the direction they took it in. The humor, the action, the actors..it was all just so perfect! I definitely am going to see this one again before it leaves theaters!

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    1. Completely agree with you. Joss Whedon was the perfect guy to put on this project. He knew exactly what to do with the characters and how to make everything look to create an epic movie.

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