The Avengers (2012)

Over the past decade, I (well, okay, we) have been blessed and cursed with the success of the comic book movie.  A sub-genre that was once scorned and ridiculed --- and rightly so, for the most part --- was given new life with the successful launches of the Spider-Man and X-Men franchises.  Since those days, we have seen some great comic book movies (The Dark Knight) and some truly awful ones (X-Men Origins: Wolverine), along with a scattering of less traditional/costume-free entries (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World).  The true test of comic book movies, though, comes from how true they can stay to their roots.  I'm not arguing that movies should adhere to the ridiculous continuity of their pulped roots; I'm saying that the logic and tone of the source material is essential to a good adaptation.  One of the most common occurrences in comics is the cross-over; characters from one comic make a guest appearance in another, hopefully impressing new readers and gaining new fans.  Until recently, each comic book movie series took place on its own, in an isolated bubble.  Starting in 2008, though, Marvel Studios began to plan for a Marvel Movie Universe, where their superhero films would all occur in the same general time and place, eventually leading up to a huge team-up movie, The Avengers.  It's a simple idea, but it was also pretty damn risky.  It meant launching multiple movie franchises and having them all be successful enough to encourage the development of The Avengers, where characters require no origin stories and the film can focus on huge special effects.  Is comic book publishing logic enough to make an entertaining movie?  In a word, "yes."

In two words, "Hell, yes"

I don't feel like explaining the plot of The Avengers in detail.  It's not a bad story, but I'm going to go with a "simpler is better" attitude here.  A desperate and petty demigod, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) has stolen a tesseract.  What the hell is a tesseract?  Well, here, it looks like a glowing cube, but can apparently do all sorts of things. 

Like make Loki give nasty grins

Loki manages to use this cube to open a doorway in space, allowing aliens to invade Earth because...well, I mentioned the desperation and pettiness, right?  Well, Earth has been through quite a lot over the past few summers, as chronicled in the documentaries Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger; in other words, Earth has some heroes available to defend it. 

Namely, Triangle Man and Person Man

And that's pretty much the plot.

Do you really need more than that in your action movie?  The Avengers does what it sets out to do; it combines a bunch of superheroes in a movie and gives them a suitably intimidating enemy to fight.  The acting in the film is not terribly dramatic, but it's pretty good for what it is.  Robert Downey, Jr is still great as the egotistical and charming Tony Stark (AKA Iron Man).  If this film leaned on any one character in particular, it was Iron Man.  Luckily, Downey is still enormously entertaining in this role.  Chris Evans showed a little bit more range as Captain America this time around, thanks to larger doses of humor and smaller doses of melodrama than in his own movie. 

...and lots and lots of posing

Chris Hemsworth is still fine as Thor, but he spent most of his time here fighting or standing in the background.  The big surprise in The Avengers was how awesome Mark Ruffalo was as the Hulk.  Ruffalo was less tragic than his Hulk movie predecessors, and that went a long way toward making him more fun to watch.  Of course, the most awesome Hulk stuff happened thanks to CGI, but Ruffalo set the stage for it well by making his character seem downright reasonable.

Above: realizing how much better 13 Going on 30 would be with a Hulk

But The Avengers are not made up solely of characters who have headlined their own films.  The group also includes the marksman archer Hawkeye (Jeremey Renner) and the super-spy Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson).  Renner is okay --- it's hard to justify an archer on a team with Thor --- but this role doesn't have enough meat for him to really do much with.  Johansson was considerably less impressive.  Granted, her character was utilized decently, even if she seems way out of her class in the battle scenes; still, the character was boring.  She doesn't carry a lot of scenes on her own, though, so that and her tight pleather outfit more or less balances the defects in her character.

ScarJo, in her biggest action scene.  Even she doesn't buy it.

What about the rest of the cast of thousands?   Samuel L. Jackson finally got to be onscreen for more than a few minutes as Nick Fury and...honestly, I wanted to see him be a bigger bad-ass.  It's not a big deal, but I was hoping for at least one scene where he does something that made my jaw drop; he wasn't bad, but he wasn't jaw-droppingly good, either.  I enjoyed Tom Hiddleston as Loki, even if he was a touch whiny.  Clark Gregg had his most important part and surprisingly wound up being the heart of The Avengers.  It was a little melodramatic as a plot device, but Gregg very likable here.  The rest of the recognizable cast was fine, but contributed little.  Colbie Smulders, Stellan Skarsgard, and Gwyneth Paltrow had the most to do, although only Paltrow was particularly likable.  And if you like playing "spot the actor," you will enjoy looking for Powers Boothe, Harry Dean Stanton, and Alexis Denisof.

The key to the success of The Avengers came from screenwriter/director Joss Whedon.  Whedon has been able to deliver some great lines for many years, but this is easily the best script he has produced to date (that landed on the big screen, anyway).  It might be a little light on emotion, but what little heart it has is taken advantage of fully.  This is a very well-paced action movie, with enough downtime to allow for humor, but enough seriousness to not wind up a Last Boyscout clone.  The secret appears to be how well he times his beats; Whedon did a great job playing with audience expectations, even when it was only slightly.  I have never really thought of him as an actor's director --- I suppose I thought of him as a story-first sort of guy --- but I loved how he had all these heroes portrayed.  The characters butted heads in a believable way and worked together in a way that made sense, too.  Surprisingly, the least likable hero in the film (Black Widow) fell into Whedon's historical comfort zone (strong female leads), but that was a small price to pay for how well he handled the movie's headliners.  I was also impressed with some of the action scenes.  There is one in particular, which shows each Avenger doing their thing in turn, as the camera pans from one hero to the next, that was just awesome to watch on the big screen.

First and foremost, though, The Avengers is an action movie.  And that is an understatement.  Free of boring origin stories or emotional investment, this film was able to provide action scene after action scene, many of which could have been the cool climax to a lesser movie.

 Each scene wowed, but the final battle, which took up a substantial portion of the movie, was thoroughly awesome.  This didn't have to be the case; wanton destruction does not necessarily make a movie fun or exciting (Transformers: Dark of the Moon, I'm looking at you).  But The Avengers was both.  I think it is because each hero had multiple occasions to do something cool; with so many characters swaggering onscreen without interfering with each other, the audience gets scene after scene of characters taking turns at awesomeness.  I should also point out how fantastic the Hulk looked in this movie.  This isn't the first time somebody has created a CGI Hulk, but this was the first time that they used full motion capture; I don't know how much of a difference it made, but his face did look pretty Ruffalo-like.

Remember that time Mark Ruffalo was shot with lasers?

Even better than the motion capture was the general attitude of the Hulk in this movie.  I don't want to spoil it for anyone by over-explaining it, but the Hulk almost stole the show.  To put it another way, The Avengers does such a good job rehabilitating the Hulk character that I can't wait for another Hulk movie.

The Avengers is, of course, not blemish-free.  It is a big, dumb action movie, after all.  The general plot of the first half was a little weak; "get captured" is rarely a step in an excellent scheme.  The aliens were a little generic.  I would have liked to see more types of alien attackers, but I suppose they were all essentially faceless henchmen.

Literally faceless

Hawkeye and Black Widow never really justified their inclusion in this story.  I don't think either character was far off from fitting in, but neither really clicked, either with each other or the rest of the cast.  The post-credits reveal of the behind-the-scenes villain might have made a handful of comic fans titter, but it was nowhere near enough to get the average moviegoer excited.  Are any of these problems enough to seriously dent the fun factor of this movie?  Not really.  Of course, an action movie is only as good as its villain, and Loki wasn't quite dastardly enough for my tastes.  Still, Hiddleston played the part well and made him evil to a satisfying degree.

Another flaw: when was Hawkeye in Inception?

How good is The Avengers?  I would argue that it is the best pure action movie to come out in at least a decade.  Please feel free to disagree with that statement; I have put some serious thought into it already and am primed for a fight.  Chances are, you already know how much you will enjoy The Avengers.  Fans of action movies and comic book flicks will be in love.  No matter how good you think it will be, you're underestimating it.  If you're on the fence, this is one of the most pleasurable summer popcorn flicks ever.  If you are tired of soulless comic book movie adaptations, then this Frankenstein's monster made of the wet dreams of every marketing team everywhere will not change your mind.  It is what it is, and it's possibly the best of what it is.  I normally have to take a few grains of salt when sitting down to enjoy a comic book flick, but The Avengers is so much fun that I fully expect it to join the illustrious ranks of Die Hard and Predator in my action movie library.  In other words, I'm planning to watch this a few dozen more times and expect to love it every time.

Thor

I'm a pretty big fan of Norse mythology.  Part of it is due to my Swedish ancestry and part of it is because Norse myths are basically set up like The Dirty Dozen; yes, the gods are all pretty bad-ass, but they all know that they're on a suicide mission called Ragnarok.   When I heard that Marvel Studios was going to be making a Thor movie as part of their announced Avengers franchise, I was a bit skeptical.  Sure, I've enjoyed the movies the studio has made so far (the Iron Man films and The Incredible Hulk), but Thor is a different type of character entirely.  This wouldn't be about making a fantastic character down to Earth, it would be about telling a story about a foreign god that most Americans are fairly unfamiliar with and turning it into a superhero movie.  There are a LOT of ways to do this story wrong.  Hell, even the comics only get it right every five years or so.  Now, I will admit that I read comics and have a decent collection of classic Thor issues, so I am definitely approaching this movie as a bit of a fanboy.

This issue was, in all seriousness, awesome.

That said, I entered Thor with high hopes and dreadful fears.  Would this join the ranks of awesome Marvel Comics movies, like X-Men 2, Spider-Man 2, and Iron Man 2, or would it be an incomprehensible mess, like X-Men 3, Spider-Man 3, and Daredevil?

Right off the bat, the film makes a wise choice by (more or less) starting the film in Asgard, home of the Norse gods.  The King of Asgard, Odin (Anthony Hopkins) is preparing to pass on the mantle of king to one of his sons, Thor (Chris Hemsworth), when there is a security breach within their castle.  Some Frost Giants, the immortal enemies of Asgard, managed to sneak in unseen and almost stole a weapon of great power before they were terminated with extreme prejudice by Odin's deadly sentry, the Destroyer.  Thor's immediate impulse is to take the fight to the Frost Giants, but Odin forbids any acts of war; he reasoned that this was an act made by a few, and they have been appropriately punished.  Thor seethes, but does nothing.  That is, he does nothing until he is baited by his brother, Loki (Tom Hiddleston).  Thor decides to go to Jotunheim, home of the Frost Giants, with his partners in crime, Loki, Sif (Jaime Alexander), and the Warriors Three (Fandral, Hogun, and Volstagg).  Why does he go?  Ostensibly, to get an apology from the Frost Giant king, but he's really there to fight.  And fight they do.  The Asgardians beat the living hell out of several dozen Frost Giants, but they are outnumbered and do not have any back-up.  A royally pissed-off Odin arrives and manages to keep the peace, but he punishes Thor by banishing him to Earth, without his godly powers.  Odin also takes away Thor's signature hammer, whispering an enchantment to it that more or less states that whoever can lift the hammer will have the power of Thor.

Most of the rest of the film follows Thor on Earth as he adjusts to not being a god.  Naturally, a brawny blonde that claims to be the god of thunder showing up right around the time and place that an unmovable hammer arrives garners some attention from all sorts of people, including scientists and the military.  However, the humbling of a god does not answer one key question.  How did those Frost Giants sneak into the supposedly impenetrable Asgard and set these events in motion?

One of the more interesting aspects of this film's production process was the decision to hire Shakespearean expert Kenneth Branagh to direct the movie.  As far as his Shakespeare films go, Branagh is one of the best in the business, both as an actor and as a director.  As for his other movies, well...Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was pretty godawful.  The man definitely has a good touch with his actors, though, as anyone working with (mostly) plays must have.  I thought he did a pretty solid job with Thor.  The action scenes (which he hasn't directed before) looked good and, in some cases, were pretty awesome.  The characters that had more than a few lines were all acted quite well by the cast, and I was particularly impressed by the lead performances of Thor and Loki by two unknown actors.  Branagh does not have the lightest touch when it comes to cinematography (I hope you like lopsided camera angles), but his choices all make sense.  All in all, I think Branagh did an adequate job with making the film look good and a very good job with the cast.

Speaking of the cast, I was alternately very impressed and depressed by Thor.  Chris Hemsworth was great in the lead role, capturing the arrogance of the character wonderfully.  His character could have been a little deeper, but Hemsworth more than delivered with what was given to him.  I was also impressed by Tom Hiddleston's Loki; Loki is a great character in mythology (and Neil Gaiman's fiction), and Hiddleston took a character that could easily just be evil and made him mischievous, cunning, and emotionally desperate.  This is definitely my favorite performance of a Marvel villain since Ian McKellan's Magneto.  I was surprised to see Anthony Hopkins giving a solid performance as Odin, since he has been mostly just mailing in his work for the past decade.  He wasn't spectacular, but he seemed regal and cold, which fits the part well.  I was far less impressed by Natalie Portman's role as Jane Foster, an astrophysicist that develops a romance with the thunder god.  She should be a pretty important part of the story, but aside from being a decently strong female character (read: she argues with the men-folk), she doesn't do much.  I'll give her credit for being more than just another damsel in distress, but that's not enough to stack up against the gods.

The rest of the supporting cast is similarly underwhelming.  Jane Foster's friends, played by Stellan Skarsgard and Kat Dennings, are likable enough, but never get past generic stereotypes.  Thor's Asgardian buddies have a similar problem, although they are less endearing.  Ray Stevenson (Volstagg), Tadanobu Asano (Hogun), Josh Dallas (Fandral) and Jaime Alexander all seem like they should have more depth, but they are surprisingly bland.  Aside from Volstagg's appetite and their general appearances, these four warriors are interchangeable in the story.  Colm Feore, who seems to get cast in big budget movies more for a willingness to wear extensive makeup than anything else, was mediocre as the king of the Frost Giants.  You would think his character would have a little more depth, or at least a few wicked moments, but I guess it's okay, since he's essentially a red herring.  Clark Gregg was okay as the agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., but he is certainly no Samuel L. Jackson.  You might be surprised to see Rene Russo in a small part, since her last role was six years ago.  You might not be surprised to hear that she doesn't do much of anything in the movie.  On the other hand, the requisite Stan Lee cameo was handled pretty well.

There was a minor controversy when Idris Elba was cast as Heimdall, the gatekeeper.  Personally, I don't have a problem with casting against type, and I think Elba has some serious potential as an actor.  He did good work in a small part here, and that should be where the controversy begins and ends.

What, he doesn't look Swedish?

This is a superhero movie, though --- the acting can only take it so far.  The action is, in parts, pretty entertaining.  I thought that most of the fight scenes were great, especially the ones on Earth.  I would have preferred the battle to be in a place where more stuff could be destroyed, but whatever.  The battle that opens the film had some inconsistent special effects, which distracted me, but the rest of the movie looked very good.  Actually, this movie is fairly action-packed, with far less time devoted to character development; that is a sharp change from the recent Marvel movies (aside from the horribad Wolverine flick), and not necessarily a bad one.  The story slows down significantly and takes on a more humorous tone when Thor is on Earth, so the movie feels a bit uneven at times.  And how much time passes in this movie?  The events in Asgard seem to take place at one pace, while the Earth storyline might have only covered about two or three days, which seems like a pretty compact amount of time for a character to learn a life lesson.  Still, the fight scenes were pretty sweet and I thought the off-Earth scenes were handled quite well, on the whole.

Thor is different from every other superhero movie that has come out because it is more than a superhero tale --- it has to be mythic.  While it doesn't get everything exactly right, I think this is a pretty entertaining action movie with some impressive fantasy elements in it.  The well thought-out work that was done to bring Asgard and Jotunheim to life helps elevate this movie above some of the more mediocre elements in its makeup.

What would have made this movie better?  A more well-defined Frost Giant king, either differentiating between Thor's war buddies or cutting some of them from the script, and a love interest that could go more than two minutes without mentioning the possibility of Thor being crazy.  More epic special effects in the flashback battle would have helped, too --- or, since it was a story, maybe animating it like an old story.  Thor is still pretty entertaining, and the lead actors were fun to watch.  It's just not up to the level of, say, an Iron Man.

(500) Days of Summer

(I Hate) This Title

Toward the beginning of (500) Days of Summer, the main character argues that this is not a love story.  I don't know how accurate that statement is.  This is kind of a romantic comedy for dudes, in the grand tradition of High Fidelity.  In other words, it's a romantic comedy that is happy to point out how just how it is not conforming to the formulas of the traditional rom-com.  And yet, when you watch it, you get the distinct feeling that this is a romantic comedy.  Because it really, really, really feels like one, until you get to the end.  The ending reminded me of a song by one of my favorite bands, Pulp.  Here's their awful music video, complete with the finest British fashion, circa 1996.

The story is told in a non-linear fashion, with a note at the beginning of each new scene, pointing out where the scene lines up in the 500 days of Tom's story.  The basics of the story are not particularly unconventional.  Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who has studied to be an architect but works writing greeting cards, is immediately smitten when he meets the new girl at work.  Her name is Summer (Zooey Deschanel), and the day they meet is Day 1.  Summer is pretty fun and outgoing, but she doesn't let people get emotionally close to her; in other words, she's an awesome acquaintance, but not much of a friend.  Plus, she claims to not want a boyfriend.  Pshaw!  Isn't this a kinda sorta romantic comedy?  There must be some semblance of romance, right?

I think she's explaining why she sounds a little like Kermit when she sings in She & Him.

The nonlinear story structure is what makes this feel like a romantic comedy.  If it was told in chronological order, it wouldn't be very funny.  Most of the humor comes from juxtaposing different days in the 500 day time line, making the scenes seem comically at odds.  Sure, there's some good dialogue within the scenes themselves, but I don't think this would qualify as either very "romantic" or "comedic" without this story structure.

The acting in this movie is never bad, but you might recognize some of the characters as fairly generic.  I enjoyed Joseph Gordon-Levitt's performance; I thought he hit the nail on the head as the single guy who is trying to decode the mystery of woman, with varying degrees of success.  If absolutely nothing else, I have to admit that I liked his character's wardrobe; I'm pretty sure I own every album featured on his band T-shirts.  His character is very likable, and it's easy to identify with him, even if he does get a little whiny at times.  His only flaw seems to be selling himself short, which isn't exactly the sort of character flaw that adds complexity to a character.  Zooey Deschanel once again plays an eccentric and somewhat flighty object of desire.  If that sounds familiar, it's because she has played this type of character a few times, notably in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, and I can totally buy her as an object of desire, but I haven't seen her in a role that's demanded much from her yet.  The rest of the cast is full of small parts.  Clark Gregg plays Tom's surprisingly kind stuffed shirt of a boss.  Matthew Gray Gubler is the friend that has a stable relationship and contributes almost nothing to the story until he has a speech about true love.  Chloe Moretz was pretty amusing as Tom's little sister and confidant; once again, she plays a character mature beyond her years, and she does a pretty good job of it.  Geoffrey Arend is Tom's idiot friend; I'm okay with Arend's performance here, but I just wanted to point out that he is married to Christina Hendricks.  That makes no damn sense to me.

Arend, master of mind control?

I should also point out Minka Kelly's brief appearance at the end of the film.  She didn't have a chance to do much, since her character's job was to just look pretty and say five or six lines, but her character is important to the story.

This was director Marc Webb's first feature film, and it's a pretty good debut.  I'm not exactly sure what about this movie got him the job directing the 2012 Spider-Man reboot, but he certainly shows some signs of talent in this film.  Nonlinear stories can be tricky to pull off on film, and they can appear gimmicky.  I don't see any way around the gimmicky thing; this would have been a far less interesting story if it was told in chronological order.  However, I think Webb pulled off the storytelling quite well.  He used a lot of strong images, along with the indicators as to what day happened when, to help the audience understand where each chapter fell within the overall story.  His use of locations and costumes definitely made the story easier to follow.  I also thought that he did a good job handling the overall tone of the film.  It's kind of funny, but not at the expense of the story.  It's kind of sad, but the humor balances it out.  I really enjoyed Webb's homages to other film genres; there is a short musical scene, one that is reminiscent of Italian cinema,and a touch of noir.

There really are a lot of things to like in this movie.  It doesn't play by the typical rules that we have come to know and expect in our romantic movies.  The direction and storytelling are pretty fun.  I feel like I should have enjoyed this far more than I did, because so many of the pieces seem right up my alley. 

Unfortunately, I don't think that this film is nearly as different as the filmmakers would want you to believe.  There are a lot of similarities here to other movies, some of them are obviously intentionally self-aware (the romantic comedy story arc, the film style homages, etc.) and some of them surprisingly oblivious (Tom's rant against the greeting card industry is surprisingly close to something out of High Fidelity).  Right off the bat, the story claims to not be a love story, and then it promptly manipulates the chronology of the story to fit the established formula of a love story; I understand that the writers were being clever with that, but it definitely felt too self-satisfied for my tastes.  Even the title tries to do something different, with the parentheses around "500," and, for reasons I can't really justify, irks me.

On the other hand, the story is quirky, the acting is pretty good (particularly Gordon-Levitt, who I am liking more and more) and the direction was especially good for a (not) romantic comedy.  I definitely enjoyed watching the movie, but it didn't have enough emotional impact to overcome a lack of explosions or utter coolness.