Thoughts on The Avengers! Spoilerfilled!!!

I’m back! It’s been a while since my last entry here, been busy with exams and the likes, but it’s all done now, school is officially out for summer as far as I’m concerned. Which means now, I have the time to talk a little about some of the stuff that’s happened the last month or so, things like the long awaited premiere of Marvel’s The Avengers. I naturally made sure I had a seat in the first screening of the day on the premiere and ever since, I’ve been pondering what to write in a review of it. Since it’s been so long since it premiered, I decided not to do a review per se, but just run through a couple of the things that really got my attention. My expectations for The Avengers have been high to say the least and thankfully, I wasn’t disappointed. It was awesome; it was pure comicbook-superhero-geek awesomeness. Everyone’s been talking about whether director Joss Whedon could make this work, if he could make these totally different characters believable as a team, if they would all be given enough screentime, would they work as a group etc. And, well, as far as my personal take on those issues, I think the picture below says it all: yes, yes he could!!! Whedon manages to make The Avengers accessible to a stranger to the Marvel U, but at the same time makes it a joy watching it to any geek familiar with the MU. If there’s anything to complain about as a fan, it’s only that the movie wasn’t twice as long. I can’t help but feeling that it only just got started after those little under 2,5 hours, I was definitely craving more at that point. But hey, that’s a positive thing, wanting more at the end of the movie, thumps up for that. 

And it was at that point my favorite scene of the entire movie came in to save the day. Had I hated the entire movie, the mid-credits scene would’ve saved the whole thing anyways. Rumors had been circulating in regards of a second villain besides Loki in the movie and a lot of us comic geeks was expecting this moment. Ever since we glimpsed the item known as the infinity gauntlet for a millisecond in the beginning of Thor, we all expected a certain someone to show up sooner or later. I’m referring of course, to Thanos the Mad Titan, who is revealed to be the one that lend Loki the chitauri army. In the mid-credits scene, we see The Other reporting to his master that the invasion of Earth failed and that humans aren’t as weak as they thought. The other goes on to state that “To challenge them would be to court death” at which point Thanos rises from his throne, turns to the camera and smiles. I can’t stress enough how amazing this is to a fan. Bringing Thanos into the Marvel cinematic universe is the kind of thing you always hope for, but never really dares to expect. But who is Thanos? I could spend a lot of room here explaining his origin, but I’d rather recommend you google him for extensive information. In short, he’s an intergalactic warlord and worshipper of death, who by any means seeks to impress the embodiment of death (mostly depicted as a female figure, Mistress Death, sometimes as a little girl) with whom he is in love. He is one of the few to ever collect the infinity gems and assemble them in the infinity gauntlet (the six infinity or soul gems mind, soul, time, space, reality and power grants their wielder immense god-like power and basically ensures absolute dominion over the universe). To sum up, Thanos is one of the biggest bad-asses in the MU and since we can more or less assume he’ll be the main villain in the sequel, we as an audience are in for something way way way better than the first one. There IS a chance he won’t be in Avengers 2, maybe he won’t show up until the third one. Again, Thanos is a freaking big deal, there WILL be casualties. In my opinion, the Avengers can’t face him without one of them dying; it’s just not going to happen. Also, there’s a need for more firepower on the team before they are capable of fighting the Mad Titan, so we might have to wait a bit, giving the opportunity of introducing additional members to the team before having to face this major threat. And yes, I know it might seem presumptuous to talk about a third movie already at this point, but since The Avengers is currently the third highest-grossing movie ever, I’d say things are looking pretty good.

There are seriously a million things I could talk about that I like about this movie, it’s overwhelming… I think that’s what describes it best, it was overwhelming. To have ones expectations met, seeing these characters that you know and love coming to life on the screen was truly amazing. Before I finish, or try at least, I really could go on and on about this movie, there are a few more things I need to mention.

Everyone talks about the Hulk and how he steals the picture entirely… And the reason for this is its true; the Hulk/Banner absolutely stands out as the one that really succeeds of these characters. The reason for this is simple, actually; we never had a Hulk/Banner on screen that worked before. All of the other characters has been handled well in their respective movies. The first Hulk movie was terrible, pure and simple. Don’t’ care how critically acclaimed Ang Lee is, keep your crouching Hulk, a hidden Hulk, the movie sucked and Eric Bana just wasn’t a believable Bruce Banner to me. The second Hulk movie was slightly better, still not really worthwhile though. This time, Edward Norton took over as Banner which didn’t exactly help things. Norton is usually a good actor, there’s just one problem; he’s Edward Norton! And that’s who he was in that movie, himself as opposed to being Bruce Banner whom he was supposed to portray. Now, in The Avengers, Mark Ruffalo has taken over as Banner/Hulk and I must say the result is impressive. I have a hard time deciding which I love the most, Ruffalo as Banner or as the Hulk because he’s remarkable as both. From depicting the nervous and uncomfortable genius Bruce Banner to the brutal god-smashing green giant, Ruffalo IS both.

Finally, I just need to highlight the effort of actor Clark Gregg whom we’ll have to do without from now on. His character, S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Phil Coulson, died at the hands of Loki in the movie. At least that what it looked like, you never know with Marvel. A lot of fan speculation has him returning as the Vision (synthezoid android member of the Avengers), but it’s important to remember that this is just fans talking and has been refused by both Gregg and Marvel. Naturally, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen and Coulson could really return any number of ways, we’ll just have to wait and see. I’m good either way. Coulson was an awesome character and I’d love to see him return if there’s a good story behind it. But on the other hand, he died a hero; ordinary human agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. taking on Loki the god of mischief, it takes balls.

The Avengers was great, it’s that simple and I can’t wait to see the next step in the Marvel cinematic universe. Until then, we’ve all got The Dark Knight Rises to look forward to. While I’m not nearly as enthusiastic about this one as I was about The Avengers, I’m very much starting to look more forward to it now that I feel safe about Avengers. The last (maybe) of Nolan’s trilogy, rumor has it he might kill off the dark knight? I doubt it, even though it could prove a great emotional way to finish his take on the character… If you haven’t seen The Avengers yet, stop being a retard and get going and remember TDKR July 20^th.