Sunday, June 03, 2012

Time the Avenger

It's official - 710 and I are the last two people in North America to see the Avengers.  ...and we did it in 3-D.

I've heard nothing but great word of mouth and what few reviews I've even scanned (but not read) have given the flick high marks.

My rating?  Meh!

I'm a fan of Joss Whedon and the direction seemed fine.  The story was kind of ok (though Whedon is alll about wormholes!) ....but nothing outstanding, though groups like Focus on the Family I'm sure got a stiffy when Captain America said there was only one g-d!.

It is an action-movie, but more action than movie and story.  It seems the action and effects were in place before the actual movie was written. That's just my take though.

Previous posts have mentioned that I've rarely read a comic book and never ever purchased one, and I've never seen the movies of the Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America or any of the Iron Mans.  So maybe I am not their target demographic.

Even in movies like these, I find it hard to suspend my disbelief  - such as Jeremy Renner's character shooting an arrow into an engine from a space ship.  It makes Luke Skywalker hitting an exhaust port two meters wide seem plausible.

As the characters go, I'm not sure Robert Downey Jr is even acting.  He comes across this way in all his movies and interviews. Renner is ok - and is more attractive than I have seen him in the past, especially after he loses those creepy contact lenses  He has nice arms.

For me, Mark Ruffalo can do no wrong....even as mild-mannered Bruce Banner (never saw that TV show either) he was kind of the heart of the movie.  And while this is possible the best thing I've seen Uma Thurman Scarlett Johansson in.  From what I can tell, her special skill is kicking, jumping and shooting pistols at targets or aliens from 80 meters away.  Oooh effective.   Gwyneth Paltrow was her charmless, talentless self....for all four minutes she was in the movie (if she was smart, she'd have given up a salary for a percentage of the back-end gross).

...and I'm sorry, but the eye patch that Samuel L. Jackson wore had more charisma than the man himself. He showed the same phone-it-in-mentality in the last three Star Wars movies and puts more effort into that g-d awful iPhone commercial.

I think there were two issues I had with the movie - one was the overhype.  There was no way to live up to it. Second was the same issue I had with the reboot of Star Trek - since all or most of the characters are coming back for a sequel or star in more of their own spin-offs, no one is in danger.  Everyone will live.  Oh yeah - sorry:  Spoiler Alert!  But it makes for a safe environment where nothing is at stake.

Whomever played the villan was good. I liked him.

And I liked seeing Cleveland. Yes, the Stuttgart scenes were Public Square in the land of Cleves. And much of the big city street battle scenes were filmed on E. 9th St.  It was shut down for weeks last summer and while many things were CGI'd to make look like NYC, those astute enough will see some Cleveland buildings.  It probably helped that I worked on E. 9th for three years and know all the structures.

3-D helped in places, but a few times I though 'whoa, in a year, this CGI is going to look really bad.'

Yeah, it sounds like I'm bad-mouthing the flick and I don't mean to be. It's not bad, but it's not as great as everyone says.  It is a good popcorn movie (though ironically I had none) but if you're looking for true suspense, it's not there.

I found the TV series of the same name to be more fun and inventive.  And it is possible after Elisabeth Montgomery, Diana Rigg may have been my next opposite-sex crush.


The Avengers was one of those shows my mother and I bonded over, though I had to be 8 or 10.  ...how did she not know I was gay then?  After Mrs. Peel left the show and was replaced by Tara King - I was no longer interested.  The movie based on this TV show, also called The Avengers, s-u-c-k-e-d. Do not see.

I'm behind on movies.  This is only #4 for the year and the first one since February. 710 has seen one more than myself - but I had zero interest in seeing The Hunger Games, so he went with friends.  But the trailers have proved a few decent summer movies to see - so we might make the 12 for 2012.


Song by:  the Pretenders

7 comments:

Cubby said...

You've put your finger on the biggest reason why not to wait to see a boxoffice blockbuster: it can never live up to the hype.

anne marie in philly said...

nope, spouse and I haven't seen "the avengers". the only avengers I will watch is the british tv series with diana rigg; tara king sucked.

Jeffrey said...

I had the same experience, and we went on opening weekend and were in a packed theater. Ho hum. Did they even mention the name of the guy with the bow and arrow once? Don't think so.

Unknown said...

As I say with all things comic book etc.. they are done for the FANS and the person just going because of the hype etc is surely to be disappointed every single time.

Erik Rubright said...

I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home, they're not much bigger than two meters.

I thought the movie was decent, although I was upset they killed of the one guy in the movie I liked: Agent Coulson.

Oh well, such is the way of Hollywood.

cb said...

Hey. I used to bullseye womprats in my T-16 back home, and they're not much bigger than 2 meters.

Cubby said...

For some reason this afternoon the name Robin Swaboda popped into my head. Did you notice, Blobby, in the credits for The Avengers that she was listed as a Cleveland reporter? I thought that was kind of cool. I haven't thought of her in a decade at least. Is she still working there?