Agile Writers

MINI-REVIEW: Hulk Smash, Iron Man Fly, Thor Grimace, Humans Run!

RATING: See it in the­aters
(Rating System: “See it in the­aters,” “Wait for the instant down­load,” “Don’t waste your time”)

Loki (Tom Hiddleston), the half-brother of Thor has returned to Earth to pave the way for a wave of destruc­tion at the hands of evil aliens.  But secret agency S.H.E.I.L.D has been prepar­ing by ana­lyz­ing the mys­te­ri­ous Tesseract – an blue-glowing cube of unhar­nessed infi­nite power.  Loki steals the Tesseract and it is up to Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), leader of S.H.I.E.L.D to pull together a team of the world’s first super heroes to defeat Loki and return the Tesseract from whence it came.  The heroes are known as The Avengers and they are Captain America (Chris Evans), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner).

The Avengers is a recipe for dis­as­ter.   It is an ensem­ble cast of play­ers, each of whom is a third mag­ni­tude star in his (or her) own right.  Whenever you get this many egos in the room at one time, there is bound to be in-fighting.  And in fact, this is what hap­pens in the movie.  The heroes can’t get along.  They jockey for alpha-male sta­tus, only to find that they are equals, each with his own unique strength.  And yet, both on the screen and in real­ity, they find a bal­ance.  Each actor brings his own ingre­di­ents to the mix.  And each actor plays his (or her) char­ac­ter to per­fec­tion; as if it were their own film.

Another prob­lem is back­story – there is a lot of it.  Some of these char­ac­ters have been brought to the col­lec­tive con­scious­ness in their own debut films of the last cou­ple of years (Iron Man, The Hulk, Thor, and Captain America).  If you’ve seen their films then you have an idea of who they are already.  The other two needed a bit more intro­duc­tion and it was skill­fully inter­laced with the action.

And then there’s the prob­lem of inter­ac­tion – 6 main play­ers plus Fury and Loki implies 28 dif­fer­ent rela­tion­ships.  And that’s a hard act to pull off in just 142 minutes.

Still, writer/director Joss Whedon (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Serenity”) pulls it all off with appar­ent ease.  The story is relent­less in its pace and still fills us in on who the char­ac­ters are and what they con­tribute.  There’s an amaz­ing scene when the char­ac­ters are at their low­est point (close friends are dead, the team is dis­persed) and they expose each other’s weak­nesses.  The souls of our heroes are left bare.  This gives us nowhere to go but up.

And indeed, up we go.  To beat their com­bined foe, the team must pull together: each mem­ber using their spe­cial gifts to turn back an invad­ing force.

But as amaz­ing as the film is, there are prob­lems.  The last cli­mac­tic scenes are a series of improb­a­ble bat­tles in the heart of New York City.  Mind you, these bat­tles are car­ried out with much more pre­ci­sion than the garbage whirl­wind of the Transformers films.  But, due to the PG-13 nature of the film, we find lit­tle blood­shed and a lot of tum­bling skyscrapers.

Which brings me to the biggest prob­lem I have with the film: just how strong are these super heroes?  Hulk, besides being hulk­ing, is appar­ently imper­vi­ous to direct bul­let and mis­sile fire.  Captain America can appar­ently with­stand the full force of alien hand grenades.  Iron Man takes a lick­ing and keeps on tick­ing.  And Thor, with his mighty ham­mer seems to be able to stop any­thing, but still goes fly­ing when mon­sters whip their tails.  And for the other two (who remind me of the Professor and Marianne from Gilligan’s Island – “and the rest”), when there is a bat­tle they are sent off to do recon­nais­sance or direct traf­fic lest they be tram­pled or crushed.  They may be more of a lia­bil­ity than they are worth.

Finally, I want to talk about the unsung hero of the Marvel uni­verse: Stan Lee.  Lee has a cameo appear­ance in every Marvel action movie.  He is held as sort of the prog­en­i­tor of mod­ern hero lore.  As such, he is a spe­cial icon in the comic book (and now movie) realm.  All leg­ends spring from his fount.  There is a name for that kind of hero – they are called gods.

So, for out­stand­ing story, char­ac­ters, spe­cial effects and an amaz­ing “boot” (not even a reboot) of a new fran­chise, I rec­om­mend you see it in theaters.