Yet Another Avengers Review! (But with added rock music)

So, I’ve just seen The Avengers and indeed it is awesome. Maybe starts a little slow, but then someone loses his temper and from there on in it’s fantastic. Here’s my review; it contains spoilers, although I’ve kept them to a minimum as there are a few moments which you really don’t want to know about in advance. Also, I’ve chosen to review it through the medium of song…

 

“The hammer of the gods
Will drive our ships to new lands
To fight the horde, singing and crying
‘Valhalla, I am coming!’”

Technically The Avengers is a sequel to most of the films Marvel has released since Iron Man, but in many ways it’s mainly tied to Thor – the lead villain is Thor’s adopted brother Loki, and the main plot McGuffin was introduced in the earlier film’s end-credit sequence. Loki’s desire for power (and Thor’s decision to use power to protect innocents) sets events into motion and leads to some nice moments where that is punctured – in one comedy moment, which is too much fun to spoil, but also in a scene in Germany, where Loki’s demands that people kneel before him is challenged by a lone, elderly man. Given that even the actions of some of the good guys are driven by a fear of power (Sam Jackson’s organisation is scared that the growing superhero population is getting too strong to contain). Thor himself doesn’t get that much to do, other than be a powerhouse who gets to beat up other powerhouses, but Thor beating up powerhouses is fun. Everyone knows that extreme property damage is one of the guilty pleasures of the comic book industry.

 

“I am Iron Man!
Has he lost his mind?”

The Hulk gets the majority of the big-fun bits, but of all the actors, it’s Robert Downey Junior who’s the biggest scene stealer – not that you were expecting otherwise.  Effortlessly poking and prodding the other characters, and generally coming across as the guy who knows he’s the smartest person in the room, he owns his scenes. It’s interesting that he gets to deliver a threat to Loki, pitching cut-glass English sarcasm against smart-ass Tony Stark. He’s not developed a whole deal, probably because there’ve already been two Iron Man films and therefore he’s the most established cast member anyway, but that doesn’t matter. No-one does the funny and charismatic thing better.

 

“Captain America’s been torn apart;
He’s a court jester with a broken heart.”

Well, no Axl, he’s not. Captain America is great in this – he’s the straight-laced one who (almost) everyone respects and loves, and while this might not sound particularly interesting, it works. As someone says, Cap may be old-fashioned, but maybe the world needs a little old-fashioned. Of all the characters, he’s probably the one genuine good and decent guy there. The film respects that – he’s the only one of the core three Avengers who doesn’t get undercut by a moment of slapstick. That’s a smart move – Thor’s Shakespearean pronouncements are crying out for a pratfall, and it’s always fun to see Iron Man suddenly paying for his cockiness, but if you mock Captain America too much, you lose the moral heart of the movie.

 

“Stop talking about comic books or I’ll kill you.
I don’t care if the Hulk can defeat the man of steel.”

Well, he couldn’t, so it’s a good thing Superman isn’t in this movie. But when people tell you that the Hulk steals the show, believe them. I know that’s hard to get your head around – the Hulk has been a difficult character to translate into movies – but he’s great as a supporting character/looming threat. Kudos also to Mark Ruffalo, who makes the nervy, quiet, restrained Bruce Banner an almost-likeable character who nevertheless you want to keep at arm’s length. The ever-present idea that he could lose control and create mayhem is played with genuine menace by the other characters, especially Scarlett Johansson, to the point where the Hulk’s inevitable emergence is almost a relief. Because that’s when the smashing starts!

 

In short, go see it. There isn’t really a weak link in the whole thing – Hawkeye gets a little punked, but there’ll be room for him in any sequels, and while I’ve concentrated on the more showy characters, it’s worth mentioning the Black Widow’s inventive use of a chair and Agent Coulson’s baseball card collection. I’m a DC fan, and my big disappointment of the night was that there wasn’t a trailer for The Dark Knight Rises, but Marvel are knocking their movies out of the park at the moment, and anything that gives superheroes a chance to shine is fine by me.

 

Never Give Up: Some Thoughts on Captain America: The First Avenger

So last night I went to see Captain America: The First Avenger and it’s a fantastic film. It’s Indiana Jones with superheroes, which sounds dismissive until you realise that Indiana Jones with superheroes is an awesome idea. It’s also one of those films where the casting really works; Chris Evans manages to sell the clean-cut sincerity of a man who only wants to stand up to bullies, be they local jerks or super-Nazis, and Tommy Lee Jones basically plays Tommy Lee Jones in a role that really just requires someone to be Tommy Lee Jones. That’s a winner, but the real stand-out is Hugo Weaving, who turns in a quiet, subtle, layered performance of tragic dignity*.

Anyone who’s read this blog before will know that my film reviews either end up taking the mick, or using them as a springboard to waffle on about the film’s themes. This is going to be one of the latter occasions, because Captain America isn’t the sort of film you can mock. While the Red Skull is gloriously over-the-top, the whole thing is a homage to WWII comic books and pulp storytelling so it really doesn’t matter. He’s called the Red Skull, for goodness sake, saying he’s OTT is just missing the point.

Meanwhile the lead character could have come across as horribly jingoistic but the film takes time to undercut any propagandism, going on to show why everyone should feel free to respect and sympathise with Cap, regardless of whether or not you feel moved to chant “USA! USA!” at any point.

The heart of the movie is seen right up front. Steve Rogers is a scrawny seven-stone weakling with a liat of ailments as long as the film’s credits, all of which mean he’s declared unfit for the army, and therefore punching Nazis. Recognising something in the way Steve refuses to quit trying to enlist, he’s recruited for a secret experiment to turn him into a peak physical specimen – a ‘super soldier’. The experiment is successful but can’t be repeated, with the film following Steve’s journey from being used as a propagandist laughing stock to becoming the central hero of the Marvel Comics universe, all of which is driven by his total refusal to give up or back down.

I guess that’s the lesson of the movie: never give up, never surrender (as another good film once said). I wonder how many times the same story is repeated – we’re young, idealistic, full of hopes and dreams, then as time goes on we get worn down, become clockwatchers, abandon those dreams as naive and hopeless. We give up, and even when we tell ourselved it’s necessary, it’s still an act of surrender.

Despite this, there are still times we have a choice, aren’t there? Times when we need to either speak out or stay quiet, take a stand or hide in the background. It’s interesting that the movie gives Steve these choices when he’s at his weakest, before he gets his powers, and when he’s sidelined by the army he so wants to serve – yeah, his moral code says he’s going to take on the bullies, but at key points he doesn’t have much in the way of back-up. It’s easy to make the right choice when, say, Tommy Lee Jones is growling at your side, but what happens when you’re on your own? How does that affect the ethical choices we have to make?

In the end, the world of Captain America didn’t need a colossus striding the skin of the world, or a stooge of politics, it just needed a brave and decent man to do the right thing. And I guess that’s all that can be asked of you and me as wel: do the right thing; never give up.

* Not really. He plays a skull-headed loon weasel. But he does it beautifully.

At the Crossroads Between Fiction and Reality: Captain America, Star Trek, Hackgate

Ever feel like the world has gone mad? I do. It seems like every time you open a newspaper, you read a story that could just as easily be the synopsis of a Dan Brown novel, or a Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster. For example:

The Soviet Union had Super Soldiers
If you don’t know the story of Captain America, it’s fairly straight-forward: seven stone weakling Steve Rogers volunteers for a secret WWII experiment that catapults him to the peak of human fitness and superhero iconography. Well, now it turns out that that the Soviet Union had Super Soldiers for real – at least according to Pravda. Sadly, Wired have pointed out that this story is bobbins, which is somehow disappointing; there’s something attractive (if insane) about there being a secret history of superhero analogues sneaking through the shadows of the 20th century.

(Of course, this use of Pravda as pop culture propaganda works both ways – Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry always claimed that Chekov was added to the show’s second season because of Pravda’s complaints that the first nation in space wasn’t represented in Trek‘s utopian future – turns out the complaint had probably never been published.)

The Whole Phone Hacking Thing
I’ve moaned about this before, but here’s another slant on it – the whole thing is playing out like a narrative. Now sure, these things get mediated through the various news agencies and so there’s a reason we call all these disparate events a ‘story’, but this week the narrative has almost starting imposing itself – beyond the core story itself, twists are emerging: the initial whistleblower has been found dead amid allegations of police corruption, Hugh Grant has emerged as one of the heroes – and now Lulzsec and the guy who custard-pied Rupert Murdoch at yesterday’s hearing are positioning themselves as the chaotic, Trickster elements of the whole thing. Our moral outrage is now sitting alongside our anticipation of the next inevitable twist. It’s news-as-inadvertent-theatre, and it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out with regards to how we consume and relate to the news media.

Space-Time Cloak Could Make Events Disappear
This is just crazy.

So there you have it, truth is stranger than fiction. Or maybe fiction is becoming reality. Who knows? But if someone dressed as a giant bat starts taking down gangsters, don’t say I didn’t warn you…