Saturday, June 9, 2012

Avengers

It was good. Dialogue was sharp, funnier than I expected. As a spectacle movie, it ends up feeling like a lightweight Transformers, never near as exciting as Michael Bay's trilogy (although also never near as obnoxious).

After the opening action sequence, in which Loki single-handedly wrecks S.H.I.E.L.D., I think Nick Fury says something along the lines of "This is a level 7," immediately prompting whispers in the audience about what would constitute a level 9 or 10. The situation does later escalate, but, even at the movie's biggest action sequences, "level 7" sounds about accurate by my scale. I was not even convinced that Thor by himself was ever quite having to give 100 percent. The cannon fodder aliens seemed no more dangerous than the entirely earthly threats of Iron Man 2. And Captain America was totally useless.

Mark Ruffalo was good as Bruce Banner, although, the way the Tony Stark character has been conceived as an uber-genius in these movies, one wonders why the team would ever need any other scientists. I can see that Hank Pym (AKA Ant-Man) would have been redundant here, but I still hope he and the Wasp are in the next one. And, no, he's not just a guy that turns small and talks to ants; he also has expertise in robotics and AI, and he created Ultron, one of the villains that I personally would most want to see as the heavy in an Avengers movie.

7 comments:

Czardoz said...

Why Ultron? Didn't we fight him in Marvel Ultimate Alliance?

Henry said...

Yeah, that game was not the best showcase for him or any other character....

Ultron is probably the only superhero comic character that I ever found kind of scary. Maybe it's just because of how he looks.

He's a super-intelligent killer robot, who, upon first waking, immediately declared his intention to destroy his creator. And his outer shell is adamantium (actually the first appearance of the metal in Marvel comics). And he's the creator of the Vision.

Czardoz said...

So Ant Man begat Ultron begat Vision? I thought the Vision was a good guy, though.

Henry said...

He is. So is Ant-Man. And Ultron is a bad guy. Quite a family.

Sam Kahn said...

I was wondering who can be featured that is non-cosmic. Ultron is really a great choice.

Czardoz said...

So is Ultron's adamantium shell stronger than the shell on that big robot from Thor? I thought that guy was pretty scary.

So Ultron sounds kind of like an evil Frankenstein's monster. That would be cool, having Hank Pym making him at the beginning of the movie, then it's activated and immediately says, "I kill you father!" Then Pym is horribly crippled by the attack, and the only way to save his life is by turning him small so the ants can use their serum on him. Man, this stuff writes itself.

What if they had Hank Pym, but he never turned small, and they never called him Ant-Man in the movie? Would that still be legitimate?

And is the Wasp just a woman who can turn small, or is she always small?

Henry said...

The Destroyer? We fought him too, remember?

I could imagine Hank Pym serving in a role similar to the Erik Selvig character, as a scientist brought in by S.H.I.E.L.D. for his expertise, rather than for his superpowers. It would be pretty lame if he never became Ant-Man though....

Janet van Dyne (AKA the Wasp) was a normal-sized woman who, like Hank Pym, could turn small or big (though almost never big). I'm not sure why, but, unlike Pym, when she turned small, she also grew wings and could fire projectile blasts.