The Avengers

I have been waiting four years for this. Marvel Studios announced the Avengers movie the Monday after the first Iron Man came out in 2008. Heck, they announced it even earlier by putting Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury at the end of the credits. Now four years later, having seen The Avengers, I can't believe they not only pulled it off, but knocked it out of the park.

Admittedly, I'm a lifelong comic book reader, so I don't know how that colors my opinions. I'm also a part of the cult of the movie's writer/director, Joss Whedon, whose career I've been following since the first episode of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show aired when I was in 9th grade. The Avengers was pretty much made for me.

But Marvel and Whedon didn't just target the nerds with The Avengers. They crafted a giant event film for the largest audience possible. An event film that truly feels like an event. Not since the Universal monsters started meeting Abbott and Costello has a studio so successfully combined characters from four separate movie franchises into one movie.

For those of you that live in a cave, The Avengers is the story of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and The Hulk all team up to defeat a world-threatening evil. Rounding the team out are superspy Black Widow, crackshot archer Hawkeye, and Nick Fury, the morally ambiguous director of SHIELD, a global peacekeeping organization.

The Avengers are not well known for how well they get along. These guys have big egos, and wildly clashing personalities. Part of the fun in the first half is watching the good guys duke it out with each other, in basically the most epic pissing contest in cinema history, before things start going crazy in the second half and they have bigger fish to fry.

The second half is where The Avengers really takes off. It's a slow build, but once the last 45 minutes come along and the heroes battle an alien army, ravaging New York City in the process, the movie provides one huge crowd pleasing moment after another. I think just about every thing you ever wanted to see done with these characters is done.

Joss Whedon is a lifelong fan, too, and he understands what we, the viewers want to see, and he delivers it with wild abandon. The characters are imbued with all the complexity and humanity that made them endure in the first place. Downey Jr. shines as always as Tony Stark/Iron Man, and the Chrises Evans and Hemsworth bring it with Captain America and Thor. Scarlett Johannson gets a whole lot more to do this time around as Black Widow, the spy with Red in her past. But the characters who stole the show for me were Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner/The Hulk, finally done right in a movie, and Tom Hiddleston's Loki, the perpetually monologuing, pompous Norse God of lies and mischief.

Also, did I mention the movie is extremely funny? The dialogue is endlessly witty, and there are several big comedy moments throughout. The audience laughed more at The Avengers than a lot of comedies I've seen.

I could go on and on and on about The Avengers, but I feel like I would be in danger of falling into one of those "and the part where this happened... and then the part where THIS happened..." situations, where I just list everything. I loved it. And I don't think you need to know the comic books to love it too. The Avengers is a real-deal phenomenon.

Captain America

It's been a long summer of event movies, and at this point, I have to say, I'm kind of sick of them. Event movie fatigue is the summertime equivalent of seasonal affective disorder. Among those event movies (a few of them were pretty good), were many superhero movies. First up was Thor, which I thought was a lot of fun, if maybe a bit brainless. Then came X-Men: First Class, which I thought had some really cool stuff, but maybe turned on the nitpicky part of my brain too much. Then came Green Lantern, which was, frankly, a piece of crap.

And so ends this summer's superhero season, not with a whimper, but with a bang. Captain America: The First Avenger, Marvel Studios' second entry of the year, is their strongest entry since the first Iron Man. It manages to break a little from the mold of the superhero origin story, tell a crazy sci-fi WWII period piece, and set up next summer's Avengers movie, all the while never losing track of the characters.

Captain America is Steve Rogers, who starts the movie as a skinny kid from Brooklyn, too sickly to serve in the military. His perseverance and spirit is noticed by Dr. Erskine, a brilliant scientist who has developed a Super Soldier Serum and believes Rogers is the perfect candidate to try it. The serum works, but circumstances follow that Steve can be the only successful subject. Meanwhile, Johann Schmidt, AKA the Red Skull has gotten his hands on the Cosmic Cube, an Asgardian artifact that can power his Nazi war machines indefinitely and turn the tide of the war.

The movie is good-spirited, fun, and full of adventure, reminiscent of the Indiana Jones movies, which is no surprise, since the director is Joe Johnston, who actually worked on the Indiana Jones movie. Johnston is also no stranger to period superhero pieces; he directed The Rocketeer, another well regarded comic book adaptation.

Chris Evans stars as Steve Rogers/Captain America. He plays it with an old-fashioned pure-heartedness that is difficult not to be won over by. He doesn't want to go kill Nazis, he just wants to be of use, do his part. As lucky as he was in getting the Captain America treatment, you get the sense he would have been just as happy getting shipped overseas in his earlier, sickly condition. There's a great moment when he's at a theater watching a morale-boosting movie serial he's starring in with an audience of kids. You see this lovely, complex look on his face that shows a little bit of embarrassment at what he's been put up to, but also some pride that he still gets to serve his country in some small way. Evans pulls that kind of stuff off excellently.

Hugo Weaving is awesome as the evil Red Skull, playing it with a dead-on Werner Herzog impersonation, an absolutely inspired acting choice on his part. Besides Heath Ledger's Joker, he's easily the best villain we've seen in a superhero movie in quite some time. Definitely the best of the Marvel Studios series. It's so fun and easy to hate Nazis, and this guy is a crazy super-Nazi. His army has energy weapons that can disintegrate victims in a burst of blue light.

The cast is rounded out by several more colorful and interesting characters. Stanley Tucci leaves an impact as Dr. Erskine, a good man who gives Steve Rogers a moral compass to guide his actions by. Tommy Lee Jones gets a lot of great one-liners as Cap's commander. Toby Jones plays Red Skull's weaselly mad scientist lackie, Arnim Zola. Not to mention Cap's buddy Bucky Barnes, his unit The Howling Commandos, his love interest Peggy Carter, and Tony Stark's Howard Hughes-esque father, Howard Stark. Everybody in the cast has at least one good moment.

Captain America also is the final building block in Marvel Studios' ambitious plan of setting up The Avengers, and as such, there are crosses and references to the other movies. Howard Stark gets a great intro, mirroring a memorable Tony Stark scene in Iron Man 2. The Red Skull is on a hunt for an Asgardian artifact, referenced months ago in Thor. And if that little teaser after the credits doesn't get you pumped, I don't know what will.

A minor issue, early in the movie, is the special effect of putting Chris Evans' head on a skinny body. Half the time, it looks pretty damn convincing, but the other half, the head tilts in a slightly strange angle, or the shading seems a little wrong. Whatever it is, it was enough to pull me out of the movie a bit whenever my brain picked up on it.

So in conclusion, if you're going to see one superhero movie this summer, then this probably came along too late for you. But if you're not sick of them after three, then Captain America is worth your time, and will certainly wash away the stink Green Lantern left in your mind.

THOR

Sorry for the lull in posts, folk(s). I haven't been watching movies much these past couple weeks. But it's no big deal, because this is the time I've been waiting for. Summer's here, everyone! And it kicks off with a bang.

The Marvel movie universe expands a little bit more with Kenneth Branagh's Thor. Thor brings a whole new element to the world that produced Iron Man and Hulk through technology gone awry: Real live Gods.

Real quick: Thor is the Norse God of Thunder, who inhabits the realm of Asgard with his friends and family. They once visited the earth, and gained the worship of man, but what they really are are highly advanced pan-dimensional beings. Still with me? It's okay if you weren't. Some of the audience wasn't either. Most of the people there seemed with it, but there were a few that shut down right away.

The first act of the movie is set in Asgard. It's an entirely original creation in movie terms, something I've never seen on screen before: Jack Kirby's trippy, larger than life artwork brought to vivid reality. It absolutely pops with colors, and is filled with architecture and designs that look torn straight from the comic book. Everything in Asgard seems huge, including its inhabitants.

After a fast paced fun adventure with cocky Thor and his mighty band of warriors, events lead to Thor being banished by his father Odin to earth to learn some humility. There he meets Jane Foster, a physicist studying the very dimensional portal that sent him to earth. He also falls afoul of S.H.I.E.L.D., Nick Fury's covert government agency previously seen in the Iron Man movies.

I'm not going to give away anymore. I'll just discuss the movie as a whole now.

As I said earlier, you're either with it, or you're not. The movie is very much a light-hearted, goofy, adventure story, quite cheesy, but I mean that in the very best way. Cynicism is best left at the door. The Gods speak in corny, boisterous fantasy dialogue, but I wouldn't have it any other way. That's part of what makes it so fun.

The cast, led by Chris Hemsworth as Thor, is pretty good. Anthony Hopkins has some powerful moments as his father Odin, and Idris Elba does a great deal with very few scenes as the fascinating Heimdall, the guardian of the Rainbow Bridge. The real discovery, though, is Tom Hiddleston as the devious God of Mischief, Loki. He brings depth and complexity to the character, making him much more than a simple villain. I have a feeling we'll be seeing more of him soon.... next summer, perhaps?

Thor's friends, warrior Goddess Sif and Volstagg, Hogun, and Fandrall, are a fun addition to the movie, and their presence gave the movie an extra element previously unseen in superhero movies: Thor has pals with powers too! It's fun to watch them. They have strong, individual personalities, and a nice feeling of kinship between them.

One of my few beefs with the movie, and this is pretty minor, is Kenneth Branagh's insistence on tilting the camera. Not since the atrocious, shit-classic Battlefield: Earth have I seen so many tilted camera angles. Branagh mostly confines these to establishing shots, thankfully, but he does it a lot. Does he think it makes it look more dynamic? Or has Battlefield: Earth just left such a bad association with me that I notice these shots more? I don't know. Anyway, I thought it was a little annoying.

Overall, I really dug Thor. It was good escapist fun and it managed to create a unique universe-within-a-universe that lives and breathes on its own. Some people might be turned off by the comic bookiness and the cheese, but if you are willing to commit to the fantasy of it all, I think you will have a good deal of fun. I think I will give it a pretty solid B+.

By the way, stay through the credits for a tease of what's to come!