Ack! Pthu! Ptui! (cough) (cough)... Aw, Chad, your words taste awful! Could you take them out of my mouth, please? If you're going to insist on inserting them in the future, at least have the courtesy to dip them in barbecue first. I never said that the Chitauri look exactly like a Power Rangers villain; what I said was they look like scrapped Power Rangers concept art. Much different. Much more belittling. And to be perfectly honest, I can't tell if you're being sarcastic with those pictures and claims or not, because it looks to me that if you take Goldar's chest armor off, you've got at least an Uncle of the Chitauri. And take a look at this guy...
If you animate this guy with CGI, he's a Chitauri. In all seriousness, this image is a Richard Linklater rotoscoping away from being that shot of a Chitauri that you posted. The leader on the mind-meld Transformers 2 planet even wore a goofy headdress like this one, so even if he and the Chitauri aren't exactly the same, they at least run in the same circles and buy from the same eBay seller. If you like them so much, I suggest you check out "gOoFyLoOkInGbUlLsHiT069's" eBay store immediately for some more cool stuff before Ivan and his Chitauri poker buddies snag it all up.
As for this fun you're so obsessed with, I wasn't having much of it. Yes, the characters are funny, but didn't it get tiresome? Didn't it start to get in the way? And is that all it takes for you to love someone, a laugh? I'm sure Saddam Hussein used to have some pithy one-liners; does that mean you love him too?
Okay. Invoking Saddam is maybe a little bit extreme, but I do so to add at least one formidable opponent to this discussion of a good-vs.-evil superhero film. The Avengers lacks a legitimate sense of danger, partially because its designated threat resembles baddies from a silly 90s after school toy advertisement. But what also holds it back is the fact that Whedon is afraid to go five lines of dialogue without a gut-buster. Yes, a lot of the jokes are actually funny, and the comedic timing of his actors is pretty remarkable, but unfortunately Whedon's own timing is off, inserting witty comments where they don't belong and ruining any tension he accidentally builds up when a few consecutive jokes miss the mark.
I'm all for fun, especially in a $220 million superhero team-up movie, but not at the expense of my taking any moment of it seriously. Fun here, as in Whedon's writing project, The Cabin in the Woods, only cheapens the experience as a whole, like when S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are playing fucking Galaga in the middle of a world-threatening crisis... Ugh. To relegate the responsibility of character development to the individual films leading up to this one, as you say Whedon does, only strengthens my case for its emptiness. Due simply to enthusiasm, your argument comes off as an endorsement for the film, but is essentially as condescending as my Power Rangers remark. Are you sure you don't agree with me that The Avengers is simply bloated and shallow? It sounds an awful lot like you do, especially now that I have you on my side about the goofy Chitauri.
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