Entry 7: RE: "Avengers" - Marvel 'Comics'

Posted by: Bradley Redder

Just a quick post before bed. It's too late to start Spider-Man 3, so I figured I'd throw one more thing out there. Our Avengers week is wrapping up much faster than I had hoped, and there are till several things I'd like to address. Among them: the plot hole that unravels the entire reason for this film's being; the Galaga joke, the cynicism of Agent Phil Coulson's death, and, of course, your claim that not only might this be the greatest superhero film ever, but maybe even the most entertaining cinematic experience of all time! An exaggeration if there ever was one.

But now, onto the flyer I saw stapled to a telephone pole earlier this evening, with the headline: "Hear ye! Hear ye! The Marvel Comics Comedy Cavalcade is coming to a town near you!" It advertised the Hulk and Iron Man and Captain America... All those guys. All together. All telling jokes. Sounds awesome. I also saw an article online that said Joss Whedon plans to make The Avengers 2: Tough Crowd what he calls "a 4 1/2-D cinematic experience." Apparently in addition to glasses, audience members will be given a scratch-and-sniff card with smells ranging from "lightning-scorched Earth" to the surely disgusting "Hulk fart." Also, at every screening viewers in the first five rows will be given complementary ponchos by two theater employees who will stand below the screen and throw various objects at the audience during the scene in which Thor starts smashing watermelon and tubs of cottage cheese with his hammer.

Yes, I stayed through the credits, as conditioned to do by every Marvel movie in the last four years. And surprisingly, for the first time it actually paid off! What a great after-the-credits joke! My only note is that it should have gone on for twenty minutes, long enough to stop being funny, and then get exponentially more funny the longer it went on, but oh well. Still great. Perfect cap for such a ridiculous film and, unlike some of the other admittedly funny jokes, well placed. Whedon had to have suspected that those tacked-on scenes were getting old, and used them as retrospective set-ups for a  punch-line. Well done! I just wish he had realized that not every character had to be a continuous source of wit. If only a similar level of thought could have been put into the rest of the jokes in the film, some of which ultimately serve to ruin tension, prevent me from taking anything seriously (characters or situation), and make me question things going on off-screen and before the events of the film. The Galaga joke is the most egregious offender, but more on that tomorrow. For now, bed, where I hope to dream about you making a convincing argument for this being a great superhero film, or even a good one.