Entry 9: RE: "Avengers" - Craving Struggle... And Dipping Sauces

Posted by: Bradley Redder

Again with the putting words in my mouth! I thought I was fairly polite when I asked for a dipping sauce if you were going to insist on doing that. I never said The Avengers needs everything that Spider-Man 2 has. I was using it to illustrate what I find fun in a comic book movie, and because after seeing The Avengers you sent me this text...

And later sent one asking "Spider-Man 2 or The Avengers?" That was still before you knew that was unimpressed with it and would therefore see no grounds for comparison. If you haven't figured out the answer yet, it's Spider-Man 2, pal, by hulking leaps and bounds.

And I hope you were just trying to take control of the argument or rile me up with that conclusion you got from my post, because if that's all you took away from it, then either I need to work on expressing my thoughts in writing, or you need to work on your reading comp... There are some great elementary schools in the area, Chad. We'll get through this. I'm here for you if you need me, and I've got like sixty Berenstain Bears books that we can read together. Just remember to sound out those words with mul, multi, multiple syllables and you'll be just fine.

Your argument for The Avengers seems to revolve around it being fun and cool. What I was saying about Spider-Man 2 is that it is more fun, and this is achieved through letting the audience see behind the curtain of its character, making us care about him. It also treats danger as something we feel along with this character as opposed to simply being a word that is thrown around or an obligatory plot device. Take the scene in which Doc Ock removes the brakes from a train and sends it speeding toward unfinished track. Spider-Man loses his mask and has to use all of his strength to stop the train. We're essentially watching Peter Parker here, and after he barely stops it in time and saves all of its passengers, he is completely spent, and he starts to fall forward when the passengers reach out and catch him and pass him back into the train car. They all marvel at the fact that their hero, the super-powered wonder that has been saving them and the rest of the city for two years is just a kid. And he is. And in this moment we see that he can be beaten. The passengers all agree not to tell anyone about his true identity and stand by him, something he needs in that moment, after we've watched him beaten down by Jameson and the Bugle, by Mary Jane, by Mr. Aziz at the pizza place, and by every other sacrifice Peter has had to make in order to be Spider-Man and go unappreciated.

You say Spider-Man is campy. I say it transcends camp. That sequence ends with Doc Ock coming back to claim Spidey, only the passengers, emboldened with the courage that their hero gives them, stand up in solidarity: "You want him, you have to go through all of us!" What's Ock's response? "Very well!" and he lunges his robotic arms forward and throws them all to the side and runs off with Spider-Man in his grips. Playing on campy cliches and being campy are two different things.

I know you're not a big sports guy, but perhaps you're familiar with underdogs, the team that is expected to lose. When spectators have no stake in the game, they tend to root for the underdog. It's only natural... It makes watching that much more exciting, thinking that what seems like an inevitable outcome will be thwarted and the little guy will win. We think that if these scrawny, little guys can pull out a win over a far more capable team, if something so unlikely can happen, then maybe the same thing can happen for us in our own lives. Maybe we can find the courage to ask a dickhead boss for a raise or maybe that girl actually likes us back. Great Hollywood heroes do the same thing.

Any great hero movie, be it Die Hard or Spider-Man has a moment when we think the bad guys might win... They're stronger, they outnumber the hero, or have him outgunned... Something. Something that makes us think that the hero succeeding isn't quite as inevitable as a century of cinema has shown it to be, which makes it that much more exciting when the hero does outsmart the villain, or has better aim with the one bullet he has left. The Avengers is missing that moment. We never see a weakness, or think for a second that Loki or the aliens might defeat the heroes, or even wreak enough havoc to create a real problem. The heroes always have it under control. It gives us nothing to latch onto... They're never underdogs, and we don't have any interest in them as characters, as people. Spider-Man 2 makes us care about what happens to these characters (even Doc Ock!), so we're taken along on the ride when the action starts, rather than waiting in line and watching everyone else have all the fun.

And Bruce Banner coming to terms with being Hulk is weak. This is not character development as much as it is the product of the Joss Whedon Plot Convenience Machine, patent pending. Out of nowhere he is able to control the Hulk and take orders from Captain America? Lame. It's also a condensed version of Banner's arc in 2008's The Incredible Hulk, minus Captain America, of course. Wouldn't it have been more exciting, interesting, suspenseful, and fun had he not been able to harness and direct his anger? If he were just let loose on New York, destroying everything, forcing the heroes to figure out a way to corral the aliens into his path? That way the aliens don't need to feel threatening, because the Hulk is there, and Whedon could get away with making them look like Power Rangers villains.

What I'm saying is that an action movie needs to have a struggle. Whether its physical or emotional or something else doesn't matter, but The Avengers doesn't have it. For all the great effects and destruction in action movies, it's the struggle that makes a good show. It's like this little textual boxing match we have going... How boring would it have been if I had said "It sucked," and then you immediately conceded? We both know this ends with you admitting that The Avengers is nothing more than glorified, grand-scale mediocrity, but it's much more fun if we go twelve rounds before you do.

And I don't know how I feel about you using this as a platform to take cheap shots at our nation's leader. "He's a menace!" Should I refer to you as J. Jonah from now on?