Well after waiting four years and watching five feature-length trailers, The Avengers lands with a thud not unlike Thor's hammer hitting the ground. Okay, it's not quite that bad, but it's not all that good, either. And like Thor without his hammer, it just doesn't hit with the power it has the potential to. At two and a half hours, half-cocked just doesn't cut it, especially when much of the most impressive set-piece looks as though it was cobbled together with unused footage from Transformers 3, with an extra-terrestrial menace flying in through a sky-portal opening from another world and attacking a metropolitan area.
The Avengers was directed by Joss Whedon, who is most known for his television work as creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, and at times it feels like he never left TV behind. It almost feels small, though it's smallness on a very grand scale. That's not a thought I initially had walking out of the theater, given that it ends with a forty minute action sequence that is for the most part well-done, despite the comparisons to Transformers 3. But thinking back on it, there really isn't much there. The bulk of it takes place on a flying aircraft carrier which, aside from the awesome ridiculousness it provides at first sight, is actually pretty bland on the inside. Every room on the ship is either incredibly bright or incredibly dark, and not in a stylistic, moody way. It even comes complete with a command center stocked with faceless young people in one-piece uniforms who monitor a bunch of graphs and stuff on fancy touch-screens... What I wouldn't give to never have to see another one of these in a movie again.
And the writing reflects this feeling of smallness. It's plot is about as loose as it gets... S.H.I.E.L.D., the agency controlled by Nick Fury, who will assemble the Avengers, possesses an energy cube that can open a portal to another world. The film opens as Loki, the brother of and villain from Thor comes through it to Earth, steals it, and intends to use it to transport an alien race that will destroy the planet for some reason that, like the alien race itself, is never explored in any way. That's it. The rest is the heroes on the ship trying to track Loki and the cube down. A loose plot is acceptable, but it also fails to give any of the characters a story arc, barely even giving one to the group as a whole. They spend the middle of the movie not getting along; two of the four action set-pieces involve the heroes fighting each other. It feels as though these pieces were tacked on because Whedon and co. had a lot of extra money lying around and had to quickly come up with a way to spend it, as do some other unnecessarily show-offy moments. And if we've learned anything from previous Marvel films, it's that good guys fighting good guys is not at all interesting. There are no stakes involved; we know nothing will come of it. Watching these sequences is like sifting through all of the Bit-O-Honeys and Mary Janes in your Halloween haul while looking for the Snickers and Kit-Kats. The team doesn't actually assemble until the end of the film, and only after an almost offensively cynical turn of plot that I won't reveal.
It's a strange experience to watch The Avengers. It's sort of the first of its kind, being at once the first film in its series and also a pseudo-sequel to several others, and I wasn't sure exactly how to take it, nor am I sure Whedon knew exactly how to navigate it. After a cheap opening action sequence, Whedon spends the first act refreshing us on all of the characters, even though we've seen half of them as recently as nine months ago. Though it's a mostly solid forty minutes, it doesn't really tell us much that we don't know already, and that's my biggest issue with this film... Either through an inherent limitation in its concept or lack of imagination, it builds nothing of its own. Whedon wants these characters to be his, to belong to his film, yet he doesn't develop them in any way, instead relying on what five other films have done, and using funny dialogue as an instant character developer. Worst of all: he misses the opportunity to show us anything at all about Hawkeye and Black Widow, the two non-super heroes belonging to the Avengers who have what I am estimating to be a combined eleven minutes of screen time in the films leading to this one. Beyond the assumption I made based on his name and the bow-and-arrows he carries, I knew nothing of Hawkeye going into this film, and coming out of it I still know nothing. I can offer no adjective, no description of his character outside of saying he is a good shot (and even that is not always accurate).
As much of it as I found disagreeable, The Avengers is far from unbearable. Tom Hiddleston as Loki is nothing short of brilliant. In the few scenes in which he really gets to come out and play, he is fantastic, a perfect villainous turn... menacing enough to hate the character, but entertaining enough to love that he is in the film. Unfortunately he gets a little lost in the shuffle throughout the third act's nonstop action and his philosophical reasoning for his actions, that he is trying to free people of the burden of freedom, is left undeveloped. And Whedon is able to inject humor into almost any scene, and his writing style is perfectly suited to Robert Downey Jr.'s cocky, fast-talking Tony Stark. In the stretches when it does take off, The Avengers can be very fun, if you just let the action and humor wash over you without really thinking about it too closely. It is pretty entertaining to watch six characters show off their respective unique powers and talents in a large scale battle with aliens... If only the whole movie could have delivered this.
Whedon's humor keeps the film's tone light, though a little too light for my taste. I find myself surprised to say that most of the jokes land, but some of them in very awkward places. Whedon co-wrote The Cabin in the Woods, which I felt suffered from its abundance of wit, and The Avengers is no different, with the humor sometimes stumbling over itself in an attempt to build on a joke, and always blocking any kind of tension or legitimate sense of danger from developing. It certainly doesn't help that the villainous alien race looks like it was inspired by discarded Power Rangers concept art, but even if I could take them seriously, Whedon never lets me think for a second that they are a worthy opponent to his Avengers, and two and a half hours is a long time to spend stomping on ants.
