Entry 12: RE: "Avengers" - Round 12

Posted by: Bradley Redder

This is likely to be the last word on The Avengers, and there is still so much to address, and quite a bit in your last entry to respond to as well, so this will be all over the place.

First I'd like to wrap up a few things that our lone commenter thus far and you seem to be taking away from my last few entries. I chose Spider-Man 2 as a point of comparison simply because it was another Marvel superhero movie, and the one that you mentioned specifically in that text to me. The comparison could have been made to Terminator, or The Matrix, or Die Hard, or any other great action film. And the comparison isn't meant to be a direct criticism of The Avengers, but merely a way to point out how a great action film is constructed. You, our commenter, and the majority of people I've spoken with or whose comments I've read on the Internet all basically argue that this movie is all about fun. Nobody has offered anything more than that. Just fun. And that's fine. I like fun movies as much as the next guy. But I know when a movie is just fun, and I know that just doesn't make a movie great. There has to be something more, whether it's meaning or character or social relevance or simply great plot construction. Whatever it may be, The Avengers doesn't have it.

Suspension of disbelief is also a great thing to bring up, because I think it's essentially what I've been talking about all along with these Spider-Man comparisons. You seem to be accusing me of not being willing to suspend my disbelief, like I'm some cranky old bastard that doesn't like to have fun, but suspension of disbelief isn't the sole responsibility of the audience; it starts with the film. The film has to build up some credit in order for me to want to suspend my disbelief. It's not a switch that I have sticking out of my head that I flick when I feel like enjoying a movie. No. The movie has to already be doing something for me in order for me to let the little things, or sometimes even the big things, slide by without much criticism, and The Avengers just doesn't grab me from the opening, with that cheap car chase in which Hawkeye, the master marksman, can't hit the somehow indestructible Cobie Smulders character from some twelve feet away. It just wasn't fun, nor was the second action spectacle, in which Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America fight each other in the moonlit woods, throwing each other through trees like Jacob and the other one from Twilight. Not only is it not fun, but it's boring, and when I get bored my mind starts to wander off and inspect the cracks in the surface of the film, like the Galaga bit.

The last point that I've been patiently waiting all week to argue is Agent Phil Coulson's death. Given that this is already much longer than I intended, I'll try to do it in broad strokes. I loathed this sequence. The build-up to it was good, very good actually: Loki tricks Thor into the jail cell and is about to hit the button to drop him from the ship, when Coulson steps in with a strange gun and tells Loki to back away. He mentions the gun was developed with Tesseract technology and says, "I don't even know what it does," a great line. Loki ends up stabbing him somehow but Coulson still shoots him after dropping to the floor. A Whedon comedian to the end, his almost dying words are, "Oh, so that's what it does." Coulson is a pretty minor character, and you could maybe get away with making a joke of his death, but then Whedon uses this as the rallying point for all of the heroes. A minor character's death, a guy that at least Captain America, had just met the day before. And somehow him dying is enough for the whole crew of the ship to stop and look sad and for the heroes, who have been bickering and fighting each other during a world crisis, to band together. This is annoying for the aforementioned reason that he is so minor, and is cynical because how many other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents died in that attack! That ship was almost destroyed. It was huge. So many must have died, but due to laziness Whedon makes the characters give a shit about someone they barely know simply because the audience is familiar with him, after seeing him in what are essentially cameos in the films leading to this one.

It ties into the Galaga point of what is a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent? It should be a very important person with a very specific skill set to be let into such a top-secret military operation, yet all of these agents are treated as dumb and expendable. They play Galaga and Nick Fury could care less if they die. It also ties into my point about these heroes not standing for anything and not being defined by anything more than their respective superpower. Should it really take the death of a new acquaintance to make a hero wake up and realize he should save the world, if only because he himself is living on it?

Other scattered complaints:

I wish they had cast Scarlett Johansson for more than her chest and, given that there was no other reason, I wish they had actually shown more of it by dressing her in something other than a one-piece thick spandex suit.

Hawkeye got a raw deal. The least developed character leading into the film has forty-four seconds of screen time before getting hypnotized into one of Loki's lackeys, leaving a great actor with nothing to contribute to the film.

The whole plot kicks off because Nick Fury is using the Tesseract to develop weapons to defend against an extra-terrestrial attack: "We're severely, hilariously outgunned," he says at one point. But in the end we see Black Widow picking off the alien invasion with a pair of small pistols and Iron Man blows up the entire mother ship with a single missile, which for some reason decommissions the living, breathing, non-robot aliens on Earth in the same instant. Lazy.

Loki, the master of deception, is deceived so easily by Black Widow's non-traditional interrogation. Great scene until it gives way to a silly plot contrivance. Whedon actually allows some tension, even fear and awe, to build as Loki threatens her... "I'll make [Hawkeye] kill you in every way he knows you fear and wake him up just in time to recognize his good work!" I think there was something about her being a "mewling quim," a cool phrase in a great moment, even if I felt like Whedon wrote it with a Thesaurus. This is that tension that I was craving, the moment where I might think the heroes don't have a complete handle on everything, but then it is ruined when she reveals she was tricking the master trickster. Whatever.

To answer your question about whether the nuke heading for NYC being of equal gravity with Ock capturing MJ: No. It does not hold the same weight. Again, we care about MJ, and even if we don't, we care about what she means to Peter. She has been a major influence on the entire film, being a contributing factor in Peter's decision to give up being Spider-Man, a hugely dramatic moment. NYC gets no such treatment in The Avengers. Whedon seems to assume we'll automatically care about, but NYC just gets no play. We never see a dead body (When the body count for this film had to have been in the hundreds (Thousands?)). We never see New Yorkers just living life either. We don't even get the obligatory but enjoyable scene where a construction worker is talking to somebody, saying it's his kid's ninth birthday and he's got tickets to the game tonight, right behind the dugout. If that were the case, I might have some emotional stake in the action, if only because I want that kid to have a nice time at the ball game. Whedon wrote a scene around establishing Coulson's first name being Phil to make his death seem more dramatic... Why not do the same for NYC? Was it even NYC? If so, it's missing shots of the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. New York Action Movie 101. He just doesn't give the city any personality, and the destruction radius in the end is like three blocks.

Scattered praise:

Tom Hiddleston. I mentioned him in my review and you agreed in your first entry, but it's worth mentioning again. He was fabulous. "Does an ant have a quarrel with a boot?" Great line, perfectly delivered. Whedon did a nice job writing this character, though I'll also mention again that he gets a little short-changed in the end.

The effects are pretty fantastic, for the most part. I show mild hesitation there only for the shot which lasts maybe two seconds of Loki riding one of the alien speeder bike thingies while chasing Black Widow. For a brief moment there is a shot that resembles the water skiing shot from Die Another Day.

The shot that you mentioned which connects all of the heroes in action. It's great, even though it is digital. That's okay. It showed the imagination and creativity that weren't present in the other action sequences. My other favorite was the shot of an explosive hitting a taxi, flipping it over, with the camera inside the cab. That was fun.

Rapid fire now:

"I'm always angry."

-"How does Fury look at all of these screens?"
-"He turns his body."
-"That's exhausting." I love how Downey delivers this line almost condescendingly, as though extremely high-tech isn't good enough.

-"Loki is an Asgardian and he is my brother."
-"He killed eighty people in the last two days."
-"...He's adopted."

-"(Something something) like flying monkeys!"
-"I don't understand this refere--"
-"I do! ...I understand that reference."

Realizing that the aircraft carrier is an invisible flying machine, and Cap wordlessly handing Fury a tenspot after take-off.

The Avengers "A" being the last remaining letter on Stark Tower and the last triumphant shot of the movie. Made me wish I had loved the movie as much as "This might be my masterpiece" made me wish I'd loved Inglorious Basturds, or however the fuck that was "cleverly" misspelled.

Black Widow's intro. Lots of fun. Lots of cleavage. Correlation?

And I'm spent. This was a pretty exhausting argument, and I get the feeling it got us nowhere, but it was a lot of fun all the same. It has been a great week. It made the mediocrity of The Avengers worth sitting through twice. Even if I haven't talked you down from your insane opinion that this is a great film, at least we can agree that Spider-Man 2 is the (far) superior Marvel film. Now, unless things have changed since I saw it twice in 2007, I'm off to face the disappointment that awaits me in Spider-Man 3.

Apologies to mobile device users.

Entry 10: RE: "Avengers" - GalaGag

Posted by: Bradley Redder

I know you said this was unnecessary. I know you said that you didn't think much of the Galaga joke, but both times I saw The Avengers, this moment received resounding laughter and even applause. I'm not bringing it up simply because I didn't find it funny; I can actually see why people laughed. I bring it up because it exemplifies a few different issues I have with this film. First up... Joss Whedon: Ball Hog.

I have made it clear several times over that I thought this film was far too jokey, and in my review I mention that sometimes jokes stumble other other jokes. There is no better example than the Galaga bit. I know you've seen it twice, Chad, but for those who don't remember, the scene begins with Tony Stark arriving on the flying aircraft carrier. He charges into the command center and makes himself the center of attention, cracks a few jokes about how inefficient the operation is, then points at a guy off screen and says, "This guy's playing Galaga. He thought we wouldn't notice... But we did!" And it's great. Very funny. A perfect Tony Stark moment. Of course, the scene ends, and Whedon cuts to the guy Stark pointed at, who turns back to his screen and brings up a paused game of Galaga. Hahah-awful. It's funny for a second, until you realize how superficial it is. Whedon turns a perfectly funny and character specific quality joke, and steals it for himself and turns it into a cheap gag, for now we realize Stark wasn't making a joke, but literally pointing out something that was happening in the room. The line could just as easily been, "That guy's tying his shoe. He thought we wouldn't notice... But we did." Very selfish. Very lazy.

But this goes a little deeper as well. I have made the case that the over-abundance of humor prevents me from taking anything seriously. This is the crowning example. This guy is part of S.H.I.E.L.D., a super secret intelligence organization; he is in an invisible flying aircraft carrier trying to track down a god from another world who is bent on ruling the planet... And he's playing Galaga? To modify a Jerry Seinfeld joke: "What does it take to get a job with S.H.I.E.L.D.? I think all you need is a face. That seems to be their big qualification." But seriously, what does it take? And how am I supposed to take any of this seriously if even the extras in the background don't? Leave the jokes to the characters with names. I know it's all just supposed to be fun, but at least keep up the pretense that these people actually have a role in the situation.

It also kind of annoys me, as a Galaga fan, that was not an official version of Galaga. It was played on a wide screen, and the fighters were moving far too quickly to be Galaga.

Also, did you notice my clever title? GalaGag! It's the name of the game, or at least some online Shockwave version of it, being referenced, but also the word "gag," because it's also referring to a joke! On yet another level, the "-Gag" portion of the title refers to the moment initiating my gag reflex... That's what happens when something gets shoved down your throat. I'm so clever, right? Is this annoying? Did I beat the joke into the ground? Good, because I was doing my prose impression of Joss Whedon.

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?

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.

Entry 6: RE: "Avengers" - Fun v. Character

Posted by: Bradley Redder

He knows a hero when he sees one. Too few characters out there, flying around like that, saving old girls like me. And Lord knows, kids like Henry need a hero. Courageous, self-sacrificing people. Setting examples for all of us. Everybody loves a hero. People line up for them, cheer them, scream their names. And years later, they'll tell how they stood in the rain for hours just to get a glimpse of the one who taught them how to hold on a second longer. I believe there's a hero in all of us, that keeps us honest, gives us strength, makes us noble, and finally allows us to die with pride, even though sometimes we have to be steady, and give up the thing we want the most. Even our dreams. 

You might recognize this, Chad. It's a quote from the best Marvel movie to date. That's right: Spider-Man 2. Since I saw The Avengers last week, I've been craving a quality Marvel movie. It's been eight years since this came out and Marvel still has not been able to top it, despite its many efforts. I'd love to remain the cynical voice in this argument and say nothing has come close, that they've gotten away from the purity that makes it great, but that's just not true, not until The Avengers, anyway.

You seem to have this idea that fun and character are mutually exclusive, that individual hero movies should carry the burden of character building and this ultimate team-up movie gets to have all of the fun. That's insane. Spider-Man 2 isn't the best just because it appeals to pretentious filmgoers who seek out a perfectly constructed piece of art; it is the best because it is the most fun. It has everything: romance, mystery, drama, action, special effects, humor, characters, emotion, style, spectacle, spectacle, spectacle, etc. It has more action sequences than The Avengers, but I'm sure if you asked a fan of the film to describe the experience for you that they would be able to describe it with other rhetorical devices than onomatopoeia. It's about something. It forms a connection with its audience beyond assaulting them with loud noises and things that go boom. It stands for something. And it has one of the many things that The Avengers is sorely lacking: Peter Parker.

It may seem unfair to criticize a movie for not featuring a character that isn't part of its universe, but I'm not talking about Peter Parker as a specific character that needed to be featured, but rather the idea of the altar ego, that which makes the superhero interesting or sympathetic, relatable, vulnerable. It's what makes Spider-Man 2 great. Yeah, the action is cool. Yeah, watching Spider-Man swing around New York is exciting and all. But what really makes it fun is knowing what's underneath it all, what happens if he fails. You know what's more interesting than Spider-Man swinging between the cab and trailer of an 18-wheeler? Seeing him three minutes later and finding out he can't pay his rent. We're constantly divided between wanting the best for Peter Parker, and wanting Spider-Man to fight Doc Ock. But we can't have both, and the fun lies in the reconciliation of the two; seeing how Spider-Man's heroics prevent Peter's happiness, and in turn how Peter's unhappiness prevents Spider-Man's heroics.

It almost sounds depressing when stated like that, but goddamn does Sam Raimi make it entertaining, and he doesn't have to rely on a series of awkwardly inserted jokes to do it, but rather the personalities of the characters and the situations in which they're put: Jameson makes Peter come to a celebration for his astronaut son and take pictures for the paper. Peter accepts because he needs the money. Turns out Jameson's son is dating Mary Jane and, after she scolds Peter for not being able to admit his feelings, accepts a marriage proposal from Jameson's son. Peter stands there looking on, stunned. We feel his pain along with him and savor the moment until Jameson pops into the frame and barks at Peter to snap a photograph of the happy couple. It's a perfect moment, capturing the essence of these two characters at the same time. We can't help but feel for Peter and sympathize with the position he is in, yet Jameson's relentless crassness pierces the emotion with humor. The Avengers features nothing near this good, and the worst part is that it never even tries for it.

And it's not as though it doesn't have the potential. As you point out, this is a team-up movie. It has six characters. Okay, to be fair, it only has four. To call Black Widow a character is a stretch, and to call Hawkeye a character is a bald-faced lie. But still, that's four characters with which you could actually do something fun. Four characters with whom something fun has been done. But we never see their altar egos; we never see a vulnerable side. I say this movie lacks a formidable opponent, and that's a problem. The Avengers are never challenged physically, and Whedon never challenges them mentally or emotionally, either. There are no stakes in this film. These characters don't sacrifice anything; they don't give up their dreams. They don't stand for anything like they do in their respective individual films. They're not defined by anything but what their superpowers are. Tony Stark is interesting in Iron Man because he is a cocky arms manufacturer who has gotten obscenely rich off of selling deadly weapons and comes to realize he wants to be a force for good, and eventually fights the very men who bought his weapons. Thor is interesting in his film because he is a demigod who has almost infinite power and due to his arrogance and vanity is banished to Earth, where he has little power without his hammer. The interest we have with superheroes is not in their strengths, but in their weaknesses, their vulnerability. Throwing them all together and removing that which makes them relatable, creating an ultimate force and pitting them against a silly, ill-equipped, and underdeveloped villain is about as far away from interesting as it gets. Take away the jokes, and what have you got here? Costumes and noise... Two and a half hours of it.

Entry 4: RE: "Avengers" - That Pesky F-Word

Posted by: Bradley Redder

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.

Entry 2: RE: "Avengers" - No Assembly Required

Posted by: Bradley Redder

Well to start, I too find no basis for saying that Whedon "claims the characters as his own," because I never said that, nor did I think it. And that is exactly the problem... He does nothing with them that we haven't seen before, aside from giving Tony Stark a new way to put on and take off his Iron Man suit. You say that each actor brings to the screen the character they developed in previous films, and Whedon's film simply brings them together; is that all you wanted from this film? Is that the "brainy" superhero film that everybody seems to be trumping this up to be? Snooze. I'd rather just buy the action figures from the separate films and put together the toy playsets to create my own world-saving scenarios.

I say these characters need an arc. If not individually, then at least as a group. The first act serves as a refresher into who that characters are, a very long time to spend on something you assume the audience is already familiar with, which is why I say this is an awkward experience. The Avengers is the first of its kind... How much can you assume people will know about these characters? And at the same time, given how much the film isn't actually about them individually, is using the first act to re-establish them one by one really an efficient way to open a two and a half hour film? I don't necessarily blame Whedon for not being able to handle it gracefully, but I can't just give him a pass on it, either, simply because there is no precedent informing how such a venture should be approached.

I'll also stand by my claim that Whedon uses humor as his instant character developer. Luckily a lot of the jokes are actually funny, or else this would go from bothersome to downright infuriating, but in lieu of giving these characters anything to actually do or figure out about themselves, he simply turns them into the Brat Pack and gives them a bunch of funny dialogue to gloss over how shallow they actually appear in this film. With the exception of Tony Stark, who is the perfect combination of wit and energy that Whedon seems to wish all of his characters could be, do you think you could come up with an adjective to describe any of these characters as portrayed in this film? I know they've been developed in other films, but do they actually embody what was conveyed in those films? (And if you say Bruce Banner is always angry I'm going to dropkick you in the face the next time I see you.) It looked to me like he was just trying to write six Tony Starks, giving all of the superheroes impeccable comedic timing, rather than something to really say, or even stand for. But more on the humor in another post.

So if this was really just bringing everyone together as you say, I still need something more. Though they do come together in the end, the group doesn't really grow in any way... They're pretty much the same going out as they were coming in. They bicker and fight each other along the way, which was very dull, and then are brought together by what was probably the cheapest, most cynical moment I've seen in a film this year (more on this, also, in another post), but it doesn't reflect any actual shift in perspective.

As for the Chitauri... Yes, I found them to be that silly. I wish I could find a picture from the sequence in which Loki does a mind-meld transportation to the Chitauri kingdom, so that I could put a picture of the remarkably similar sequences of The Fallen from Transformers 2, and to show how closely the character design and outfits resemble Power Rangers villains. I Googled them, and yes, they do look very similar. In the end, the army of Chitauri is a little bit different, but after that ridiculous introduction to them, there was no way I was ever going to take them seriously. Also, the very concept of this film, bringing together six distinct heroes into one ultimate fighting machine... Is it not another parallel to Power Rangers? Is the shot in which we finally see the Avengers assembled not essentially the same thing as the Rangers forming into the Megazord? Perhaps Joss Whedon is more firmly rooted in television than I thought. And perhaps you could elaborate on that "distinct visual style" you were talking about too, because all I saw was blah, meh, and so what.

Entry 5: RE: "Raven" - Clumsily UnPoetic

Posted by: Bradley Redder

First, let me just say that outside of the profoundly silly delivery of "Nevermore," that horseback chase sequence was by far my favorite part of this movie. If the detective sending Poe after the murderer instead of any one of the handful of others far more suited to the task is the set-up, then Poe falling off the horse nine seconds later and emptying his gun into shadows in the mist is the perfect punchline. The only thing it was missing was a few seconds of struggling before Poe could actually mount the horse and take off. It was gloriously dumb, and yet maybe the truest moment in the entire film: Why on Earth would Poe last much longer than that on a horse? Or know how to aim and fire a gun? This might beg the question: "Why am I still criticizing it for being ridiculous and out of place, then?" Because this happens so late in the film, and McTeigue has spent the previous eighty minutes trying to condition the audience into seeing Poe as a Hollywood hero. So, though it does succeed in providing the most entertaining sequence of the entire film, it is a complete failure and falls flat on its face in regard to its actual intent.

Which brings me back to the question I asked you... I was not talking about removing Poe or keeping him. What I'm curious to know is whether you think the more entertaining film would have been a series of weird "Nevermore" lines and goofy horseback scenes, or a more true-to-life depiction of Poe in a darker, more psychologically twisted film in more capable hands. We both agreed that this concept has potential, but potential for what, exactly? It relates to the larger question of Poe's superfluousness in this story. Personally, I think I'm so caught up in wishing that there had been more of these dopey, ham-fisted Poe references that I want the fully-realized goofy version of The Raven. I wanted The Tell-Tale Tambourine. As it stands, it's just about halfway in between: too silly to take seriously, but too labored to provide enough of that silliness for me to have a good enough time.

Though the way you interpreted that question makes me wonder now if it would have been better to scrap Poe altogether. I know it's not really fair to judge a movie based on how true to life or source material it is... I understand and fully stand by dramatic license and all, but at the same time I don't think it's fair, either, to just cut-and-paste an interesting historical figure into a dull script in order to jazz it up without at least putting any of that person's traits into the character. Having Poe ensures a certain expectation that the audience will have, and not delivering on that in any way is not only unfair, but it's also incredibly distracting. I'm supposed to look at this gun-wielding asshole running around after a murderer for ninety minutes and see him as the guy that wrote some of the most fantastic poems and mystery stories I've ever read? Not happening. So, given that this was an obnoxiously bland and poorly constructed film, I have to say that I might have been a little more willing to suspend my disbelief and go with it had the guy been named Steve... Because Steve knows how to ride that fucking horse.

Entry 3: RE: "Raven" - Po(e)stponed

Posted by: Bradley Redder

I just wanted to quickly comment on the question you posed at the end of your post... Why Poe? It's an important question given how much this film failed him not only as a mystery writer but also as an actual historical figure. I had planned to address it in a later post. The short answer is yes, I think he was definitely tacked on to a lame script... There's no way this was originally intended to be a movie based on/about/featuring Edgar Allan Poe. We both touched on it in our reviews, but I think your observation nails it... It is exactly like putting a celebrity's image on an everyday product in order to make it seem cool.

So I'll put off answering in full for now and ask you a related question: which film would you prefer... The silly, goofy, fun movie that The Raven sometimes was and which I started craving halfway through this dud, or the moody, atmospheric thriller that it could have been had Poe actually been utilized as more than a character name?

And if you're wondering... There are plenty more Poe puns where those came from.

Entry 2: RE: "Raven" - Cheese or Poe-peroni?

Posted by: Bradley Redder

I don't know if it's a sign of a dull film or of this blog being comprised of two incredibly astute viewers that we both came away with an almost identical dislike of this sorry piece of shit. I notice that both of our reviews hit on all of the same points; mine originally even contained mention of that outrageous utterance of "Nevermore" by Poe himself at the costume ball. What a ridiculous moment! But perhaps one that should have been replicated throughout. Think of how much fun this could have been had we seen Poe just walking around shamelessly quoting his most macabre lines in ordinary conversation: "Villains! Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of... little Timmy's tambourine. I borrowed it last week and forgot to give it back. Sorry."

If I had to pick out what the biggest problem with The Raven was, after much deliberation I think I would say inconsistency of tone. You are right when you say this had the potential to be fun; I thought the same thing. It's really not a bad premise, but McTeigue just doesn't really know what to do with it. The murder scenes are handled in radically different ways, sometimes gravely, like the opening double murder, which actually brought some legitimate thrills. But then you get scenes like the pendulum murder, which are so over-the-top and cartoonish they couldn't possibly be taken seriously at all. And the reactions to these murders, the pendulum one in particular, were just as erratic: The guy identifying the bloody, halved body of the victim is vomiting when he enters the room, and by the time he is leaving a few minutes later looks like he's wondering which toppings he should get on his pizza.

If only McTeigue had settled on a cheesy approach, all of this could have been great. All of the schlocky silliness could have been right at home. Then when we got to the end and the killer is getting away on horseback, leaving behind a horse and a dozen policemen, I would have been laughing with the film when the wounded lead detective tells Poe to ride after him. Not any of the able policemen... Poe. The alcoholic writer. Horrible.

Brad's Take: The Raven - *

The basic idea of The Raven is, though a little ridiculous, a pretty good idea for a fun piece of pulp: A serial killer bases his murders on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, leading the police to ask for his help in tracking this killer down. When Poe agrees, the killer kidnaps his fiancé and challenges him to write stories based on his future murders in exchange for clues as to his fiancé's whereabouts. So Poe becomes detective trying to solve the mystery of his own work. Sounds interesting, no? Art imitating life... turning life into art... about art based on life imitating art... or something like that. Well, it's not interesting. Not in the slightest.

I'm not sure if it's ironic or just lazy that a murder mystery about Edgar Allan Poe could be so lacking in thrills. How is that possible? Well, it doesn't help that Poe is written about as blandly as can be, without any real hint of what made the man a literary genius. His poetic, mid-19th century style of speech is turned on and off as if by switch depending on the importance of the scene's expository dialogue, and alcoholism is treated like a boy scout merit badge he is trying to earn, rather than a debilitating condition that might actually turn him into an interesting protagonist. So we see him getting into barroom tussles and calling everybody "philistine" which, had I not been told about two hundred and seventy four times that this guy wrote "The Raven" (the poem, not this movie), is pretty close to how I would describe this character.

The Raven was directed by James McTeague, who previously directed the fantastic V For Vendetta and the hyper-kinetic Ninja Assassin, which makes me wonder how this film could be so drab. It's visually dull, poorly paced, and has no idea what tone to adopt, being at times almost tongue-in-cheek ridiculous while at others so self-serious it was almost parody. Even worse, it fails to create any kind of tension or atmosphere... you might think that it would have a sense of macabre, but instead everything is brightly lit, even the underground coffin in which his fiancé is being kept. The characters are constantly carrying around lanterns which, given the abundant sources of light in every scene, I have to assume were some leftover props from another film. 

The real mystery of The Raven is why this story had to be told using Poe as its main character. There seems to be no reason beyond using a recognizable figure to grant legitimacy to such an insipid screenplay. Beyond a few references to some of his works in the form of murders with cartoonish splatters of blood shooting at the screen (which made me seriously wonder if the guy in the ticket booth forgot to give me my 3-D glasses) and the aforementioned two hundred and seventy four allusions to "The Raven," there is almost nothing onscreen resembling the life or works of Edgar Allan Poe, missing above all the imagination it takes to create a compelling murder mystery.

Entry 5: RE: "Cabin" - 'May the Gods Be Ever in Your Favor'

Posted by: Bradley Redder


Okay. As I said before: I think that you and I feel very similarly about Cabin. We both enjoyed it as a piece of mild entertainment, and we both seem to agree that the last twenty or so minutes could have been lopped off completely with very little complaint. So my vehemence over aspects of it puts you in the awkward position of having to stand up for a movie that you don't seem to find worthy of strong defense. You liked it, but are more than willing to point out its flaws, so I'll lay down my sword. I'll just say that I was only so aggressive about it because I wanted to like it--No, I did like it. A lot. And then it just fell apart and squandered all of its potential. Seeing it a second time made that fact even more annoying for me. I stand by my original position, but I'm willing to concede that it's entertaining, and sometimes that's enough.

However; there is one thing I want to bring up that struck me as a little strange while watching Cabin. Did you happen to notice how remarkably similar it was to The Hunger Games? Ditch the meta-horror premise, and it's almost the same thing. Young kids are chosen from the outside world and essentially asked to kill or be killed in the service of preserving world order. They're transplanted to an artificial setting whose environment is controlled from the outside by people trying to please someone... In the case of The Hunger Games, that is the masses, or maybe the world leaders (it was never really all that clear), and in Cabin the characters are made to suffer in order to satisfy the godlike "ancients."

I found myself distracted by these comparisons throughout the entire viewing experience, and was thinking about how two such similar films could be released three weeks apart, whether it was coincidence or a reflection of where we are culturally... Is this be the beginning of a trend of cynically paranoid film plots? I later found out that Cabin was actually filmed in 2009 and got shelved for a bit, so maybe this is all moot. But even if it's simply coincidence, it's a bizarre one.

Entry 3: RE: "Cabin" - Fun Schmun

Posted by: Bradley Redder


Yeah, yeah. Cabin was funny and clever and I got some kicks out of it, which I have already mentioned. My problem is not that it's not funny, but that it's not funny enough. In the end it just bothers me more than it entertains me. I'll admit that part of the reason is a little unfair and involves the gushing reception by its audience rather than the film itself. Everyone seems to think that this is a great film, that it's brilliantly conceived. And just to clarify: by "everyone" I obviously mean the seven things I've read on the Internet. A little cleverness goes a long way with people with screen names like "rapmetalrulz069" and cause movies like this to be hailed as "genius." The early comments I heard on this were so overwhelmingly positive, which could be because Twitter messages aren't long enough to include the "but" clause after "Cabin in the Woods is so fucking awesome..." So I've taken it upon myself to represent the absent clause of every Tweet I've read about Cabin.

Okay, that came out a little more spiteful than I had intended when I started, but oh well. And again, I recognize that it's not exactly a fair angle to argue given that it has nothing to do with the film itself, but its audience instead. But at the same time I feel like this movie is targeted to that type of audience, the one that hides behind Internet aliases and can only speak in hyperbole, so maybe I should be more spiteful and perhaps take another cheap shot at another ridiculous genre of music.

As for what is actually in the film... Not only do I say it's not fun enough, but I also say fun just gets in the way. In my review I mention that there is a cockiness inherent in this premise, and it is that cockiness which drives a lot of the humor (fun). Goddard and Whedon spend the first half, the good half, of the movie calling out horror conventions and making fun of them, and it's great. It made me believe that they had something new to bring to the table, something we hadn't seen before. But when we get to the end they don't have anything to say, nothing new, nothing we haven't seen. Just more of the same and, in fact, quite literally everything we've seen before. That's just not good enough; that's not fulfilling the promise they make in the beginning, and I can't let them off the hook simply because I laughed.

Also, Cabin is being referred to as a "horror-comedy," but where's the horror? This doesn't deserve to be brought up in the same breath as Scream, which also poked fun at horror conventions, but embraced them in a way that allowed it to do exactly what it was parodying, and it even did so effectively, doling out legitimate suspense and scares in between laughs. Cabin reveals its big secret so quickly that it kills any potential for suspense. Seeing puppeteers staging deaths based on horror conventions is funny, but it removes the opportunity to pretend like we don't know exactly what is going to happen so we can be thrilled and entertained while it does happen.

So comedy cancels out horror, yet I still have to watch teenagers struggle to live instead of be entertained by whatever Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford are doing in the control booth. For shame!

Entry 1: RE: "Cabin" - Ha-Ha-Hang Me

Posted by: Bradley Redder


Well, I have to admit that that was not the reaction I was expecting from you. I chose The Cabin in the Woods after seeing it last week because I was sure you'd overpraise the Hell out of it and spark some lively discussion. Instead it looks like you had the same initial reaction I did walking out the first time, but fortunately a second viewing hardened me to its superficial charms and revealed how nonsensical it comes across as once you know exactly where it's heading.

Needless to say I was less impressed as I walked out a second time, and reading your review I do find a bit of that overpraise I was talking about. Given how much I actually did find myself laughing (even the second time) it may seem a little unfair to ask if you were really that impressed by its humor. But, uh, were you? Didn't you start to find it a little exhausting after a while. When it was focused, it could be very funny, when it was directly or, even better, indirectly poking fun at horror conventions and audience expectation, it was brilliant at times, like right before Chris Hemsworth is going to jump the canyon to get help we know he will never get, but he still gives the obligatory No Quit speech: "I'll come back with helicopters and big fuckin' guns; if I'm wounded I'll crawl... Whatever happens, I will come back." It was sublime. But then there were so many moments, like the one directly after, when I could feel Goddard and Whedon trying so hard to be funny, shamelessly pointing out their own cleverness and ruining the joke because of it... Hemsworth jumps and it looks like he'll make it, but instead he hits the invisible wall that we all knew he was going to hit, because we already saw the same thing happen earlier in the movie.

In your review you mention that "There are moments so out of place, so completely unfitting of the rest of the film, that it seems like they were added because the writers had written themselves in a corner." I'm curious to know which moments you're talking about. I would almost say the last twenty minutes fit that criticism, but at the same time I feel like that was what Goddard and Whedon really wanted to get to in the first place, and it's a shame that it fails, because the idea is kind of amazing... a hundred different ghosts, monsters, zombies, etc. loosed upon the corridors of an underground military base (or whatever that place actually was). It's just executed poorly. It goes on either far too long, or not nearly long enough. It was so mindlessly presented that I felt like I got it after the first wave of monsters, but more came, and then more, but not enough to get to the point at which it's so relentlessly absurd that I could do nothing but stand up and applaud. No. Instead I just realized how bored I was, looking at shot after shot of cartoonishly blood-covered walls. And that was before the who-gives-a-shit expository scene with Sigourney Weaver. Ugh.

Am I wrong?

Brad's Take: The Cabin in the Woods - **1/2

The Cabin in the Woods ends the way I imagine the idea for it was conceived: with two people smoking a joint. If only everything in between had been as fun as the night Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon thought up the image of a unicorn killing a man with its horn surely was.

I don't know how much of the plot I can reveal before spoiling it, but one of the problems is that I'm not really sure if it actually presents anything to spoil beyond varying degrees of absurdity. Cabin is a "horror" film that follows a ritual conducted by a faceless group of people, acting on behalf of the world, sacrificing five teenagers to "the ancients" via horror film conventions. With the help of the Chem Department and stupidity-inducing drugs, five teenagers are turned into stereotypes meant to send up the horror genre, so five intelligent college students become a jock, a nerd, a slut, an idiot, and a virgin on their way to a secluded cabin, which essentially becomes the staging ground for their deaths. This is all puppeteered by two guys (Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford, who almost save the movie from itself) sitting behind an endless control panel, adjusting everything from lighting and temperature to the release of pheromones in the form of mist in the forest.

At once high-concept and incredibly simple, the premise is pretty clever, but flawed. There's enough in it for a drunken dorm-room riff, maybe even a comedy sketch, but stretched out to feature length, it just collapses in on itself. At first it had me lodging all the right complaints... Really? The rundown abandoned gas station with the creepy redneck attendant? Bor-ring, only to realize that that was exactly the point. And I would have been glad to remain the butt of the joke, because unfortunately with the gradual revelation of its mock, meta premise also come the limitations of it. Goddard grossly mismanages the amount of screen time given to each set of characters, spending much of it half-developing doomed teenagers in an artificial scenario as opposed to their puppeteers, with whom the real threat lies. Once it's revealed that this scenario is engineered with the predetermined outcome that these teenagers die, there is no real opportunity for suspense. It's like an M. Night Shyamalan film was condensed into the first act, only we're asked to go through the motions of another hour after the twist ending, with thrills that are as artificial as the cabin itself. 

Divided somewhere between homage and derision, Goddard and Whedon attempt to lampoon a genre while trying to add a legitimate entry to its canon, an impossible endeavor with such a flawed premise. Though the death scenes aren't very graphic, this, in a sense, devolves into comedic torture porn, where we're just waiting to see what clever way each character might die, only none of them are all that clever. And that pretty much sums up the film: not clever enough to justify the cockiness inherent in its concept. It's fun to watch Goddard point out cliches, but it gets tiresome once we realize that he doesn't really have anything to say about them beyond re-enacting them with a ridiculous framework and an over-the-top final act, which though it does afford some truly inspired moments and absurd killer unicorns, it's just not enough.