Entry 11: RE: "Avengers" - Apples and Oranges

Posted by: Chad Van Alstin

Before I begin, I must confess that I spaced out during your Galaga post. I'm sorry that one line -- one single line -- in the film made you that upset. It's almost as if your taking very tiny things and attempting to make them into something much larger.

I'm going to put this criticism next to your Power Rangers comparison. For shame! However, your "GalaGag" pun was excellent. I will give you props for that.

I'd like to clarify that my original message about The Avengers being the best Marvel movie was only meant to include the films that were part of its series. I'm not necessarily willing to compare The Avengers to Spider-Man 2 because, like I said, they're very different films. At the time I was just curious if you enjoyed it as much as Spider-Man 2, since I know you're very fond of the film.

I also meant no offense to Mr. Obama -- I just think that's the dumbest Spider-Man cover ever, and the image fit in with my argument of the Spider-Man films being all about cheese. The character exploration in Spider-Man is quite superficial, and done in slight tongue-in-cheek, as tends to be Sam Raimi's style.  Again, this is not a complaint -- it's an excellent style choice for a film series about a high school superhero.

The scene you mention with Spider-Man losing his mask on the train is an brilliant scene, and it's made even better by the steady hand of Sam Raimi. The Avengers contains no scenes like this because, again, it lacks a single protagonist.

Comparing the Spider-Man films to The Avengers, pointing out what Whedon's film lacks by making comparisons to the plot of the Spider-Man films, is disingenuous for a couple of reasons. First, because The Avengers has a completely different tone, and lacks that single focus. Spider-Man 2 is a character study about a single person; The Avengers is about putting already developed characters together.

Whedon makes a choice not to focus on drama, growth, or in-depth character development. Where you may see this as somehow lazy, I don't agree at all. I don't have a problem with Whedon going straight for pure entertainment. It was a damn good choice.

Also, thank you for making me aware of Underdog. I spent hours watching the cartoons, and hope to receive the DVD movie in the mail soon. It looks like quite the adventure. He's a very cute puppy.

Look, everyone already knows that the heroes will win in every superhero movie they see. James Bond never dies, and neither do superheroes. So, your "underdog" point is moot. However, I will address it for the sake of fairness -- what the hell are you talking about!?

Did you miss the part of the film where Iron Man lost power in space and began falling to the earth like a rock? How about the scene where a nuke was about to land on New York? I was really enjoying the suspense from these moments. I even had a small sigh of relief when Iron Man ended up being alive.

I have a question for you: are the scenes I mentioned somehow less significant than Magneto's mutant-creating ball of-energy device that is about to hit the United Nations building (as seen in X-Men (2000))? Did the scene in Spider-Man 2 where Doctor Octopus captures Mary Jane really affect you more than scenes from The Avengers?

Crazy. They are all on the same scale -- we know how it will turn out, but audiences enjoy suspending their disbelief in order to enjoy the experience. You need to learn do the same -- consistently.

With such a well-crafted film like The Avengers, you should be able to watch it with the same suspension of disbelief you had when you saw Iron Man; unless you were really more convinced that Iron Monger was going to crush Tony Stark into dust.

I just want to drive this home once more -- The Avengers is superbly well directed and photographed. This is a gorgeous film to look at. It's fun; it's funny; it evokes emotions from the part of me that always loved the larger-than-life grandness of superheroes. That's exactly what it was going for, and it sold that package perfectly. If Avengers was trying to be something that it's not, I would share a lot of your distaste for the film.  

Entry 8: RE: "Avengers" - He's a menace!

Posted by: Chad Van Alstin

While I am a huge fan of the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies, they are quite different from The Avengers. I'll also agree that Spider-Man 2 is an incredible film, and definitely one of the greatest comic book movies ever made.

The Spider-Man films are fun, especially if you enjoy all the campy humor. Before you freak out -- I don't think this is a bad thing. The approach Raimi took was to play into the expectation of the audience. He gave the audience exactly what they think of when Spider-Man comes to mind.

All those sequences of people looking up and shouting Spider-Man's name, or those times Spider-Man stops for a second in front of an American flag -- It's camp! It's all fairly cheesy, but that's what those films were about. The Spider-Man films embrace super hero cliches, and they aren't ashamed to admit it.

The Avengers takes a completely different approach. While The Avengers is also very entertaining, the tone it goes for is much different. The Avengers wants re-design superheroes into the Hollywood action movie formula. Whedon wants these heroes to be cool, slick, and absolutely badass.

While both approaches are perfectly acceptable and work for their respected films, comparing the two is rather difficult. It's true that Whedon doesn't put in all the family death, quotes about heroism, and puberty that we get in the Spider-Man films. Again, just because it doesn't contain those elements doesn't mean the film is lacking them. You need to explain why Avengers needs these elements -- it seems to work fine without them.

If The Avengers focused too much on one character, one person's growth, then it wouldn't be about The Avengers. This movie is about all the heroes -- all the team members -- and how they came to work together. It doesn't need all the campy drama -- tug at you heart -- moments of Spider-Man 2. In fact, the result of that may have been disastrous.

And the Galaga joke...Yeah, that seemed to bother you a whole lot. My issue with the scene was that it didn't cut together correctly. My initial reaction was to think that Captain America was the one playing Galaga. This would have been much funnier, since he was frozen in ice and didn't get to experience video games. The scene was rather confusing, and it still didn't make sense to me the second time I saw the movie.

So, I agree that it isn't the funniest joke. Since you already admitted that most of the humor worked for you -- let's try and move past it. Together, if necessary. I'm here for you if you need me. I'm really sorry you have to experience it. To be fair, it was just one mediocre joke.

One more thing I have to point out, as evidenced for just how well-crafted this movie is on a technical level, is the continual shot that covers all the heroes as they battle in New York City. Granted, it's not a "real" camera shot -- definitely a digitally created shot. However, it's still quite an amazing sequence.

In one continuous shot the camera is able to move through New York and capture each of the Avengers doing battle. It's moments like this that solidify the purpose of this film -- to give the Avengers an origin story. To bring the team together, and to sell them to an audience as a single package that audiences will love. The Avengers moves the inherent "nerdyness" of a super hero team-up into the realm of something cool that  movie fans won't be ashamed to embrace.