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 3: RE: "Avengers" - The resemblance is uncanny.

Posted by: Chad Van Alstin

Separated at birth?

    

I now officially concede that the Chitauri look exactly like Goldar from Power Rangers. I guess I will have to try my very best to argue against your other equally well thought out positions.

At first I assumed you were just writing crazy, baseless, statements in order to make your review more entertaining to read. After doing my Mighty Morphin Power Rangers research, I now understand your position completely.

I will also agree with your point that Whedon uses humor to re-aquaint the audience with the characters. Yes, a lot of this is quite funny and entertaining. I can see how being entertained and laughing at this re-introduction would deserve your criticism.

Another tally for you, good sir!

Whedon spends a lot of time getting the audience acquainted with the characters -- helping them to love each character -- for a number of reasons, including to benefit those brand new to the series. While Avengers is connected to previous Marvel films, it's still a stand-alone experience.

I'll agree that most people who see The Avengers have probably seen all the preceding films. However, what if someone didn't like a particular film? What if someone really hated Thor, or thought Captain America was a terrible movie?

Some audience members could have a jaded view of the characters walking in; in which case it's Whedon's job to sell those characters to the audience. There's really no better way to do that than with laughter. The bickering between the heroes is quite entertaining, and it makes you love them all over again.

I understand your position that there is no real full story arc present here. There's also not a whole lot of growth for each hero emotionally. Again, I don't think that's a problem. The character study is for the individual films to take on. The purpose of The Avengers is to appeal to audience's sense of fun by making a really entertaining movie. The Avengers is not a place for all the drama of comic books; this is a place for the fun in comic books.

That sense of adventure I had as a kid -- loving superheroes because they seem so epic -- was brought back to me. I think that's Whedon's goal entirely; he wanted to create a film that focused the fun factor of superheroes. I think he accomplished his mission.