By the time you read this,
Avengers should be well on its way to making a billion dollars at the
box office and if you ask any fanboy, Avatar may have something to fear. Joss Whedon has created the
comic book movie geeks have wished their entire lives for.
In the 90s, before Bryan Singer made X-Men,
Wizard magazine
would run a feature called “Casting Call” where they would make fantasy
casts for big superhero movie adaptations, but even back then no one
could ever dream of a comic book property being so perfectly translated to the big screen as The Avengers.
The reason for this is that ever since Burton’s Batman, Hollywood has wanted to ground comic book flicks in reality. The thinking was that if they embraced the unreality of
the comic page, they’d alienate the casual audience. So while we did see some really great comic book movies prior to Whedon’s Avengers, they always fell just short of perfection due to a restraint that was put on them to make them more realistic.
With
Marvel Studios crafting a cinematic universe for their characters to
inhabit, that restraint was lifted from Joss Whedon, and the result is
amazing…
It Embraces the Comic Book
Watching The Avengers
and being thrilled by the epic scale, casual moviegoers are now exposed
to what comic readers get every week when they crack open their new
issues. Avengers isn’t grounded in reality, it fully embraces the
unreality that the Marvel Universe is. From a Mad Titan employing a
mischievous “god” from Asgard to wage war on New York with aliens to a
team made up of a demi-god, billionaire playboy in a
suit of armor,
a living legend, a scientist with serious anger management issues, and
two master assassins; this is a comic book on the big screen.
Whedon melted fanboy brains with The Avengers if only because we never thought we would ever see a comic book
reproduced to faithfully on theater screens, especially after more than
twenty years of Hollywood rejecting the fantastical nature of the comic page. Avengers is not only the culmination of four years of universe building for Marvel Studios, it also ups the ante for every single comic book movie to follow.
The Hulk
The
Hulk is a difficult character for Marvel. While the David Banner series
of the 70s and 80s handled the character well, both film versions
didn’t quite get it. Ang Lee’s Hulk was burdened with too much family
angst and made Banner more of a troubled scientist with daddy issues,
instead of a troubled scientist with anger issues. Ed Norton’s version
was a definite
improvement, but focused too much on Banner trying to cure himself.
Mark
Ruffalo’s Hulk is simply the best version of Bruce Banner and the Hulk
to ever be put on screen. He’s perfectly twitchy. Accepting of what his
problem is, but not yet fully embracing it. It takes a little push from
Tony Stark for that to happen, and when it does the Hulk becomes
the star of the movie.
Characters Done Right
Hulk wasn’t the only character handled well in The
Avengers.
Whedon showed off his talent at balancing a large cast of characters by
giving each one a journey in the movie and each one got their own big
payoff moment. Seeing Cap take command of the Avengers, and the entire team following his command, should bring a huge smile to
comic book geek’s faces as we finally see the Cap from
the comics in his element. After all, when DC and Marvel crossed over in the 90s…even
Superman snapped into line and followed after Captain America.
The Cosmic Marvel Universe
Part of embracing
the comic
page is including all elements of that page, and Whedon showed no fear
in bringing the Cosmic Marvel Universe into play with this movie. From
the Chitauri to their masters, the movie expanded audiences
knowledge of just how epic comic book
movies could get even more than what was shown in Thor. How many people
honestly thought that we’d ever see a true version of Thanos up on the
big
screen? He wasn’t a cloud, he was the Mad Titan. Thanos grinning back at the audience in a major summer blockbuster. Mind = blown.
Whedon’s Dialog
Part of the reason Avengers is seeing such great success is because the movie is actually a lot funnier than people expected. And that’s
completely
due to Joss Whedon’s ability to write great dialog and how naturally he
wrote these characters. He knows Cap, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Hawkeye,
and Black Widow. He didn’t need to figure out who they were, he was able
to put them on screen in a way that casual audiences could enjoy while not offending fans of the comics. The banter between the characters both before they become a true team and after is one of the best parts of The Avengers.
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