The Avengers has been out for quite a while now, but Tim, Rob, and myself just had a chance to sit down and talk about it on the latest episode of Bubble Pipe Theater over on our podcast network. We discuss the movie and geek out about the next phase in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and you should have a listen.
Avengers Mini-Review
I usually forget or don’t get around to typing up my official thoughts on geek movies on here until it’s too late, but The Avengers could very well be the geek movie of the decade so I wanted to go ahead and get my thoughts down.
I didn’t get a chance to see The Avengers at midnight on May 4th but I went the next morning with my wife to a packed IMAX theater, filled to the brim with geeks of all ages. We didn’t really want to see it in 3D, but for this film I knew I wanted to see it on as big of a screen as possible, so I made an exception. My wife was just as excited as me, having loved Thor and Captain America last summer, and having watched Iron Man for the first time that week. We were ready to see them all team up on the big screen.
The first two scenes in the movie started out kind of slow, but from that point on the pacing was non-stop. Joss Whedon’s dialogue was snappy and he handled the characters with respect. He gave the audience plenty of great jokes and fist pump moments, and the action was incredible.
I biggest concern going into The Avengers was that it would just be Iron Man 3. I like Robert Downey Jr., a lot actually, but I didn’t want him to overshadow the rest of the cast too much, and I don’t feel that he did. Captain America had more screen time than I expected him to have, and that was fine by me. Thor had a little less than I thought he would, but the moments he was in were great. Tom Hiddleston was great as Loki again, and that character is still one of my favorite comic book movie villains of all time.
The biggest surprise for me was Black Widow. She was handled very well and I’m glad she was a bad ass assassin instead of a love interest. Even though she didn’t seem to fit in with the super human members of The Avengers, it made sense the way Joss Whedon put the team together. I could see a stand-alone Black Widow/Hawkeye movie being a lot of fun.
The battle at the climax of the film was about as perfect as I think it could have been. It totally felt like a comic book. The stakes were extremely high, the heroes were scrambling to take care of the problem, and the action was incredible. Hulk stole the show in the last battle, in what I thought was a perfect interpretation of the character. He looked great, and he was a total beast. Seeing him take down a Leviathan with one punch was one of Whedon’s biggest fist pump moments and the crowd went wild.
I mentioned this in the podcast, but I hope Marvel at least gets Whedon to write the sequel to The Avengers. With it being (at the time of this writing) the 4th biggest film of all time, maybe they won’t skimp on the sequel like they normally do and we’ll get an equally impressive Avengers film again in a few years.
