I’m not a comic-book reader (well, okay, I read Watchmen, but only after I saw the movie), and I got a kick out of it. I don’t think it’s about being a reader; it’s about this kind of movie being to your taste. I don’t really dig the Hulk - neither of the recent movies thrilled me all that much, although Tim Roth was kinda cool in the latter one. But the first Iron Man movie, Thor and Captain America are all movies I’ll cheerfully re-watch. They’re to my taste: fun, sharp dialogue for the most part, believable villains*, shit blowin’ up real pretty
If superhero movies aren’t your thing, then they’re not your thing; but, if they are, this is a pretty neat entry into the genre. I’m sure we’ll make time to see it again before it leaves theatres.
*We were talking on the way home last night and this something most of the Marvel movies have in common. The villains aren’t just taking over the world because that’s what evil villains do; they have their own reasons and drives for their villainy. Magneto still wins; his motivation is perfectly understandable, given his history.
I am pumped for this movie, but not very excited to hear that the villain in the sequel is likely to be Thanos.
I really want to see Ultron, who’s much more of an Avengers-specific villain, and has both great story potential, plus additional Avengers characters whose introduction would be natural for an Ultron story (Hank Pym, Wasp, Vision - maybe a call-back to the brief appearance of the original Human Torch in the Captain America movie).
Another potential Avengers-specific movie villain could be the Masters of Evil, if they’re properly introduced in the second round of individual movies. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have the Enchantress and Executioner in the next Thor movie, for example.
I loved Watchmen, and in some ways I think I was spoiled by it. I know The Avengers and all its super heroes are a completely different style than Watchmen but when I watch The Avenger movies I can’t help but think what they could be. For instance, I love Captain America, and was really looking forward to that movie. But when I saw it I was really disappointed to see it was just some simple popcorn flick. So when I see a movie with as much potential as The Avengers I just want a little more than a pretty good action movie.
You don’t need to see the ealier films, but they don’t spend time re-explaining the characters, so a little bit of passing knowledge of who’s who couldn’t hurt. There have been a few ‘guide to the avengers’ type articles cropping up over the last couple of days, and a quick read through one would probably help (This sort of thing)
I can see Ultron cropping up in later movie, but I think they’d need to introduce Hank Pym in a sequel first
This is better than any of the lead-in films. If you thought they were ok, you will definitely like this
A local theater near me, the one we’re seeing it at, will be doing a showing of Iron Man first, along with a Q&A with one of the writers from Iron Man, and then showing The Avengers at midnight.
Not necessarily. Hank doesn’t even need to be a super-hero to begin with, he could just be the scientist whose AI experiment got out of control. Maybe he works for Tony Stark and is trying to upgrade JARVIS, maybe he works for SHIELD and is part of the LMD team (a SHIELD concept from the comics not yet introduced in the films, unless it’s in Avengers).
Just saw it. As popcorn movies go, this was excellent. Whedon did a good job balancing all the characters. I saw it with a very appreciative audience; high point for them was seeing Dr. Banner do his thing. (You’ll know the thing when you see it.)
And hey, I can’t get enough of Tony Stark, so that works out nicely.
And I don’t know what’s up with Thor’s voice, but it works very, very, very well. Rawr.
Did anyone pick up on the slightly odd line of Loki dialogue half way through the film…?
…when Loki calls Black Widow a ‘mewling quim’? Seemed a bit out of place, seeing as quim is British slang for vagina. Caused a bit of sniggering in the cinema when he came out with this one.
Saw it last Thursday and seeing it again tonight. I really enjoyed it, and I didn’t expect to as I’m not a huge superhero fan and was feeling a bit ‘over it all’. But it’s so snappily written and well put together, I really enjoyed it.
I didn’t understand some of the plot (which I won’t discuss here as I know most won’t have seen it yet) but knowing Whedon, it will have internal logic, so I’m hoping I’ll understand it better on second viewing.
