If you’ve known me or followed my posts on the Net for any length of time, you’ll know I’ve been a Joss Whedon fan for ages. Buffy, Angel, and Firefly, oh yeah, down with all of those. And I’ve also certainly enjoyed the Marvel superhero movies leading up to this one–both the Iron Man flicks, Thor, and Captain America being the ones I’ve seen. (I never caught Edward Norton as the Hulk.) So I was absolutely expecting to enjoy the hell out of the Avengers.
I was not disappointed. There was no moment of that movie that was not a GLORIOUS SYMPHONY OF AWESOMENESS. <3
This is going to be less 'review' and more 'fangirl squealing'! Look behind the fold for overall reactions!
Man, I didn’t expect to click hard onto Hawkeye nearly as much as I did. But damn, I LIKED him! Those of you from my Two Moons days will of course know my particular partiality to handsome, gruff archers who can shoot things without even looking at them, so given that, it’s no great surprise that I had quite a few moments of “goddamn that boy is channelling Strongbow”.
Plus, I loved his interplay with Black Widow. Part of me kept flashing to Brock Sampson and Molotov Cocktease from the Venture Brothers, I gotta admit–but on the other hand, those two were quite hot together. I giggled quite a bit at the line he gives her about how she remembers Budapest quite differently than he does.
And OMG how awesome was Black Widow. I loved her taking down her bad guys while tied to a chair. I loved her being the one who pulls Hawkeye back to the home team. I loved her being the one who pries information out of Loki, her being the one to clue in during the battle that taking down the tesseract might not be about guns, and how she got the Captain to fling her up onto that alien hovercraft so she could make her way up top. Black Widow rocked.
Thor! Mmmm, THOR. I was vaguely disappointed that a bigger deal wasn’t made out of how he actually got back to Earth again, especially given that I’d just rewatched his movie earlier in the week to get into a proper mindset, and I was also vaguely disappointed that Jane/Natalie Portman was not involved in his return–but at least they did give her a nod and let the audience know her status, and that Thor clearly asked after her. One hopes he’ll get back to her soon enough, possibly in his standalone sequel. But godDAMN, that boy is still pretty and looks awfully spectacular flinging Mjollnir around.
Captain America: still adorably handsome-and-dashing, straight-laced good. Say what you will about Boy Scout type heroes, but I LIKE Boy Scout type heroes! I LIKE that the Captain wants to do the right thing because he’s a fundamentally decent, courageous human being, and he was like that even before he became a supersoldier. And now he’s got that added wistful out-of-his-time air going on, and he was ADORABLE perking up about the flying monkeys reference, being all “HEY WAIT I got that one!” Also: Captain vs. Loki in Germany, roxx0r. The Captain telling Thor and Stark to SETTLE THE FUCK DOWN, also roxx0r. The Captain laying down the tactics for the cops in Manhattan though was my favorite moment with him! “Why should we take orders from you?” *Captain promptly dispatches several incoming aliens, and cops are all RIGHT THEN we’ll take orders from you* Hee hee hee hee.
Which of course brings me to Agent Coulson and AAAAAAAUGH. I suppose this would not have been a Joss Whedon film if somebody hadn’t died, but that’s another thing about Joss–the man makes his character deaths count. And MAN, I adored Coulson here. I liked him in all his previous appearances in the movies leading up to this, but I was deeply charmed by his fanboy gushing at the Captain, and I admired the hell out of him in his final confrontation with Loki. “Oh, that’s what that does…” Sniff. I took my hat off to him as the credits were rolling. Well done, Agent. Well done.
TONY! TONY STARK! Out of everybody in this entire cast, I can’t think of a better character for delivering pure Whedon snark gold. I loved that we got to see Pepper again, in all her Pepper glory. I loved Tony lighting up at Dr. Banner (“finally! Someone who speaks English!”) and inviting him over to play with his ten floors’ worth of shiny R&D toys. I loved the snark with the Captain about being the hero willing to take the sacrificial fall vs. always finding a way out, which of course sets up Tony’s whole throwing the nuke through the portal thing at the end. And I loved Tony lying there in the ruins of his suit, even then mumbling, “We won? Yay! Let’s just call in tomorrow…” (heart) (heart)
And speaking of Dr. Banner… O. M. G. I’d been seeing all over the net about how the Hulk pretty much walks off with this movie in several places, and yeah, he pretty much does. I adored this treatment of Banner and the Hulk, from Banner’s self-deprecating references to “the other guy”, to “Son, you’ve got a condition!”, to the Captain going “And Hulk? SMASH”, to that UNBELIEVABLY AMAZING grabbing hold of Loki before he even really warmed up on the pontificating and WHAM WHAM WHAM “PUNY GOD” ahahahahahaha! And that last punch he got in on Thor, and the roar at Tony to wake him up, and oh god, Joss Whedon made me love the Hulk. (heart) (heart) (heart) (heart)
LOKI! LOKI! LOKI! Loki was GREAT. Especially after having just rewatched Thor, I could definitely see the progression of the character from that movie to this one, since this Loki came across as quite a bit more fucked up than the Loki of the previous movie, which absolutely makes sense. Oh man, I loved him.
So, OH MY YES I will be seeing this again, and looking very, very forward to it. Well done, everybody in the cast! Well done, Joss! Well done INDEED!
