Whenever a new film comes out that I'm a fan of, I always end up overanalyzing the littlest details and jumping to my own conclusions, positive or negative. Naturally, that brings about some things I get very excited about and some things I'm equally anxious about in a bad way.
As I just purchased my tickets for the Ultimate Marvel Marathon, I figured I’d take a look at those things in regards to THE AVENGERS…
THINGS I'M WORRIED ABOUT
1. Juggling All Those Characters
The Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Agent Coulson, Maria Hill, Nick Fury, Loki, Loki’s army, all the side characters that might have spots in it like Pepper Potts…the likelihood that they can balance all of these people and give them adequate time (by which I mean they serve a functional storyline purpose and aren’t just standing next to the other people fighting) is staggeringly against the creators of this film. This is a hefty ensemble to deal with and I’m very worried that people will end up not serving a purpose. For instance, we can tell what roles Cap, Fury, and Stark are going to play, but how is Hawkeye going to be a noteworthy member of the team? Is Loki’s army going to be just a bunch of generic mooks that follow his orders and receive no backstory? I’d like to know who these people/creatures are as opposed to just Loki saying “these guys are with me, go fight each other”. I don’t want to see the SHIELD agents get more screen time than the Avengers themselves by any means necessary, as there’s a hierarchy of importance, but at the same time, I don’t want people to be walking out of the theatre not knowing the difference between Hill, Widow, Hawkeye, Coulson, and Fury. It’ll be a good test if you can quiz the people around you and they don’t just refer to the characters as “the bow and arrow guy”, “the chick with the short hair”, “Samuel L. Jackson”, “Scarlett Johansson” and “the bald guy”.
2. My Track Record with Joss Whedon
I wasn’t able to get into Buffy. I therefore had no real interest in Angel. You might hate me for this, but I personally just do not see the appeal of Firefly or Serenity and I wish I hadn’t wasted my time watching them. Because of this horrible track record of me not enjoying the Whedon experience, I’m very worried that this will just fall into the same category. I’m hoping instead that this is what redeems him in my eyes, but naturally, I’m hesitant to believe that will happen.
3. The Lack of a Cinematic Feel
There’s been talk that the film doesn’t really feel so much like a blockbuster movie, but rather, that it has a television quality to it. That worries me quite a bit, especially because these previews they’ve put out have certainly given off that vibe to me. I’m a big fan of television, but I’m an even bigger fan of film. One of the biggest pleasures I have is the movie experience. My alarm clock is the THX sound. I get goosebumps when I hear the new Disney intro theme. I can hum you the pre-preview AMC theatres song where the film strip drops all the reels. I sit in the center aisle, center row of the auditorium if I can. To me, if this film comes off like a made for TV movie or an elongated episode of Heroes or God forbid The Cape, it’s going to completely throw me off and irk me.
4. The Hype Dooming the Expectations
With things like this, sometimes no matter what you do, it can’t live up to what people were expecting. Hype is a dangerous thing. It’ll put butts in seats, but it also drives people to start making assumptions that, if not fulfilled, leave them feeling empty. What about the person expecting Hulk to go nuts throughout most of the film? What about those who think the soundtrack is going to be epic? What about the people that are foolish enough to think that this will end up being nominated for Best Picture and Best Actor and Best Director and all sorts of Academy Awards next year? You can’t please everybody, but at the same time, a lot of hype tends to make it so you can’t please ANYBODY that was looking forward to it at the level that you want people to crave it. Sometimes it’s better to not get your hopes up and be pleasantly surprised than to be hoping for something amazing and getting something just great.
5. Time Restraints = Less Complex
I like my movies to be well rounded and not necessarily “complicated”, but it needs to have meat on its bones. One of my standard gripes about movies is that they seem to need a half hour extra to set up the different story aspects and make me really care about the characters to the point where I’m feeling what they want me to feel at the end. I don’t want this to turn into one of those films where the action dictates the story and they worked backwards from “how can we get Thor to fight Iron Man”. I want this to be “at this point in the story, Thor and Iron Man have gotten into conflict so much that they need to duke it out and settle things”. I don’t want Loki to be just the bad guy that they need to stop – I need motivation. Thor can’t walk on screen, say Loki’s his brother and they need to be careful, and then I need to fill in the rest and just accept that. The “what” needs to also be surrounded by the “why” and the “how”. Don’t tell me early on that Hawkeye is a rebel and then do nothing with it until one scene where he steals a jet and goes off to fight or something, let me see why he’s a rebel, show me how he’s a rebel, and then I’ll make the conclusion that he is one. Show rather than just tell. I don’t want to walk out of this film thinking it needed another hour because it ended up being a bunch of action sequences surrounded by the bare minimum of storyline just to get us from one explosion to another.
THINGS I'M EXCITED ABOUT
1. Juggling All Those Characters
The Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Agent Coulson, Maria Hill, Nick Fury, Loki, Loki’s army…AWESOME! When have we ever seen something like this before? Warner Bros hasn’t even been able to push out a Superman/Batman crossover film, even when they tried to do it with no setup and no continuity to bind them together. Marvel on the other hand has fully set up the majority of these characters with an entire film dedicated to them (two in the case of Iron Man…or, well, I guess you could say one and a half considering how short Iron Man 2 was). While many people could argue that the X-Men films have shown us what to do and what not to do in regards to ensembles, I’d argue that this is an entirely different beast altogether. Sure, there are some guidelines established from those films and others, but fashioning a team of characters in a movie on its own is different from fashioning a film out of pre-existing characters from other films. I’m very excited to see what essentially is a movie adaptation of the types of comic book crossovers we all eat up (and then spit out when they retcon it a year later).
2. Joss Whedon’s Passion
With Whedon, we know how big of a fan he is of the source material and the characters in general, so there’s no real worry on my part as far as him understanding what he’s got on his plate. While I may be worried about his ability to execute, I have no worries when it comes to his ability to understand what he should be trying to go for. Think of it this way - no matter how good of a chef you may be, if you’ve never encountered the particular ingredients, you could very well screw up the dish. However, you could be a terrible chef but still be able to pull off the best grilled cheese in the world if that’s what you’re familiar with. His interpretations of the characters aren’t going to be riddled with the type of BS that tends to ruin a lot of these things. There will be no “we need to make one of these characters have some street cred to bring in that audience, let’s put some bling on the Hulk so we can sell it afterward” fiascos. Whedon’s Hulk should by mostly all accounts be a good representation of the Hulk and the same goes for everyone else.
3. Secrets, Credit Cookies, and Hidden Easter Eggs
One of my favorite things about films in general is when there are little trinkets hidden around the place. These films have been great in throwing in references to other stories and giving you more if you’re a fan than just the bare minimum. When I saw Thor, I thought it was great that the Infinity Gauntlet was amongst the weapons. When the first Nick Fury scene happened in Iron Man, I was giddy like a school girl. This movie series has done wonders for that concept and I know a lot of people that actually only started realizing that there might be post-credit sequences because of these films, so I’m expecting a few things to really light up my eyes during the movie (as well as some that go right above my head and I don’t find out about until later).
4. The Culmination of Years of Planning
Even if it ends up being a horrible film, which I doubt it will be (though to be fair I’m not expecting it to be amazing either, just decent) I’m still very interested to see the end result of this. The whole concept has intrigued me from the very beginning, so I’m curious and excited about what they were planning on building up to and how they’re able to execute it. If it IS great, then on top of that, I’ll be very proud of those that contributed in pulling it off.
5. Sequels and Future Planning
What if there’s a post-credit setup for Thanos? What if we get Avengers 2 with Vision and Ant Man and Wasp and Black Panther and Wonder Man added to the team? What if?! Aaaaaaah! How does this change the way things would go for the sequels to Thor and Captain America? How will this lead into Iron Man 3 now that he’ll have come in direct conflict with enemies working beyond Stark’s realm of technical expertise? I’m very excited about the possibilities that can spawn from this film and what we’ll be able to look forward to, seeing as how we’ve been looking forward to this film itself for so long.
So what are some things that you're worried and/or excited about for the Avengers film?