Between logic and madness

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Tiny Story by blunderandfrightening

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I love the songs I cannot sing.
I love the words I cannot spell.
And this is why I worry,
About loving you.

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So last night, I saw The Avengers for the first time. Now, I am a huge fan of comic book movies and comic books in general. I may not buy the comics, but I like to keep up to date on the basics of the Marvel Universe. Needless to say, I was so ready to see this film.

Before the film starts, my brother (who’s seen the film 3 times already) tells me that he thinks The Avengers was better than both Spiderman 2 and The Dark Knight. That’s where I put the breaks up.

To me, Spiderman 2 and The Dark Knight are opposite ends of the same top tier spectrum. Spiderman 2 represents how it is possible to make a fantastic superhero movie that is also so very similar to the comic book. It was a comic book come to life that also explored the humanity of the characters, that did not shy away from looking at the heroics from a human perspective. The Dark Knight demonstrated how to do a reboot that re-imagined the world for what it really is: a dystopia in which villans run amok almost at free will. Nolan took the campy villans and hero himself from the original and made them disturbingly realistic.

I honestly did not see how The Avengers could beat that. And I was right, it didn’t.

Don’t get me wrong, The Avengers was a fantastic movie, both visually captivating and smartly written to play up all of the actors/characters’ strengths. Iron Man was given the majority of the funny lines and had to deal with his egotism, Cpt. America had to deal with this new world he lived in, The Hulk struggled with his inner demon, and Thor was just trying to stop his brother’s madness. (Then there was Black Widow who dealt with her past (kind of) and Hawkeye who was mind-controlled for the majority of the film).

But there was nothing really groundbreaking about the film. Joss Whedon, who I love because of his work with Buffy, Angel, and Firefly, played this movie VERY straight and it was because he had to. Adding anything else would have just gotten lost in the sheer scope of the film. His movie was everything that it had to be: exciting, eye-catching, entertaining. The Avengers excelled at meeting those standards, but it didn’t attempt at being anything more than that.

That’s not a problem, because again, I loved it. I thought it was a great film that met all of my expectations. If every other Marvel film followed Whedon’s formula (and avoided the cringe worthy like X-Men: The Last Stand) I would be satisfied. However, it is the films that go beyond our expectations, that make us consider new possibilities, that tend to be the greats. While The Avengers was Amazing, it just didn’t push the envelope enough to beat Spiderman 2 or The Dark Knight. It still will be considered one of my favorite superhero movies of all time though.