Well, this is the last part of Marvel Marathon, and like the series, is what this marathon has been building up to. It took a lot of work to do Marvel Marathon. I'm not a comic book guy, but I liked the movies a lot, meaning I had to do tons of research into who these characters are and how true the movies were to them. In hindsight, I still can't believe this movie exists. Crossover two franchises? Rare, but it has happened before. But let's be frank, those movies kinda suck (I'm looking at you AVP). But tying together four different action movies into one gigantic movie? Never been done before. The fact that only one of member of the main cast ended up being recast (For the best, I might add) made this movie even more of a huge accomplishment before it even hit theatres. It's funny how my personal hype went. I was excited to see it for sure, but The Dark Knight Rises was easily my most hyped movie of the year. It was in the hours before I saw this movie that I got excited. I went on opening day, and I saw a newspaper ad shortly before I left for the theatre. It featured the poster for this movie with a brilliant slogan above it: "TODAY THE WORLD WILL ASSEMBLE." Confused? The line comes from here:
It's a catch phrase from old Avengers stories. And for some reason, I started to get really hyped from that brilliant poster. When I got to the theatre, I was greeted by the longest lineup I had ever seen for an opening night showing (By that I mean the 7:00 showing: the real opening night showing). Bear in mind I have seen Spider-Man 3, Avatar, The Dark Knight, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Parts I and II on opening night. None of those lineups were longer, and none of those lineups had as much hype. I sat down in my seat, begging the Movie Gods to allow this movie to be good. I had just had a sudden love affair with this thing. Don't let it suck. Ladies and gentleman, I am proud to say the Movie Gods are real.
I already said in my Summer In Review post that I loved this movie, but I now want to say why I loved it, what was so good. Well I ask you: what was bad? What didn't work? Not much. Sure, there are inconsistencies and flaws, but those are minor. Does anyone really care how Bruce Banner was suddenly able to control his transformations into the Hulk? Not really, or at least from my point of view. This movie has it firing on all cylinders and managed to avoid any potential problems I was afraid it might have. The biggest fear I had was that some characters would be used more than others, especially Iron Man. He was hugely popular, and Robert Downey Jr. was suddenly the biggest thing in the world, so I assumed he would get the most screen time and development. I was completely wrong. Every character gets their time to shine. I didn't like one character any more than the other, and that is quite an accomplishment, and I got the sense the actors were having a ton of fun, and that extends to the audience. This is one of the most entertaining movies I have ever seen, but not in a Transformers way in which there is no story or character. This movie had heart. It tried to tell a good story. Yes, it is about an evil villain trying to take over the world, but it was done well in the execution. We cared about the characters and hated the villain. Tom Hiddleston really stole the show as Loki. He is still hateful, so despicable and so wonderfully villainous that you have to just love him. He loves what he is doing and always has a creepy smile on his face. The Avengers as a whole have good chemistry together and the actors manage to play off of each other extremely well. You can see the effort that everyone put into this. It was how an action-adventure like this should be done and acts as proof you don't need an Inception style story to have a great movie like this. You can have your explosions and your CGI effects, but you also need to have something beneath the surface. One of the movie's best aspects was the humour. Not only are there gags in here, but they work. Hulk grabbing Loki and throwing him around was completely hysterical, as was Hulk punching Thor. It kept the movie light and fun. Sure, comic book movies can get serious and have it work, but that would have been wrong for this one. It's about superheroes teaming up to save the world. You can't take that too seriously and I'm glad Joss Whedon was smart enough to not go down that road. Now, I can keep going all day about this movie, but it's pointless. Everyone has seen it, and there are millions of reviews on the Internet that point out every good aspect of The Avengers, so I will end it here. It's a fantastic movie, as we all know.
And that is the end of Marvel Marathon. It took a lot of research into these characters, and I'm kind of glad it's over. But it was fun looking into these movies. Yes, even Iron Man 2.
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