[Movies] Avengers

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This movie is a comic book. I mean that in a very good way. Out of all the comic-derived movies I've seen, this one comes closest to capturing the spirit of the comics. Whedon did a really good job on the humor without going all Whedonesque. He has sort of played out that whole "this is going to be a really big fight--nah just kidding it's over right away" thing, but I guess it's still fresh for the people unfamiliar with his work. The only thing I didn't care much for was what seemed to be Whedon's personal interpretation of the relationship between Banner and the Hulk, but not enough to ruin anything else. I did like the Genre Savvy-ness. They always expected betrayal.

Who was the waitress? A Whedon? The camera stayed on her a lot, and I don't know who she was supposed to be. Her name tag said "Beth", but still doesn't ring any bells. Scarlett Johannsen was nice, but Gwyneth Paltrow wins this round in my book.

Also
Thanos.
Clever Whedonesque (I used it twice GasBandit ) "court death" joke.
 
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Oh and another thing. This movie had people in it. That's a good thing that directors like Reitman and Donner understood, but a lot of superhero movie directors don't seem to.
 
Norris

Norris

fade said:
Who was the waitress? A Whedon? The camera stayed on her a lot, and I don't know who she was supposed to be. Her name tag said "Beth", but still doesn't ring any bells.
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According to Wikipedia, that was Ashley Johnson, whose notable roles include Chrissy Seaver on Growing Pains and voice work as Gretchen Grundler on Disney's Recess, Peter on Jumanji, Terra on Teen Titans, and teenage Gwen Tennyson on Ben 10: Alien Force and its sequels. She also had guest appearances including episodes of The Middleman, Lie to Me, Monk, Roseanne........and Dollhouse's original pilot and the first season finale. She will also be appearing in Whedon's take on Much Ado About Nothing. So yeah, she seems to have joined the Whedon team. Speaking of which, Enver Gjokaj as a random cop and Alexis Denisof as The Other were fun to see (or hear, as the case may be).

She's credited as just "Waitress", so I think the character was just a straightforward "everywoman" to demonstrate the good the heroes did. That she was played by one of Whedon's cohorts was just gravy.
 
Enresshou

Enresshou

Saw the movie today with the fiance. She was the one that introduced me to Firefly, and has an even bigger love-on for Joss Whedon than I do, so we both had an absolute BLAST at this movie. Favorite superhero movie, hands-down.

Question, though, regarding the ending:

I was under the impression that that was the Red Skull at the end, not Thanos. Maybe it was the lack of sleep last night, but what definitively gave it away as Thanos??
 
LittleSin

LittleSin

This was my first IMAX movie.

I just...oh my god...this was wonderful. Everything was great. It blew my fucking mind.

Also, Hawkeye was a total babe. I mean DAMN.

THANOS!!!!
 
filmfanatic

filmfanatic

Enresshou said:
Saw the movie today with the fiance. She was the one that introduced me to Firefly, and has an even bigger love-on for Joss Whedon than I do, so we both had an absolute BLAST at this movie. Favorite superhero movie, hands-down.

Question, though, regarding the ending:

I was under the impression that that was the Red Skull at the end, not Thanos. Maybe it was the lack of sleep last night, but what definitively gave it away as Thanos??
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The person talking to Thanos said that taking on Earth was like "courting Death itself". Thanos is in love with the actual being of Death and wants her affection. His smile at the end there is because anything that can be comparable to dating Death will grab his attention.
 
Norris

Norris

Also, and I know this is kind of a strange idea, but
Would anyone else be really keen on seeing a "What if...The Chitauri won?" comic put out? Something like Nick Fury having to create and possibly personally lead a team consisting of War Machine, The Abomination, one of Odin's warriors (Heimdall, Sif, Hogun, Fandral, or Volstagg), and maybe a couple of others (the existence of Ross' super soldier formula would allow for the easy creation of U.S. Agent, JARVIS - assuming he's in more than one place at once - might be able to animate one of Tony's old suits) in a bid to get the tesseract back. Preferably written by Zack Whedon.
 
Adam

Adam

Norris said:
Also, and I know this is kind of a strange idea, but
Would anyone else be really keen on seeing a "What if...The Chitauri won?" comic put out? Something like Nick Fury having to create and possibly personally lead a team consisting of War Machine, The Abomination, one of Odin's warriors (Heimdall, Sif, Hogun, Fandral, or Volstagg), and maybe a couple of others (the existence of Ross' super soldier formula would allow for the easy creation of U.S. Agent, JARVIS - assuming he's in more than one place at once - might be able to animate one of Tony's old suits) in a bid to get the tesseract back. Preferably written by Zak Whedon.
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What is this, I don't even.
 
Norris

Norris

Adam said:
What is this, I don't even.
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What do you mean? Joss is busy these days. If you're doing a comic set in The Avengers universe, based on the movie written and directed by Joss, get his brother who writes comics. Which is Zack Whedon. I misspelled his name by mixing it up in my head with Jed Whedon.
 
ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

I'll have to see it a few more times to be sure, but I'm about 80% sure right now that that was the perfect superhero movie. Some are saying it had a slow start, but I felt it was proper build up. Build up to SHIELD, Loki and his threat, each of the team members, etc. Once the BIG final battle started, man, everything was awesome. And of course, Hulk pretty much stole the show every time he was on. Even better, they used him just enough times throughout the movie that his small, hilarious moments were great, not overdone.

Ruffalo, in my opinion, was the perfect Banner. Even better than Norton. He had confident nervousness like he was afraid to be around everyone. Not because he was afraid of them, but because he was afraid for them. Especially in his hand-ringing. Great stuff.
 
Dave

Dave

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I agree with you, Nick. It was so well done that if I have money I'll go see it again. I never see movies twice.
 
Frank

Frank

Here are my random thoughts, maybe spoilers, I dunno. Don't read this if they frighten you.

- I really enjoyed most of it.
- I would do things to Cobie Smulders in that SHIELD uniform that would shame us both.
- Mark Ruffalo > Edward Norton
- Captain America's new costume was fucking awful. Like, just the worst. 200 steps back from his own movie's version of the costume. Hell, it was worse than the one he wore doing USO stuff.
- The Galaga gag wrecked me, funniest moment in the film
- I would have preferred the Hulk not suddenly becoming good and under control, but whatevs. I think the movie would have been more interesting with them having to deal with a rampaging Hulk after they won the day from Loki.
- The helicarrier segment in the middle really stole the show. The rest of the movie afterwards just couldn't live up to how good the middle was. It was really Loki being Loki at it's finest.
- The Thanos thing is all well and good and I'm looking forward to it, I think Ultron should have been the choice for the next movie.
- I saw it early, at like 11 am so the theatre was heavily populated by children. I've learned something about myself. I have way higher tolerance for children being children in a movie theatre than I do with adults being children.
- The Prometheus trailer was not the wisest choice for a theatre full of 5-8 year olds. There were so many kids crying after it was over.
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

Wharglbargl overnight shifts. The first showings are long after I'm in bed for the next night's work, and I wind up waking up too late to catch a show before I have to go to work.

I don't want to wait until Wednesday or Thursday for my next night off. I'm gonna drag myself out of bed early enou tomorrow to go see it.
 
ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

Frank said:
Here are my random thoughts, maybe spoilers, I dunno. Don't read this if they frighten you.

- Captain America's new costume was fucking awful. Like, just the worst. 200 steps back from his own movie's version of the costume. Hell, it was worse than the one he wore doing USO stuff..
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I thought so, too, except when the mask was pulled back. But to be honest, I think that was partly intentional. Agent Coulson said he helped design the suit, which may be why it looked partly ridiculous. I get the feeling Coulson was more fanboy than fashion designer. :p
 
ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

Ravenpoe said:
I never saw the new hulk movie. Now I want to. He stole the show.
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It's definitely the weakest of the 5 Avenger solo movies, but it's still pretty solid. Though fair warning, there's not a whole lot of Hulky comedy like this had. Still worth at least a watch.
 
Frank

Frank

ThatNickGuy said:
I thought so, too, except when the mask was pulled back. But to be honest, I think that was partly intentional. Agent Coulson said he helped design the suit, which may be why it looked partly ridiculous. I get the feeling Coulson was more fanboy than fashion designer. :p
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I don't think they intentionally made him look shitty.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

Ravenpoe said:
I never saw the new hulk movie. Now I want to. He stole the show.
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It's decent, but as Nick said, it's the weakest of this franchise Marvel's been putting together since 2008. I really hope Ruffalo gets to star in a new Hulk film. They already set up the Leader in the 2008 movie.

Frank said:
- I saw it early, at like 11 am so the theatre was heavily populated by children. I've learned something about myself. I have way higher tolerance for children being children in a movie theatre than I do with adults being children.
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THIS. Sometimes kids are just sitting there watching the movie, and the parents think they need assistance to process things, like reading text on the screen or identifying a character, even though the kid doesn't ask. And that's how kids learn to talk during movies -_-. Which is the reason I only go to action movies in theaters for the most part, besides the Paranormal Activity films, since those are best seen with an audience.

- The Prometheus trailer was not the wisest choice for a theatre full of 5-8 year olds. There were so many kids crying after it was over.
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AHAHAHAHA! That's awesome. Now that you say that, I'm surprised all the little kids at our 3:30 showing weren't crying afterward. Maybe for the same reason my wife gave when I asked if she wanted to see it: "I didn't understand that." Maybe they didn't know they were supposed to be scared. That was a great trailer though; Prometheus keeps sliding between "might see" and "must see" for me, and that trailer moved it back to "must see".
 
LittleSin

LittleSin

I had a little girl with down syndrome sitting behind me.

She asked to leave part way through the movie because it was too loud. Up to that point I could feel her squirming but she kept quiet.

Then her older brother had a tantrum. Their mother took them both out but I kinda felt bad for her. :(
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

I almost forgot.

During the commercials pre-movie, everyone was chatting and being loud. When the trailers started, there was still a lot of talking, mostly from the kids. Then the trailer for The Dark Knight Rises started. There was no way to know this was a Batman movie right away unless you're good at guessing, but it came up quietly, with hushed speech from the characters and no sound playing during the explosions.

Complete fucking silence in that theater. Not one kid made a peep, not one candy wrapper crinkled, no one crunched popcorn or slurped. You could hear a pin drop while that trailer was playing. I thought that was amazing that it could capture everyone's attention so intensely, as if the trailer began with a booming voice "Christopher Nolan commands you: Be Silent."
 
fade

fade

Staff member
Frank said:
Here are my random thoughts, maybe spoilers, I dunno. Don't read this if they frighten you.

- I would have preferred the Hulk not suddenly becoming good and under control, but whatevs. I think the movie would have been more interesting with them having to deal with a rampaging Hulk after they won the day from Loki.
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I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with you there. I thought that was a good move on their part. I didn't like the "I'm always angry" part and the intentional transformation as I said above, but I mean they gave Hulk his candy by letting him SMASH. They did have the small scene with Harry Dean Stanton where Banner came to realize the Hulk wouldn't intentionally hurt anyone. Not that Banner got control, but he realized the Hulk wasn't bad.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

fade said:
They did have the small scene with Harry Dean Stanton where Banner came to realize the Hulk wouldn't intentionally hurt anyone.
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That scene was great.

There were so many great scenes, actually. Lots of great character moments. I'm amazed that everyone had some scene with the main villain, and there were character arcs... and NONE of it felt forced. The movie took its time and flowed naturally. I loved it.

Though I will say...
You couldn't do it, could you, Joss? Couldn't get through a whole movie without killing somebody. Well, at least this death had some dignity, and Phil got to have his own moment with Loki, and there was a purpose since (again, not forced) since these other characters knew him. It wasn't like that one SHIELD woman from the beginning died and suddenly Stark and Rogers were changing their tune. This was a guy they were familiar with, conversed with, had reasons to know (in Stark's case, through multiple movies). So if you gotta kill someone, do it right, I suppose.

Also, the Natalie Portman thing was handled very well.
 
fade

fade

Staff member
To me the weakest moment of the plot was
Hawkeye getting Fred Flintstoned back to normalcy.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

fade said:
To me the weakest moment of the plot was
Hawkeye getting Fred Flintstoned back to normalcy.
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If I had to choose between that or a subplot involving a device/substance/etc. to bring Hawkeye and the physicist back around, I'd choose what they did.
 
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