The Avengers (2012)

I intensely dislike Joss Whedon. I would love to punch him in the face. Him and that smug style of writing he has. I can't explain it, but there it is. I've never been able to put my finger on what it is about his writing that just irritates me to no end, but I'd say there are two big factors: smugness and the fans.

The first factor is pretty self-explanatory: Whedon's writing is full of itself. Nearly every line from every character in one of his shows is some quirky, wink-at-the-camera, oh-I'm-so-clever, snarky joke that I just never see the humor in. And the second factor, the fans, love it.

Oh you Joss Whedon fans. I really am not too fond of you, either. Not on a personal level, no you're fine people generally speaking, but you just can't wrap your heads around the fact that I don't like Joss Whedon can you? That fries you to your core, doesn't it? It just gets under your skin and festers like a wound. Your eyes go wide, your jaw drops and you shout "WHAT?!" at me when I responded (after you asked) that I didn't like "Firefly." Then you tell me I have no taste in sci-fi. Every time. You lot are nothing if not consistent, I'll give you that.

 "You DARE defy The Great Forehead?! Destroy him, my minions! FLY!!!"

I've actually been threatened with physical violence over "Firefly" before on two separate occasions, so don't tell me you people can't get a bit intense. "Star Trek" fans don't do that when I say I liked "Voyager." They just roll their eyes and say "Next Gen" was better. That's called "civility," people. I'm sorry your show only lasted a season. Trust me, FOX screwed me out of MY favorite show, "Arrested Development" too. I feel your pain. WE ARE KIN.

So before going into "The Avengers," let me clear the air and address some things right now. Here are the issues which I'm sure I'm going to get called on, and let me answer them here and now.

1) "You're going into it with a bad attitude!"
I wasn't too excited about "The Avengers," no, but I wasn't dreading it. I was more neutral. But I've never liked Joss Whedon's works before, so you can't blame me for being apprehensive.

2) "It's just a movie, dude! Turn off your brain and have fun!"
I like to have fun with my brain ON, thank you very much. I don't consider mindless acceptance a positive quality to have. That trait is why Michael Bay still has a career. It's kind of evil.

3) "Why do you have to nitpick everything and ruin everyone's fun?"
Because unlike most of you, I'm a critic. It's what I do. I've been doing it for years. I was published in a newspaper. It was my job. What do you think my reviews would have been like had I just typed IT WAS AWESOME 100 times? It doesn't mean I'm necessarily out to ruin stuff, I'm analyzing it. And don't ask me what I thought if you don't want the truth.

4) "But in the COMIC they explain-"
Didn't read. Don't care. Irrelevant.

5) "Well I thought it was awesome."
Cool! I thought it was mediocre!

Ok? Now on the part where I make a lot of people mad at me. Beforehand, let me just say, I'm sorry and please don't firebomb my house.

Before I get into the character aspects of the film that I found annoying, I'd first like to bring up some plot related stuff that really irked me. First up is that there seemed to be some real inconsistency in powers. Most of this come from The Hulk. Now, at about the halfway point of the film, Thor has a fight with The Hulk, and while he doesn't exactly beat him up, it was a pretty close fight before it got cut short. However, later in the film, Thor has his little showdown with Loki and can't touch him. And then here comes Hulk, beating the ever-loving cream-filled stuffing out of Loki.

How does that work? We also have to assume Thor was probably going easy on Hulk at least a bit, since he probably didn't want to really hurt him, if that was even possible. But there's no way he was going easy on Loki. So if Thor could hold his own against Hulk while holding back, and Hulk could just sneeze on Loki to pulverize him, Loki verses Thor at full tilt shouldn't even have been close. Instead, Loki pretty much wins that fight. So exactly how powerful is he, then? Make up your mind, movie.

"Hulk level up between scenes!"

And another thing with The Hulk! Why does Hulk all of a sudden not go into an insane rage the second time he Hulks out? He was trying to kill Scarlett Johansson earlier, and now he's fighting alongside them and taking orders? What changed? Did I miss a line? All of a sudden he's totally cool, capable of taking orders, and totally knows who is on his side and who isn't? You just can't do that without explaining it! It seemed that Whedon realized that he wrote himself into a corner with Hulk, but said "screw it" and had him fighting with The Avengers at the end just because.

OH! Another thing!!! How in the hell did the mystical MacGuffin wind up on the roof of Tony Stark's building without him knowing? The dude is hardwired into everything on the freaking planet with his tech, yet his AI butler dropped the ball on his home security?! And you can't tell me they hacked his AI butler, because he's functioning perfectly throughout the entire affair.

Alright, alright I'm done with the plot holes. Besides, apart from the MacGuffin on the roof, none of those were really deal breakers for me. They were more like little annoyances. No, for me the real Listerine in the punchbowl were the characters themselves, and how they acted. Particularly the guy who was once one of the most awesome superheroes around, but has now become one of the most insufferable: Tony Stark.

"Hi, my name is Robert, but you can call me Chuckles the Clown."

Tony Stark is hands down the least interesting character in this film. He's a walking punchline. And no, that doesn't automatically make him awesome. That makes him a punchline. There's a difference. I seem to recall Tony being slightly less obnoxious with the amount of jokes and "Lookit me, I'm not taking this too seriously" lines in the other "Ironman" films. I mean, they were there, sure, but they seemed a bit more spaced out. In "The Avengers" it's like EVERY SINGLE LINE with this guy. If Tony Stark is on the screen, there can't be 12 seconds going by without a witty, snide comment with the appropriate amount of pause afterwords so the audience can laugh. Irritation and distraction are not powerful enough adjectives to describe the effect that had on me. And of course, he's probably the Avenger with the most screen time.

The far more interesting characters for me were Captain America and Thor. I found Captain America interesting because he was the man representing loyalty and faith in the system, something he fought and basically died for, but he gets thrown in a position of having to question that very loyalty and coming to terms with what the "right" thing to do really is, even if it means disobeying orders. It's an interesting bit of character development which lasts for about 5 minutes before an action scene starts, and when it's done he's made his decision. That's fine, but personally I would have liked to have seen it addressed maybe one more time, because it was a good angle for the character.

Now Thor I liked because of the connection he had with the villain. Loki being Thor's brother added a connection that the other characters couldn't hope to match. For that reason, the scenes between Thor and Loki are quite good and have far more impact on a dramatic level than when any of the other Avengers are fighting him. For everyone else it's just the Big Bad of the movie, but for Thor it's personal.

Loki also possess the power to turn into Michael Sheen.

Thor is also the only character that was given the exact proper amount of funny lines. That total ended up being maybe three. He's basically the complete antithesis of Tony Stark in that regard, since Tony had maybe three lines that were serious, and for that reason Thor was the only character that I actually found funny. When he said something humorous, it was unexpected, and to be perfectly honest, Chris Hemsworth had a FAR superior sense of comedic timing. The one joke I laughed at was Thor meekly mentioning that Loki is adopted when it's brought up that his brother killed a lot of people. That was pretty funny.

But YOU need to shut up, dude, before you wear out the love I have for you...

Speaking of shutting up, the absolute biggest problem I had with this flick was the unbelievable amount of talking going on. GOOD. GRAVY. I thought we were over this. Did I miss something? What have we been doing the last half decade? What were all those other movies about? You know, the FIVE Marvel films that were the lead-in to "The Avengers?"

I thought the point of those was so that we didn't need an hour and a half of talking in "The Avengers" movie. I thought in this movie, since we already knew everyone, they would simply form a team because of an evil that threatens the world, and a lot of stuff blows up and awesome superhero action awaits without having to bother with drama and petty bickering.

Boy was I wrong. Almost the entire first two acts of the film are devoted to the Avengers bickering and in-fighting with each other as they can't seem to come to the simple conclusion that they really need to work together otherwise they're all dead. Oh wow. That's fun. That's what I paid $10 to see: superheroes having a penis measuring contest. For that reason I found the first 2/3rd's of the movie to honestly be pretty darn boring, with the exception of an occasional brief action scene snapping me out of drifting off.

But shock of all shocks, once the third act comes along, "The Avengers" out of nowhere gets pretty freaking good. I'm not going to lie, the last act is outstanding. And although the action does have an annoying habit of flipping back and forth between "phenomenal" and "way-too-close-what-the-hell-am-I-looking-at-stop-shaking-the-camera," the ratio of amazing to confusing is severely skewed in the positive direction. The last 40 minutes or so of "The Avengers" is probably some of the best, most consistently exciting action I can recall from...well nearly any movie, really.

And that fact makes it just that much more frustrating for me when I realized that had this movie been about half an hour shorter, started at the third act, and just played out Loki's plan to a more severe outcome, "The Avengers" would have ROCKED. The alien invasion that is the third act should have happened by the half hour mark. Not the hour and forty minute mark. This should have been a movie entirely made up of The Avengers fighting back the alien horde. Not Tony Stark and Steve Rogers puffing their chests out at each other and setting a time and place to fight after school.

Most of the movie is The Avengers fighting each other rather than the bad guys.

I know people are going to come down hard on me for having these views, but I'm sorry. For the most part I found "The Avengers" to be boring, obnoxious and WAY too full of itself. And I blame every single bit of that on Joss Whedon, because that is the exact same reaction I've had to pretty much everything he's ever done.

And for those of you fanboys and fangirls ready to tear my head off over what you would probably call my "blasphemy," ask yourself a question, think about it seriously, and be honest:

"Did you really enjoy "The Avengers" on a objective level, or did you enjoy it simply because it's there?"

THE BOTTOM LINE - "The Avengers" is not a bad movie. It's just not that great if you ask me. It's kind of boring, it takes way too long getting started, the plot never really solidifies, and most of the movie is superheroes being snarky jerks to each other. When it finally does pick up at the end, it's fantastic, which is the best redeeming quality for the film. Fanboys will worship it because that's what they do. For someone with their blinders off, I can say it's just "OK" at best. Recommended for a rental, or perhaps theaters after all the annoying diehards are done seeing it 15 times.