Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Movie Review

I finally got to see Avengers and I was completely blown away. I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie like this and was so happy leaving the film. So why was I so impressed with the film?

The film’s director/scriptwriter Joss Whedon did an incredible job tying together five films worth of plot lines and characterizations. The end result is one of the best super hero/comic book adaptation films ever.

The plot is very straight forward; Loki has returned to Earth, allying himself with the alien army the Chitauri in an attempt for him to rule the planet and giving the aliens the Tesseract (cosmic cube) for their help. SHIELD commander Nick Fury has to pull together the best super heroes alongside the top SHIELD agents to stop this. Along the way, Iron Man and company learn that they have to coexist. Can they save the day? Spoilers after the jump…

Avengers Film: So this is it?

Tonight (well technically tomorrow) Avengers makes its movie debut. For the last four years, Marvel/Paramount/Disney has made five films that have gotten us to the point where Earth’s mightiest heroes together.

What they’ve done is put together a cohesive universe for the Marvel films at least for the Avengers characters. So what does that mean for the future?

Captain America’s costume was on display at the New York Comic Con.

I read a blog post (from the LA Times I believe; sadly I cannot find the bookmark for it) saying that it may raise the bar for super hero films too high, especially in regards to the number of costumed characters.

They brought up the concern that this would lead to a veritable super hero appearance arms race, with all future films having to have a large cast of characters.

That said, should we be worried about this in regards to future comic book films? To that I’m going to say no. Avengers is a special case. It may be team film, but there is definitely a three-tier system to its characters.

Obviously at the top we have Iron Man, as Robert Downey Jr. has spent the last five years convincing us about how cool the character is. If it wasn’t for Iron Man doing so well, we might have not seen the subsequent Avengers family films. Captain America and Thor are up there as well, but that’s mostly because they had the last two blockbusters.

But after that, there really is a drop off with the rest of the characters. Yes, the Hulk is huge–literally and figuratively–but this is the third launch the character has had in the last decade. Consider him a gamma powered supporting character. That’s about the same for Nick Fury and for a lesser degree with Black Widow. Hawkeye is a step below them, not even being verbally identified during his debut in Thor.

What this film looks to do is less then introduce an audience to new characters, but to tell a story about how three (well four, we’ll give Hulk his due) extreme personalities can put aside their differences to work cohesively in an extremely intense situation.

I still haven’t seen the film yet and plan on doing so shortly. I hope I’m right.

Captain America: Movie Review

So it’s the time that everyone has been waiting for, time for a review of the Captain America movie. And we’re not talking about the one from the early 1990s.

Surprise!

I still haven’t seen the film yet, but I’m planning on very soon, so just be patient. Until I see the movie (and probably until I get bored with it), we’ll still be talking about all things Captain America.

Cap made his big screen debut way back in 1943, in a 15 part serial from Republic Pictures. It has little, if anything, to do with the comics of the time. Captain America is the secret identity of district attorney Grant Gardner who dons the star-spangled costume one more time in an attempt to stop the villainous Scarab.

The film is what you would expect; it’s a lot like many of the other action/adventure serials of the time. I might even say that its better than the 1990 Cap film, as far as the storytelling aspects are concerned.

One interesting but morbid bit of trivia from this film is that Dick Purcell–who played Captain America–died of what was assumed to be a heartache shortly after the filming of the movie wrapped up.

It looks like this incarnation of Captain America has lapsed into public domain, and you can view it over at Archive.org