I hadn't seen any of
the Marvel films leading up to Avengers Assemble,
bar one of the Iron Mans.
Nevertheless, the joy of the geekdom must be contagious because I
found myself moving from perfectly apathetic to actively seeking out
the cinema of my own volition. What resulted was something awesome
and a triumph of the genre, with peppy banter, great action
set-pieces, and a remarkable tightrope act of balancing between
sentiment and farce, using light moments of the latter to dilute the
threat of the former.
Nick
Fury, director of SHIELD (played as a morally ambiguous
consequentialist by the brilliant Samuel L. Jackson) brings together
the joint forces of Captain America (Chris Evans, tipping the scales
of old-school sanctimonious patriotism), the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo),
Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr in full
wise-cracking flow), the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and
Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner). Such a gathering of human, super-human, and
divine beings is necessary, for SHIELD has been playing with its new
toy, the Tesseract, and has found itself in deep trouble. Deep
trouble which comes in the shape of Thor's brother Loki (Tom
Hiddleston), who, fashioning himself as a would-be tyrannical king of
Earth, is leading an alien invasion across the time/space boundaries
opened up by said Tesseract.
Tom
Hiddleston is superb, bringing nuances and humour to a character who
in other hands could so easily have become a typical pantomime
villain, undermining the whole piece. As it is, he excels and hints
at even more which he could bring to the table. A treat for Avengers
Assemble 2 perhaps, which was
always a given, especially with a worldwide box-office of over
$1.2billion to date. All performances are well-executed, with
particular mention going to Mark Ruffalo, whose understated,
restrained scientist brings a wonderful fully rounded sense of
humanity and character to all aspects of Bruce Banner, not just the
big green monster within. The only weak link is Captain America and
that is because nothing has been done to rescue him from being an
anachronistic insertion; awoken from an ice-induced sleep, he is
characterised by older God-fearing, patriotic values, which sit
untidily with the dynamic of the rest of the team. A deliberate and
appropriate device, it might be said, but still one which seemed to
distract rather than entertain.
The
reason that Avengers Assemble
avoids a 'too many cooks spoil the broth' comparison is due in part
to the script, which allows all characters to co-exist equally, and
due in a large part to the skilful direction of Joss Whedon behind
the camera. No stranger to sci-fi and fantasy, certainly, but it must
have seemed a daunting task at the beginning. Nevertheless, he makes
it incredibly entertaining with a rate of a quip a minute, visually
appealing, suitably uncomplex, and above all, effortlessly
crowd-pleasing.
Has
Avengers Assemble
already stolen the show from the rest of this summer's blockbusters?
No. But that is not a criticism. What it has wisely done in a season
seeing the climax of Christopher Nolan's epic Batman
trilogy and a reboot of Spiderman
which hopes to atone for the sins of the last Tobey Maguire-starring
film, is create an area within the genre and set the bar in that
area. Skilful, inventive, and funny, it has left plenty of space in
the dark and profound for Batman
and lots more space besides for Spiderman.
It shows one way of creating a superhero film and has proved itself
the best in that.
