Never Seen It, #8 of 200: The Avengers

I made a list of 200 movies I've never seen before—found HERE—and I'm working my way through them in alphabetical order, while writing a little bit about them (or a lot about them, depending on how much I have to say about each movie... I don't have much to say about today's movie.)

The Avengers

2012

If the crux of each week's movie essay is "what I expected vs. what I actually saw," then The Avengers is an easy one to write, because my expectations have already been documented in writing. See this exchange between Dwyer and I during his The Dark Knight interview:

Dwyer: See, I watch the Marvel movies every once in a while. I think they're entertaining. I think they're well done. But I don't love them, per se. I don't think they have a lot of themes and analyses like this movie does, or really the whole Dark Knight Trilogy does. I think those Marvel movies are just superhero movies.

Joe: So you need more than just big dumb fun.

While we may not necessarily agree on The Dark Knight, we definitely agreed on Marvel movies, how they supposedly are "big dumb fun." Earlier on, I implied that Marvel movies are nothing more than "bang boom pow!" These were all assumptions, of course. But did my assumptions hold up? Was there more to The Avengers than I assumed there would be?

Yes, I could make a case that there was. Not a whole lot more, mind you. We're not talking about cinema. This is still a popcorn flick. But I was surprised at the amount of nuance that The Avengers was able to find, in between the loud explosions during the requisite destruction of New York City. If this is a manifestation of a movie easily overcoming my basement-level expectations, then maybe I should watch every movie with basement-level expectations, because it worked out pretty well this time.

I always appreciate when a superhero flick questions its own existence (this will be the last time I mention The Dark Knight, but the whole question of "do we really need a hero like Batman?" was one of the best parts of that film). I didn't expect the Avengers to question their worth like, say, the Watchmen might, but I was pleasantly surprised that the script at least nibbled around the edges of the idea.

I'm thinking specifically of Loki's monologue, when he says all that stuff like "You pretend to be separate, to have your own code. Something that makes up for the horrors. But they are a part of you, and they will never go away!" This is at least a peek at those types of questions, ones that the best superhero stories ask of themselves. Yes, these are heroes, but at what cost?

This subject of "it's not black/white but many shades of gray" was touched upon again during the whole sequence where Fury is accused of using S.H.I.E.L.D. to build a nuclear device (I think Captain America has a problem with it because that's what the Nazis were doing in his standalone movie, but I'm not 100% sure). This isn't a Batman thing, where these heroes are around long enough to see themselves become the villain. It's more of a mirror moment, where they're all thinking "Have I been the villain this whole time?" The answer is made clear, obviously—nope, these are the heroes, duh—but to even ask the question lends at least some weight to this film.

One of the ways that I felt The Avengers (and most other movies of the genre) fell short was the depictions of the civilians in New York City. I know we love to see the Hulk smashing his way through an office building, but what do we make of the office drone for whom this was the most fantastical and traumatic day of his life? I know there's only so much a movie can pack into two and a half hours without seeming unwieldy, but by focusing the camera on the heroes and villains doing the destruction, it makes it a lot harder for me to relate to any of this.

It's a minor complaint, for sure, but I know that the movie knows that they dropped the ball in this regard, because there was that scene at the end when all the television news outlets were presenting all the different opinions in quick succession ("We gotta clean this shit up!" and "Captain America saved my life!" and etc.). It seemed to me like a sweeping under the rug maneuver. "We'll deal with this in future movies." (By the way, do they? I don't think I'll be watching Age of Ultron any time soon.) (Hey, there was a short-lived TV show about this, starring Abed Nadir, I wonder how that was? (jk I'm reading about it now, apparently that show was DC, not Marvel WHOOPS.))

I will say that the script, as a whole, was pretty successful. We quickly and effortlessly moved from set piece to set piece, and it never felt like it was lagging or had much extraneous fluff. Some 160-minute movies can be a fucking drag, but The Avengers flew by. I also appreciated the onslaught of quips provided by Joss Whedon—not surprising if you've seen any of his other work. There could be nothing worse in the history of movies than a superhero movie that takes itself too seriously, but this is not a charge that you can level against The Avengers. Think about the punchline of "He's my brother!" "He killed 80 people." "...He's adopted." That's some good shit!

Even the jokes you can see a mile away are appreciated. Like that brief scene during the climactic battle sequence, where the NYPD captain (hey, that guy's from Boardwalk Empire!) questions Captain America's authority, and then immediately rescinds his skepticism after Cap kills like eight aliens at once. It was more of a groan-laugh than an LOL-laugh, but I'll take smirking groans over endlessly unpleasant bad guy slaughtering any day.

I also appreciated the fact that the script didn't have too much exposition, or try to over-explain anything. It felt like the plot of The Avengers was one single story in the vast history of these characters, and that sense was achieved pretty skillfully. I thought about this when Black Widow and Hawkman were interacting, and were talking about their shared history. "Remember Budapest?" None of the shit they were talking about happened on screen in the MCU (I'm assuming), and yet it was treated as fact, as something that happened. It colored their relationship without having to go into details.

That's not to say that there weren't moments and dialogue that were kinda hokey. There was plenty of that too. I'm thinking particularly of Coulson's death scene, with the whole "You're going to lose" thing, I didn't know Agent Coulson from Adam, so maybe that's my fault, but his death seemed like a "[insert midlevel player's death here]" parts in a script. The rest of the gang has plot armor, but Coulson? Sure, let's kill him, and maybe attempt to tug the heartstrings by staining his Captain American playing cards in blood. (I remember reading somewhere that Coulson comes back from the dead in the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. television show, but I don't care enough to read up on the subject.)

Let's talk about the plot armor, though. Do we think that subtracts from the drama at all? E.g. are the stakes lower when Iron Man is riding a nuclear bomb because we know for a fact that Iron Man is not going to die? A little bit, yeah. The fact that this is a multi-billion-dollar money-printing franchise means that there are strings attached; Robert Downey Jr. isn't going to be written out of the series before they can squeeze ever last cent out of him. That's the just the way it goes. (This is also probably why—spoilers—Avengers: Infinity War's climax of "killing off" half the character seems pretty dumb to me. Black Panther got an Oscar nomination, do you really think they are going to kill off the Black Panther already?!)

But look... I get it. People who love the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies aren't watching this shit for a genre treatise or a trope buster or a Roshomon-style run through the general populace. People who watch superhero movies wanna see the good guys win in the loudest, most exciting way possible. If that's the baseline, then consider it met, and consider my time watching this movie enjoyable.

There are days, though, when I need more. I can't imagine watching 23 of these movies, and enjoying all of them. So if we're talking about simple thumbs up and thumbs down, The Avengers gets a thumbs up. But if we're talking about movies that inspire me to change, or to think about the world differently, or to expand my thoughts about cinema in any measurable way, then The Avengers does the bare minimum.

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Who's Involved

There are some heavy hitters in this cast, but I want to primarily answer the question: Is this actor/actress best known for their work in Marvel movies, and if not, what are they best known for?

Robert Downey Jr. — Honestly, at this point, he's probably best known for Iron Man? This is coming from someone who didn't know or care about Downey's substance abuse concerns, DUIs, etc., while that whole thing was happening. Looks like he was part of the Brat Pack for a while due to his role in Weird Science (see you in 2022, Weird Science). He was nominated for an Oscar for wearing blackface. What else.... um, Dolittle anyone?!?!?!?

Chris Evans — I don't think there's any question that Captain America is his most well-known role. What else would he be known for? Not Another Teen Movie? (I promise I will limited the amount of paragraphs I end with the bit where I name a terrible movie and sarcastically ask about it.)

Mark Ruffalo — This is an interesting one, because there are a bunch of prestigious films on this filmography. But as is often the case with prestige film, none of it comes close to touching the popularity of the Marvel juggernauts. (Plus, he's in this meme, which I didn't know was from The Avengers until watching it.) (Also: I already wrote about Edward Norton originally playing Hulk in the MCU, but that he was a pain in the ass to work with, so Ruffalo replaced him. Ruffalo had this to say: "[My friend] Ed has bequeathed this part to me, I look at it as my generation's Hamlet," which is about as graceful as one can be in those types of situations.)

Chris Hemsworth —Wikipedia does my job for me, stating on the record that Hemsworth is best known for playing Thor. I first saw him in The Cabin in the Woods, which is interesting to think about. In Cabin, Hemsworth was asked to play it straight, because the plot called for these teens to be manipulated by a monster a la classic horror films. In Avengers, he is also asked to play it straight, because he is not like the other characters—he is a demigod. I've read that Hemsworth eventually gets more opportunities to be funny later in the MCU, and I'm glad he gets to stretch his skillset a little more than he does in the two movies I've seen him in.

Scarlett Johansson — Johansson might be the only Avenger who isn't best known for her work as an Avenger, at least in my opinion. But I'm just saying that because I've coincidentally watched a decent amount of non-Marvel Scarlett Johansson movies (including two Oscar-nominated films last year alone). Also, consider that Black Widow is one of the few Avengers who hasn't had her own standalone film yet, meaning that someone who doesn't watch these movies might not even be aware that she is in The Avengers, et al. (This paragraph would've been out of date had COVID not pushed the Black Widow movie back from last month till November 2020.)

Jeremy Renner — I guess it depends if you've seen The Hurt Locker, for which he was nominated for Best Actor at the Oscars. Seeing as our nation's children have almost certainly never seen The Hurt Locker, I concede that Renner is best known as Hawkeye. (I could've sworn The Hurt Locker was on the Never Seen It list at one point. I must've taken it off.)

Tom Hiddleston — 100% best known for his role as Loki in these films. Hiddleston does a great job in The Avengers portraying a deep and vivid villain (which doesn't happen too often in superhero movies), especially when you consider the fact that Loki spends a large portion of the film in a jail cell. I would've assumed that I have never seen this guy in any other movie, but apparently he was in Kong: Skull Island. I guess I remember seeing Kong: Skull Island.

Cobie Smulders — No fucking way, she will always be Aunt Robin (I will take every opportunity to say this: If you have a problem with the How I Met Your Mother finale, you can GO FUCK YOURSELF). Her second best role is the billboard I see when I ride my bike to work on which she is laying on a car with her hands behind her head, with a smirk that says "don't you wanna know all the sexy mysterious exploits I get up to in my neighborhood of Stumptown?"

Samuel L. Jackson — Get these motherfucking snakes off this motherfucking S.H.I.E.L.D. airship.

Gwyneth Paltrow — Apparently, it was the intention of Joss Whedon to not include any of the characters from the Avengers' standalone films, because he wanted their lives as a group to seem different from their lives as individuals. However, Robert Downey Jr. apparently has enough pull that he was able to force Paltrow into the movie. My theory is that Downey Jr. made millions of goop bucks hawking goop products and was just trying to repay the favor.

Stan Lee — Will anyone ever overcome his lead for highest grossing actor of all time? If you calculate it by dollars per minute of screentime, then the answer is no.

Powers Boothe — He was missed in the Deadwood movie, so it was nice seeing him pop up here. The dude has such a good villain presence, so it added depth to the movie that he was ostensibly on the good guys' side.

Harry Dean Stanton — This is a cameo that I would not have picked up on without help from the internet. Stanton plays the janitor who finds Hulk after he falls out of the sky. He asks the question "Are you an alien?" which is funny enough on its own. But the joke gets an extra layer when you remember that Harry Dean Stanton was in Alien.

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IMDB Trivia

Here are 219 piece of trivia about The Avengers.

BEST: "Tony Stark casually refers to three of the other main characters, Loki, Thor, and Hawkeye, as either movie characters, or movie titles. He calls Loki 'Reindeer Games,' Thor 'Point Break,' and Hawkeye 'Legolas'." Hey, I understood one out of the three references! I'm getting better at this!

WORST: "Robert Downey Jr. kept food hidden all over the lab set, and apparently nobody could find where it was, so they just let him continue doing it. In the movie, that's his actual food he's offering, and when he was eating, it wasn't scripted, he was just hungry." Wowz so quirky lol.

OTHER WORST: "Gwyneth Paltrow is noticeably barefoot in all of her scenes in Stark Tower, while Robert Downey Jr. is in three or four-inch platform shoes, so he looks taller than her." Oh no, goop is making Robert Downey Jr. shrink!

ALMOST CASTED (WHO THE FUCK CARES): "Malin Akerman, Alice Eve and Rachel Nichols were reportedly going to be cast in the film as either Sharon Carter or Carol Danvers/Ms. Marvel." Who the fuck cares?

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Sequels, etc.

I almost didn't include this section, because it's too obvious, and too saturated into the pop culture lexicon already. Yes, The Avengers is the sixth movie in a franchise that currently includes 23 movies. You already knew that, right?

I guess I mainly just want to admit that I will not be submitting the boring take of "Marvel movies are stupid," which seems to be the hip thing to do these days, akin to saying that "Elmo ruined Sesame Street" or whatever. It's easy to take pot shots at a multi-billion-dollar franchise, and maybe they deserve it at the end of the day. I would think that linking together 23 movies and counting takes big fucking balls to pull off, and I can't really blame them if the MCU goes for 100 movies. People like them, the movies make people happy, they contain positive messages for children, they are spectacles, etc. Do the producers ultimately pump these suckers out thrice a year to print money? Absolutely. But that doesn't take away from the positive aspects as well.

And it's not like they are haphazardly putting this shit together. Plot points are teased out movies in advance. As someone who has only seen a couple of these movies, even I was able to see the tense moments between Iron Man and Captain America for what they were—set-up for Civil War. And there are six movies in between Avengers and Civil War. And what's his name, the genocidal maniac, Thanos, he makes his first appearance in this movie (the post-credits scene), a full twelve movies before he reveals himself to be the true villain. I'll try not to give Marvel Studios more credit than they deserve when I say that putting all of this together took at least some skill, and I admire that.

Still not going to shell out $20 to see any of these movies, though.

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Final Word

I dunno, there's not really much else to say.

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

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NEXT TIME: I get my baseball fix somehow, some way, by watching Bad News Bears.