0
comments
How much more I enjoyed watching The Avengers in 2D rather than through the mud and blur and migraine of threedy. I felt like a partially sighted man suddenly given the gift of 20/20 vision. "Look at how beautiful it all is!" I cried at the cinema screen. "The colours so bright and vivid, the action distinctive, the background detail actually visible... I can see - I CAN SEE!"
In truth, The Avengers looks no better or worse than any other big screen FX fest. Unless you watch it in 3D... when it looks just as bad as every other big screen 3D FX fest. I couldn't help thinking of those adverts in which terribly earnest thesps like Ray "Cant" Winstone or Tim from The Office (you might know him as Dr. Watson or The Hobbit, but he'll always be Tim from The Office to me) encourage us not to download badly pirated movies from t'internet because not only are we damaging the film industry, but "the picture quality is rubbish". And yet (not that I've ever downloaded any badly pirated movies from t'internet), I imagine that'd still be preferable to watching said movies in 3D. But...
...enough about all that. What about the newly crowned BIGGEST OPENING WEEKEND EVER movie, the superhero blockbuster even the most churlish of critics are lauding (with the exception of Philip French's wonderfully pompous review in The Observer, which begins thus...
"Unhappy the land that has no heroes!" someone remarks to Bertolt Brecht's Galileo. "No. Unhappy the land that needs heroes," Galileo replies.
...and you can guess the rest); what about The Avengers? Is it any cop?
Well, yes. It's not an unqualified success, but it does the job far better than it might have... if not quite as well as I'd hoped. All the main characters are well-handled, although it's new-boy Mark Ruffalo who really shines as the most likeable Bruce Banner since Bill Bixby's David and a more enjoyable Hulk to boot. Robert Downey Jr's insistence on throwing away some of his best lines continues from Iron Man 2; Chris Evans brings flashes of nobility to the otherwise faintly ridiculous Captain America; and Chris Hemsworth's Thor faces real competition from his half-brother Loki, with Tom Hiddleston almost stealing the movie after a somewhat muted performance first time out. (I love his Loki-grin.) Scarlett Johansson is slightly less annoying than she was in Iron Man 2 and a whole lot less annoying than she is in anything else and Jeremy Renner rather draws the short arrow as a mindwashed Hawkeye stolen from the first half and given little development as a result.
The script has some nice visual gags and typically Whedon one-liners (when RDJ's goatee isn't fast-talking them into inaudibility) and the fanboys will be happy to see that virtually every character gets the chance to go one-on-one up against each other. Best are the scenes where someone faces off against the aforementioned God of Mischief... Fury vs. Loki, Cap vs. Loki, Widow vs. Loki, Stark vs. Loki... and, best of all, the hilarious Hulk vs. Loki sequence which is worth the price of admission on its own. The hero-on-hero fight sequences (while necessary to slake the geek thirst) seem a little forced... and the film is at least 20 minutes too long, especially considering how little actual story there is to go round. I was impressed by the way the writers tied together the earlier movies, making each a genuine prequel to the main event, but after that it's a mishmash of chase scene, destructo-porn and quipping slugfest right up to the closing credits. I'd have hoped for a few more plot twists... especially from Loki, the king of crafty shenanigans. And the Big Bad Reveal at the end is distinctly underwhelming, even for fanboys who know who Thanos is. I reckon they only roped him in to piss on DC's Darkseid chips should that fabled JLA movie ever get past the planning stages. Oh, sorry, was that a spoiler? Pretend I wrote it in 3D and you'll not even notice it was there...
closes with this short burst of defiance...
is one of my favourite novels, 
isn't one of my favourite Springsteen albums. Lyrically, these stories are strong - musically, they're a little too sparse - yet without the devastating 4-track effect of 
Still, Dry Lightning remains an evocative piece of storytelling...
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
, the songs takes its name from the same DC Comics character that also christened the late New Yorks Dolls guitarist.
)
- now there's a killer idea... Thor vs. Max Rockatansky. (Not in 3D.) C'mon, Hollywood - make it happen!
)
(although the soundtrack to Iron Man 2 was pretty much a crass exercise at shifting a Greatest Hits album for a band that never does Greatest Hits albums). 
)
. I remember buying the CD as soon as it came out and rushing home to listen to it. Realising I had to work that night, I decided to copy the CD onto cassette to listen to in my car on the way (this was 1991, so forgive me for not having an in-car CD player). To make sure the album filled the cassette, I programmed the CD player to repeat-play then left it recording while I went to have my tea. I returned, picked up the cassette, and set off to work. Thunder was a great opening track and I was really enjoying it... but, boy, did it go on. I was halfway to work before I started to get a little bored of it - how long was this track anyway? Was track 2 ever going to begin?
)
