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Monday, September 10, 2012

"The Avengers", superheroes' all-star game

The Avengers

That's the last superhero movie I'm watching in a long while, promise. Too many in the last two years, the majority of them being quite mediocre. "The Avengers" is not going to be any landmark in these overexploited sub-genre, but at least achieves its ultimate goal: being a pleasant entertainment.

After watching "The Avengers", I think I resolved myself a question regarding superhero/action movies. I prefer to have a no-brainer but quite spectacular, and for the most part, entertaining film than a supposedly more serious, but eventually more pretentious and sorry to say, tiring film like the last Batman. After all, a superhero film is not author's cinema and, if the material you are working with doesn't allow you to do so, maybe is better to concentrate in what you can offer: a couple of hours of fun. Besides, Marvel's factory has never been known for its adult/very mature pretensions, something that is completely reasonable, if you keep your coherency. So director Joss Whedon probably realised he had the potential (and budget) to film the most spectacular superhero film ever made. And decided to go for it, leaving the most substantial elements of a film (namely the plot or the premise) in an obvious second place. He probably chose well.

So, if you expected an intricate and tortured villain, look somewhere else. The bad guy is that kitsch version of Loki we saw on the laughable Thor, who by the way, looks exactly as silly as it was on that film, more likely to be participating on Smack Down/RAW than understanding what's going on Earth. If you were thinking on an elaborated major crisis that would force to assemble such a superhero "all-star game" this is not your film: the evil comes from another world, and with no other goal than provoking total war. Basically, "The Avengers" is that battle, and the so-called plot is the excuse to keep you waiting for it.

Well, the good part is that "The Avengers" doesn't pretend to take itself very seriously either. No one really cares about the Tesseract, and that extremely long scene on S.H.I.E.L.D. awesome headquarters, where scientists Bruce Banner and Tony Stark try to find a solution about the energy issue while they discover the real reasons of Nick Fury's behaviour, has the only purpose of being funny.

No, the questions on "The Avengers" are who would win in a fight: The Hulk or Thor? Who will be do the last action, who would be the one that saves the world? Can Captain America pair alongside the powers of the other superheroes? And what are the real motivation of the S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers? The sort of questions to please the comic fans, providing a feast of amazing scenes of action, the mother of all battles and quite a few hilarious moments (best one being The Hulk hitting Thor by surprise). Actors doesn't have a lot to prove. Scarlett looks sexy as anyone can expect, but her character doesn't have an important role. Chris Evans has the same lame character as Captain America as their solo film. And Samuel L. Jackson is quite ridiculous again as Nick Fury. The only ones remarkable are Robert Downey Jr's impersonation of the cynical hero as Iron Man and the good actor Mark Ruffalo mutating into the green beast.

"The Avengers" combination is pretty engaging. Pretty silly, understanding silly as some kind of compliment, as it refers to its lack of pretensions. So it's a good, fun option, for having a couple of entertained hours at least. 

SCORE: 6/10

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