This blog is entirely spoiler free. No story points are ruined, not even the ones already ruined by the trailers. Grrr! Also, for those who don’t feel like staying for this whole blog post, make sure you do stay through the entire credits if you see the movie. There are not one, but two stingers during the credits. So, don’t get cocky after the first one ends and leave, stay all the way through. Worth it! Anyway, on with the post.
Oh, Avengers. My sweet, sweet, Avengers.
I expected this movie to be really good, but it far exceeded even my lofty expectations. It just further confirms that Joss Whedon is some sort of awesome geek god. This movie is a fanboy/girl’s dream come true. Well, I guess I can’t speak for all fanboys and girls, but I can speak for this one, and he loved it. Unadulterated joy. I laughed, I smiled like an idiot. At one point, I even said, “Yes!” out loud… involuntarily. I shit you not. I didn’t realize I had said it until it was already out of my mouth.
The audience we saw the movie with really loved it, too. There were points when they cheered and clapped and yelled, a common occurrence on opening night. The difference is that this time, it wasn’t even annoying (I usually find that extremely annoying), because the scene they were cheering was so fucking awesome it deserved to be cheered by a bunch of idiots like us.
Oh, and did I forget to mention the salvation of the Hulk? Whedon and Ruffalo brought him from being underwhelming and boring to somehow being the best Avenger. Even Whedon’s favorite scene features the Hulk, but I won’t tell you what it is… no spoilers.
This is the reason they invented summer blockbusters. It’s the culmination of all popcorn fare that has come before. Hilarious, action packed from start to finish, and never bogged down by the overwhelming number of characters on screen. To quote Peter Travers of Rolling Stone: “All hail Joss Whedon, the warrior king of this dizzying, dazzling 3D action epic. The Avengers is Transformers with a brain, a heart and a working sense of humor.” I thought it was funny when I got home from the movie and saw that Travers compared the movie to Transformers, because after this insanely huge film was over, I thought, “Joss Whedon has become the anti-Bay. He is the embodiment of good, where Bay is evil.”
That is very good, because between his writing and directing of The Avengers and his writing on Cabin in the Woods, Joss Whedon is on fire. I don’t know if Joss Whedon wants to take over genre entertainment the way Loki wants to take over Earth, but if he does, I will gladly bow down before the rightful king.
I assure you, I’ll be seeing the film again, pronto. Probably several times. And by ‘probably’ I mean ‘definitely,’ and by ‘several,’ I mean ‘thirty.’
