Avengers: longer/more thoughtful thoughts
May. 4th, 2012 06:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
butterflySo, I've had some time to let the movie settle in (and I'm definitely going to be watching it again - probably several times) and I ended up with some additional thoughts on everything.
When it came to the Steve/Tony stuff, the movie met expectations; when it came to every other possible aspect of the movie, it wildly exceeded expectations. It basically took all the things that were great about each of the individual pre-Avengers movies and multiplied them by awesome.
There were some lines that took me by surprise though they made character sense:
a. Loki calling Natasha (who was playing him like the awesome badass that she is) a 'quim'. I was like, woah, did the MPAA not know what that word means? They totally don't know what that word means.
b. Steve referencing "only one God" made me blink (right before I laughed myself silly with what he said afterward - "I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that").
c. Tony being 'I'd rather die than get CPR from a man' ("I hope none of you kissed me").
All of them, after my initial blinking "did they just say that?" moment, completely made character-sense (Loki is an asshole who has previously used misogynistic language, Steve is an Irish guy from the 1940s, Tony lives and dies by his OTT feckless playboy image - even when he's presumably in a monogamous relationship, he still defines himself as a 'playboy' to Steve during the argument scene). I just wasn't expecting the movie to go there in any of those cases.
I really liked that the movie Jossed (lol, Joss is Jossing again! Like he does. There's a reason that we call it being Jossed, after all) pretty much every single movie-fic that I've read. I like that no one saw the details of the movie coming. That's Joss! That's what he does! He'll Joss you every time.
Okay, I said up above that the Steve/Tony stuff 'met expectations'. What I was expecting - that they would start out hostile and end up being teammates. My expectations were basically "what happened in the trailer, only it lasts longer". lol
Which is basically what happened. I like seeing it fleshed-out, but the Steve/Tony we got in the movie was pretty much what the trailer led me to expect. Steve sees beyond Tony's facade and realizes that he has a good heart, Tony calls him 'Cap', they save each other's lives, they begin to settle into their places in the team dynamic. I enjoyed it all, quite a bit, but it was what I was expecting to enjoy. It wasn't a surprise.
Now, for the rest of everything, which was 'wildly exceeds expectations'. I'll go in alphabetical order, I think.
a. Bruce Banner
How perfect was he? Wow. This is the character that I had the least exposure to, because I haven't watched the previous (different actor) Hulk movies and he doesn't appear in the other Marvel movies like Clint and Natasha did. Mark Ruffalo was absolute perfection. I came out of this movie with him as one of my favorites (okay, they're kinda all my favorites right now). He was funny and thoughtful and just all-around fantastic. I love the Bruce-Tony Science Club. We only had that one line from the trailer, so that relationship was a delightful surprise. They really clicked and worked together really well. I bet that Bruce is going to take Tony up on that offer to use his labs.
b. Clint Barton
I was so surprised that he was in play on the wrong side for so much of the movie! Jeremy Renner did a great job playing both examples of Hawkeye. And, wow, he's damn hot in the ending fight. And the conversation between him and Nastasha in the helicarrier was just right.
c. Loki
Loki is exactly as he should be. He's petty, vicious, vindictive. All the things that he was in Thor but he felt more dangerous here, because he's settled into himself. I like that he's not nice, that he has zero respect for humans, that there's so much to dislike - and yet he's so enjoyable to watch on-screen and there are still those flashes of vulnerability (he had a tear in his eye when he stabbed Thor. Also, he stabbed Thor). Basically, he's a lot like Klaus from The Vampire Diaries.
d. Natasha Romanov
Epic badass is epic and badass. I love how completely she owns herself and her ability to, well, be a spy and lie. She kicks regular ass, but her special talent is her ability to pull one over on people like nobody's business. It's how we're introduced to her in Iron Man 2 and it's how we're introduced to her here, too, and then it gets used very impressively against Loki.
e. Nick Fury
I love the balance of ruthless and idealism that Nick Fury embodies in this movie. Samuel Jackson did an impressive job of constantly walking that line between the two without ever falling over on either side - he believes in this set of "freaks" and he's also willing to make sacrifices and lie in order to try to get the result he wants.
f. Phil Coulson
I thought it was interesting that Coulson basically had the place in Pepper's life that Natasha seemed to get in a lot of the movie-verse fanfic. I was never fully sold on Natasha and Pepper having this great bond because, well, Natasha was under cover in Iron Man 2 and was lying to Pepper throughout their association. So it made a lot of sense to me that Natasha had gone off to do another, completely different mission, while Coulson continued to be the primary liaison between SHIELD and Stark Industries.
Coulson being a Captain America fanboy was really adorable. And he had a really good death scene, too. Basically, kudos all around.
g. Steve Rogers
SO MANY FEELINGS. Ah, Steve probably tugged at my heart the most throughout the movie. He's sweet with flashes of bitterness and he doesn't get some things but has a sense of humor about it. He's a natural leader with a good sense of strategy and how to get the best out of people. He's loyal to his ideals but not afraid to question people in authority and investigate on his own when things seem fishy. All the hearts. ALL THE HEARTS. And I love that his mask got torn off. Again. lol, he can't keep that thing on to save his life.
h. Thor
Perfect entrance is perfect! I think that as far as character introductions go, Thor and Natasha had the best of the bunch (though they were all good). The lightning and Loki being all, "shit", and the fighting! Oh, the fighting. Tony and Thor are way too much alike for them not to have clashed on first meeting like that. It was perfect and yet I didn't expect it. Joss strikes again!
i. Tony Stark
I mentioned in my first post that Joss actually got me to find Pepper/Tony believable as a romantic relationship; I think part of that might be because Tony wasn't actually flirting with tons of women in this movie. I don't think he actually flirted with any non-Pepper women at all. He was snarky and smart and slowly getting into the groove of working with the team, but the issues that plague him in his own movies - the drinking, the way he treats women, and the neediness - were mostly submerged in this one. They weren't entirely gone, but they weren't at all focused on; like I said in the previous post, it makes sense because Tony already has a support system in Pepper and Rhodey and JARVIS. Those are the people he relies on and those people are the ones he lets see him when he's having major issues. Nick Fury and the Avengers don't qualify (yet) to be let inside his walls. Plus, he's no longer actively dying, he's in a shiny new relationship, and everyone loves Iron Man. He's almost the person with the fewest number of issues in the whole movie, which is actually weird.
Overall, all the Avengers are my favorites right now. I love them separately; I love them together; it's just a big love fest.
When it came to the Steve/Tony stuff, the movie met expectations; when it came to every other possible aspect of the movie, it wildly exceeded expectations. It basically took all the things that were great about each of the individual pre-Avengers movies and multiplied them by awesome.
There were some lines that took me by surprise though they made character sense:
a. Loki calling Natasha (who was playing him like the awesome badass that she is) a 'quim'. I was like, woah, did the MPAA not know what that word means? They totally don't know what that word means.
b. Steve referencing "only one God" made me blink (right before I laughed myself silly with what he said afterward - "I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that").
c. Tony being 'I'd rather die than get CPR from a man' ("I hope none of you kissed me").
All of them, after my initial blinking "did they just say that?" moment, completely made character-sense (Loki is an asshole who has previously used misogynistic language, Steve is an Irish guy from the 1940s, Tony lives and dies by his OTT feckless playboy image - even when he's presumably in a monogamous relationship, he still defines himself as a 'playboy' to Steve during the argument scene). I just wasn't expecting the movie to go there in any of those cases.
I really liked that the movie Jossed (lol, Joss is Jossing again! Like he does. There's a reason that we call it being Jossed, after all) pretty much every single movie-fic that I've read. I like that no one saw the details of the movie coming. That's Joss! That's what he does! He'll Joss you every time.
Okay, I said up above that the Steve/Tony stuff 'met expectations'. What I was expecting - that they would start out hostile and end up being teammates. My expectations were basically "what happened in the trailer, only it lasts longer". lol
Which is basically what happened. I like seeing it fleshed-out, but the Steve/Tony we got in the movie was pretty much what the trailer led me to expect. Steve sees beyond Tony's facade and realizes that he has a good heart, Tony calls him 'Cap', they save each other's lives, they begin to settle into their places in the team dynamic. I enjoyed it all, quite a bit, but it was what I was expecting to enjoy. It wasn't a surprise.
Now, for the rest of everything, which was 'wildly exceeds expectations'. I'll go in alphabetical order, I think.
a. Bruce Banner
How perfect was he? Wow. This is the character that I had the least exposure to, because I haven't watched the previous (different actor) Hulk movies and he doesn't appear in the other Marvel movies like Clint and Natasha did. Mark Ruffalo was absolute perfection. I came out of this movie with him as one of my favorites (okay, they're kinda all my favorites right now). He was funny and thoughtful and just all-around fantastic. I love the Bruce-Tony Science Club. We only had that one line from the trailer, so that relationship was a delightful surprise. They really clicked and worked together really well. I bet that Bruce is going to take Tony up on that offer to use his labs.
b. Clint Barton
I was so surprised that he was in play on the wrong side for so much of the movie! Jeremy Renner did a great job playing both examples of Hawkeye. And, wow, he's damn hot in the ending fight. And the conversation between him and Nastasha in the helicarrier was just right.
c. Loki
Loki is exactly as he should be. He's petty, vicious, vindictive. All the things that he was in Thor but he felt more dangerous here, because he's settled into himself. I like that he's not nice, that he has zero respect for humans, that there's so much to dislike - and yet he's so enjoyable to watch on-screen and there are still those flashes of vulnerability (he had a tear in his eye when he stabbed Thor. Also, he stabbed Thor). Basically, he's a lot like Klaus from The Vampire Diaries.
d. Natasha Romanov
Epic badass is epic and badass. I love how completely she owns herself and her ability to, well, be a spy and lie. She kicks regular ass, but her special talent is her ability to pull one over on people like nobody's business. It's how we're introduced to her in Iron Man 2 and it's how we're introduced to her here, too, and then it gets used very impressively against Loki.
e. Nick Fury
I love the balance of ruthless and idealism that Nick Fury embodies in this movie. Samuel Jackson did an impressive job of constantly walking that line between the two without ever falling over on either side - he believes in this set of "freaks" and he's also willing to make sacrifices and lie in order to try to get the result he wants.
f. Phil Coulson
I thought it was interesting that Coulson basically had the place in Pepper's life that Natasha seemed to get in a lot of the movie-verse fanfic. I was never fully sold on Natasha and Pepper having this great bond because, well, Natasha was under cover in Iron Man 2 and was lying to Pepper throughout their association. So it made a lot of sense to me that Natasha had gone off to do another, completely different mission, while Coulson continued to be the primary liaison between SHIELD and Stark Industries.
Coulson being a Captain America fanboy was really adorable. And he had a really good death scene, too. Basically, kudos all around.
g. Steve Rogers
SO MANY FEELINGS. Ah, Steve probably tugged at my heart the most throughout the movie. He's sweet with flashes of bitterness and he doesn't get some things but has a sense of humor about it. He's a natural leader with a good sense of strategy and how to get the best out of people. He's loyal to his ideals but not afraid to question people in authority and investigate on his own when things seem fishy. All the hearts. ALL THE HEARTS. And I love that his mask got torn off. Again. lol, he can't keep that thing on to save his life.
h. Thor
Perfect entrance is perfect! I think that as far as character introductions go, Thor and Natasha had the best of the bunch (though they were all good). The lightning and Loki being all, "shit", and the fighting! Oh, the fighting. Tony and Thor are way too much alike for them not to have clashed on first meeting like that. It was perfect and yet I didn't expect it. Joss strikes again!
i. Tony Stark
I mentioned in my first post that Joss actually got me to find Pepper/Tony believable as a romantic relationship; I think part of that might be because Tony wasn't actually flirting with tons of women in this movie. I don't think he actually flirted with any non-Pepper women at all. He was snarky and smart and slowly getting into the groove of working with the team, but the issues that plague him in his own movies - the drinking, the way he treats women, and the neediness - were mostly submerged in this one. They weren't entirely gone, but they weren't at all focused on; like I said in the previous post, it makes sense because Tony already has a support system in Pepper and Rhodey and JARVIS. Those are the people he relies on and those people are the ones he lets see him when he's having major issues. Nick Fury and the Avengers don't qualify (yet) to be let inside his walls. Plus, he's no longer actively dying, he's in a shiny new relationship, and everyone loves Iron Man. He's almost the person with the fewest number of issues in the whole movie, which is actually weird.
Overall, all the Avengers are my favorites right now. I love them separately; I love them together; it's just a big love fest.