This isn’t going to be a review of the film.  By the end of this weekend, according to foreign and domestic box office estimates, you will have seen Marvel’s The Avengers and you know how you feel about it.  And if you didn’t see the movie, like, because you’re grounded or you hate joy for some reason, then you can read any or all of the official reviews written by people who get paid to do this stuff.

This, instead, is going to be a character review for all of the principal characters in the film, based on order of appearance in the movie, and treated as a response to the observations, criticism and questions I addressed in my overviews of the heroes in the movies leading up to this.  These comments are preliminary impressions from a viewer who has not slept much, so I’m going to try and keep it simple.  Because I’m so good at that.

Nick Fury

When you lift his eye-patch, a tiny, third hand comes out and slap's you!

Up to this point, Nick Fury, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., has been more of an orchestrator, pulling strings from behind the curtains and dishing out plot devices as dramatic reveals and fanboy easter eggs.  You’d hardly think of him as a man of action.  Until now.  The first twenty minutes of the film is all S.H.I.E.L.D., and we see exactly how Nick Fury could rise to his still-shadowy place of unfathomable power.  He’s a master manipulator, but he can also jump out of a helicopter before it crashes, stand toe-to-toe with the God of Menace, and–because he’s Samuel L. Jackson–he can fire the $#@% out of a bazooka.

Fury’s job is to put all of the disparate personalities of the Avengers on one functioning team so they can save the day.  It takes a lot of chaos, a lot of collateral damage, and a heartbreaking loss, as well as a bit of cold, shrewd manipulation, but he makes it happen.  The problem is, now that the Avengers are assembled, what is Nick Fury’s role?  There’s plenty of buzz about a Nick Fury or S.H.I.E.L.D.-centric solo movie to follow.  Honestly, that and Captain America 2 are the only places I can really see Nick Fury working well without feeling forced.  He brought the team together: mission accomplished.  Now he’s a man without a mission.

Hawkeye

Agent Barton, the S.H.I.E.L.D. operative known as Hawkeye, had the least screen time and character development leading into The Avengers.  With all of the other higher profile characters we’ve come to love, I expected Hawkeye to be pretty thinly drawn and underutilized.  Well, he definitely didn’t lack for screen time in this go-around.  By “compromising” Barton, effectively making him a villain for the first two-thirds of the movie, writer/director Joss Whedon found a brilliant way to make the character relevant and present without having him vie for attention in a room with Iron Man and Thor.

He's not falling. He's in "Inception" and the street is folding over behind him.

We still don’t get a lot of character development from Barton, and what we do learn of him (as my wife pointed out to me while I was drooling over the Hulk) we learn from other characters, specifically Black Widow.  Her connection to and concern for Hawkeye makes him a character we want to follow and root for.  What’s more, Hawkeye gets to exploit some rather unconventional aspects of archery and marksmanship so that his character doesn’t feel like a low-rent Legolas.  More importantly, in the climactic showdown during the last half hour that ravages New York as the Avengers fight off an alien invasion, Hawkeye never feels like an afterthought.  It never feels like he’s not in the same league as Thor and Hulk.

Black Widow

She would have my bank PIN, passwords, and the pink slip to my car in six seconds via this method of interrogation.

By a wide margin, Natasha Romanoff is the biggest surprise of the film.  In my previous post, I commented on how the Black Widow was offensively mishandled in Iron Man 2.  Everything the character should have been was absent in that movie, but it’s all present and accounted for in The Avengers.  Her roots as a foreign assassin with buckets o’ blood on her hands before defecting to S.H.I.E.L.D. is referenced multiple times, not so much it becomes distracting, but enough to tell us what Natasha’s driving motivation is and why she’s involved with this group of gods-among-men.  She even speaks Russian!

Black Widow gets plenty to do in this movie already crowded with Alpha males, and that owes a great deal to Whedon, whose track record for sculpting powerful female heroes is well established in TV and film.  Widow is the most focused, objective-oriented character in the film, more so even than Captain America and Nick Fury.  But she never feels as coldly out of place or even bored as she did in Iron Man 2.  Whedon gets a lot of untraveled miles from Scarlett Johansson, letting her play vulnerable and wounded in two different “interrogation” scenes, only to have her flip roles in each scene.  But the contrived fear she shows Loki and some Russian mobsters has nothing on the genuine terror that all-but swallows her whenever she’s near Bruce Banner in one of his bad moods.

The Hulk

Hulk channeling his inner-Keanu.

The Hulk is my favorite Marvel superhero, if you can even call him a superhero.  He’s been the star of two well-intentioned but extremely flawed movies, and a lot of critics and viewers considered the character unworkable on the big screen.  The Avengers proves them wrong.  Proved me wrong, too.  I thought Edward Norton was the perfect Bruce Banner in The Incredible Hulk.  He had the lanky–scrawny almost–frame of a bookworm physicist that contrasts so well against the hulking monster that comes out when he loses his temper.  Norton’s Banner was tortured, haunted, obsessed with ending his wretched existence, either through cure or death.  It’s an engrossing portrayal, yes, but it’s also really damn depressing.  And maybe that has been the fatal mistake of Hulk movies past, that Banner is too sad to be likable for two hours.

Joss Whedon and actor Mark Ruffalo take a different approach in The Avengers.  Ruffalo’s Banner has, for all intents and purposes, accepted his fate.  He’s not trying to kill the Hulk, he’s just trying to live with him.  And it’s clearly a struggle.  Throughout the film Banner looks like he’s clenched up; his hands clasped together, or arms folded over his chest, as if he has to physically hold himself together.  Like if he’s not constantly squeezing, his dark brother will rip through his skin and destroy everything.  It’s an incredible take on the character, and for the purposes of the movie, it works terrifically.  This is how the Hulk should be done in movies, and it’s a testament that the Jade Giant gets not only some of the biggest shock-and-awe action beats of the film, but some of the biggest laughs, too.

Captain America

Cap's costume looks better when it's been dragged under a semi for ten miles. There's a metaphor there, I know it.

My biggest fear about Captain America going into this movie was that he would look small compared to some of the other characters, that Chris Evans simply didn’t have the star power to stand with Robert Downey, Jr. and not be totally eclipsed.  Well, those fears were justified somewhat.  First, I do give Evans credit for his performance; he’s got a better handle on the character than writer/director Joss Whedon does.  I think Whedon tried to force some old-fashioned-sounding lines out of Cap that just felt corny.  Cap’s loneliness about being a man-out-of-time is never more than teased, possibly to allow for more exploration in a Captain America sequel movie.  Evans does his best work in the smaller scenes with characters like Fury, Banner, and Agent Coulson.  There’s a sense of him wanting to be the big brother that people can depend on that feels very natural for the character.  It shows how central the concepts of service and duty is to the character without making him a S.H.I.E.L.D. soldier following every order he’s given.

But in the scenes with Downey, Jr., he’s just in over his head.  It’s not even fair.  They don’t have a lot of chemistry on screen, and unfortunately, it makes the Living Legend of WWII look like a slow, lumbering dinosaur.  From the beginning, you never believe the Avengers is anyone’s team other than Tony’s.  He makes or breaks the team; the story is quite clear on that.  And during the final apocalyptic confrontation, Iron Man defers to Cap’s strategic judgement.  Captain America doesn’t take leadership of the team; he’s given a hand-off.  Of all of the Avengers, Cap was the biggest disappointment for me.  Also, his costume sucked.  It’s a thin needle to thread to make his costume not look preposterous, but they made it work in his solo movie last year.  The changes they made are stupid and he looks silly.

Iron Man

Stigmata is a serious condition for the Killbot6000.

Hulk and Black Widow were the happiest surprises of The Avengers.  Iron Man was just a surprise.  It makes sense that the movie would emphasize his character considering he’s the most successful and popular character of the franchise, but I figured they would use him more strategically for humor and cool visual effects, considering he’ll be in a third solo movie next year.  I figured much of the screen time would go to Cap and Thor, but that is not the case.  I don’t know why this should surprise me, I mean, it’s Robert Downey, Jr. playing Tony Stark.  If you can’t make a good movie with that formula then filmmaking is not your true calling.  Joss Whedon knows what he’s doing and plays to the strengths shared by Downey, Jr. and Stark.

In many ways, Tony Stark is the emotional center of the movie.  His romantic interest from the Iron Man films is not only revisited in this film but expanded upon in both funny and touching ways.  Tony’s journey through the film is learning to trust and finding strength in numbers.  The Avengers team does not come together without him, making him really the star of the movie.  Downey, Jr. didn’t just get top billing because of his contract.  He is the star of The Avengers.

Thor

Thor, like Captain America, was another mild disappointment.  I expected him to have a much more significant role, both dramatically and emotionally, in The Avengers.  His little brother, Loki, is the villain of the movie.  All of the mischief, menace and mayhem caused by Loki’s machinations, Thor must feel deeply, intensely guilty about to some degree, but we don’t get a whole lot of that.  At the center of Thor’s conflict is the question: what is more important, protecting his brother out of family obligation, or saving the lives of a human race he has come to care about.  In the context of who Loki is, this question is a no-brainer, and the fact that Thor seems to struggle with it doesn’t do his character any favors.

More than that, though, the conflict between Thor and Loki feels incidental.  Loki makes this conflict personal for all of the Avengers.  The grudge Black Widow, Hawkeye, Nick Fury and Iron Man hold towards Loki is more immediate and relatable than the sibling rivalry.  If Thor has a stake in the movie’s outcome, it’s negligible.  If he has a character arc, it is brief.  But he does get a ton of frenzied and fun action beats, and that forgives a lot of the limits of his character.  Also, his sleeveless costume in the first two-thirds of the movie is sooo much tougher-looking than the faux-chain-mail armor that covers his arms in the final battle.

Did I leave those tickets TO THE GUN SHOW back in Asgard?

Cliff’s Notes Recap

The Hulk and Black Widow are both redeemed by this movie.  The Avengers shows what these characters can and should be.  I look forward to a Hulk movie staring Ruffalo and a Black Widow movie could be as awesome as any of the Bourne movies, or that Angelina Jolie movie, Salt, which I think was like Bourne with a vagina.

Nick Fury and Hawkeye benefit from pure added exposure.  These guys finally get a chance to do something, and they do it well.

Iron Man didn’t need any additional screen time, but he gets plenty of it.  This movie feels a little like Iron Man 2.5, in the way Tony becomes the heart of the team.

Captain America and Thor are sadly underutilized.  They don’t lack for action or dialogue or heartfelt moments with the other characters, but neither do they seem to gain anything from appearing in this movie.  I don’t know more about Cap at the end of The Avengers than I did at the end of his own movie.  Ditto Thor.

Sigh…

Okay, this movie is out of my system.  I can start writing about important shit again.

When does the next Batman come out?

“You’ve become part of a bigger universe. You just don’t know it yet.” – Nick Fury

Not all the heroes starring in The Avengers premiered in their own self-titled films.  In fact, Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and the Hulk comprise only half of the world’s mightiest heroes who’ll save the world from utter destruction this coming Friday.  The rest, including Black Widow and Hawkeye, who pull double-duty as Avengers and covert agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., as well as Nick Fury, director of the global peacekeeping task force, have been showing up in various capacities across the five Marvel Studios films leading up to this mash-up.

The seeds of this event were planted in Iron Man, where viewers first heard mention of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division, eventually (mercifully) abbreviated as S.H.I.E.L.D.  Think the CIA, FBI and Seal Team Six, all together but working for the United Nations in an attempt to police the entire world and keep tabs on crises of the superhero and supervillain variety.  Starting with the ubiquitous and scene-stealing Agent Coulson (played to a comedic tee by Clark Gregg), the Marvel films have slowly but steadily rolled out an ever expanding cast of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and operators.  The Avengers, though, is where they make the Big Time!

The Cat That Won’t Cop Out When There’s Danger All About

You'll know John Shaft's evil twin from his eye patch.

After the credits rolled for the first Iron Man film, comic fans were treated to a scene that would drive them batshit insane.  Tony Stark is greeted by Nick Fury, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., played by Mr. Bad M***** F***** himself, Samuel L. Jackson.  I got a contact high just from writing that sentence.

This wasn’t the first time Nick Fury appeared in film, but it was the first time his appearance didn’t make viewers ashamed of humanity.  What’s more, putting Jackson in the role served as a acknowledgment not just to genre fans, but fans of the character.  While Nick Fury historically had been a white character who looked more or less like David Hasselhoff, a more recent, alternate universe depiction of the character was modeled specifically after Jackson.  I don’t know how many fans walked out of Iron Man and immediately committed seppuku in the parking lot, believing nothing in life could be greater than what they’d just experienced, but I bet it was in the tens-of-millions.

So far, Fury’s biggest presence has been in Iron Man 2, where he dangles some revealing truths about the Avengers Initiative concept to put people with extraordinary abilities and super powers together to fight the threats no single person or army can fight.  In the comics, Fury is a cynical, reactionary warhorse with enough excess testosterone and intensity to make George C. Scott’s Patton say, “Dude, calm the hell down!”  We haven’t seen much of that in the movies yet.  We know he’s a schemer with far-reaching big picture ideas about security, but definitely less hands-on with day-to-day operations and some of the budding Avengers.

She Moves in Mysterious Ways

After a shockingly successful Iron Man, expectations were sky high for Iron Man 2.  Sadly, the sequel missed the greatness of the first film by overreaching.  I mean, it unhinged its shoulder joints reaching; lost its balance and toppled over in an embarrassing heap, reaching.  Iron Man 2 tried to do too much.  The result is a bit of a mess of a film that feels like it shifts tone, genre and even story every half hour.  Because it’s still Robert Downey, Jr. playing Tony Stark it’s at least an entertaining mess, but the faults of the movie are big and loud…

Except, perhaps, where it counts most, and that is the introduction of new character, Natalie Rushman, aka Natalia Romanova, aka Natasha Romanoff, aka the Black Widow.  Her role is dramatically, almost criminally underdeveloped.  And that’s a shame, because when you’ve got Scarlett Johansson playing the character, you want to spend as much time with her as possible.

Getting our ass handed to us is still quality time.

We meet Black Widow in the film when she takes over the job of Tony’s assistant, previously occupied by Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts.  Out of loyalty to Pepper, though, we never quite know if we should like Natalie/Natasha.  Her brains, brawn, and bust trigger suspicion that she may have another agenda, but none of her actions confirm this suspicion.  She doesn’t try to seduce Tony.  She even rebukes his advances.  She’s beautiful to watch, but so completely emotionally detached from the people around her that when the film reveals she’s a government spy working for S.H.I.E.L.D., it feels disappointing.  Like, I kind of wanted her to be a robot or an alien.

In the comics, the Black Widow debuted in the 1960s as an enemy of Iron Man, a KGB spy trying to steal tech-specs from Tony’s company.  Her history is rich and textured with the history of Soviet revolution and Cold War paranoia.  An orphan of war, Natasha was taken into a cruel, clandestine intelligence community that trained her to be the ultimate assassin, before she defected to join S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers.  She’s an expert hand-to-hand combatant, sharpshooter, and–no joke–ballerina.  Of course, we get none of this in the film, besides an obligatory (and slightly humorous) fight scene at the end.  As a spy, she doesn’t unearth any groundbreaking intel, or any boring intel, for that matter.  We never even really see her paying attention to the kind of exchanges that might seem important.  Agent Coulson is a thousand times more charismatic and watch-able in his few brief scenes, and if your movie has me more captivated by Clark Gregg than Scarlett Johansson, you’re doing something wrong.

The Black Widow could have been the villain of Iron Man 2.  She could have at least acted shady enough to make us think she’s a threat before hitting us with the twist that she works for S.H.I.E.L.D.  Damnit, they didn’t even give her a sexy Russian accent!  The filmmakers took one of the few complex female superheroes in Marvel’s stable and reduced her to a flat, uninteresting distraction.

Maybe "flat" isn't the right word.

I have no problem with Scarlett Johansson.  Lady is nice to look at and she does a decent-enough job in this movie with what she’s given (which is a big ol’ bucket o’ nothing), but I was a lot happier when the studio was in negotiations with Emily Blunt to play the role.  According to some reports which I may be making up, Blunt backed out at the last minute because she didn’t want to commit to a multi-picture deal that would include Iron Man 2, The Avengers, and Iron Man 3.  Other sources say the studio pursued Johansson as she was the bigger, more bankable star.  I don’t care.  I have to imagine that Blunt could do a better Russian accent than Cate Blanchett’s cringe-inducing attempt in Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars.

The least-scene member of the Avengers is Hawkeye, the world’s greatest marksman, who specializes in… bow-and-arrow.  Hooo-kay.  I’m not going to make fun of the fact that a guy with a bow-and-arrow is supposed to be a worthy compliment to a team with a giant rage monster, a flying robot-man, a super soldier, and the god of thunder, because, well, because the god of thunder wields a hammer and the super soldier dresses like the flag and throws an enlarged discuss.  They’re all a little preposterous.  That’s the conceit of the whole superhero genre.

The true archer knows the arrow is all in the mind.

Hawkeye is played by Jeremy Renner.  I have no idea who Jeremy Renner is.  Somebody told me he’s in the new Mission Impossible and he’s going to be the new Jason Bourne.  I still don’t know who Jeremy Renner is, because I haven’t seen any of those movies.

Like Black Widow, Hawkeye has no “super powers”.  He’s a normal human being, albeit one at peak physical fitness, with the agility of a circus acrobat and the instincts of a special forces sharpshooter.  Hawkeye debuted as “Agent Barton” of S.H.I.E.L.D. in a glorified cameo halfway through Thor.  His one-and-done scene served to establish his face and his archery motif prior to a more elevated place in The Avengers.  Unfortunately, the cameo only muddled the pace of the Thor flick which was already overcrowded with side-plots and supporting characters.

If this dude was in The Avengers I would buy out every seat in the movie theater.

In the comics, Hawkeye distinguished himself as an Errol Flynn-style, swashbuckling adventurer, dressed in a purple hand-me-down costume that could have originated at a Renaissance Fair.  He’s a wisecracking, womanizing malcontent who constantly butts heads with the more powerful and reputable members of the Avengers like Captain America and Iron Man.  But he is as much a staple of the franchise as Cap or Iron Man; Hawkeye’s even led the team on multiple occasions.

Hawkeye in the films, however, seems more or less an afterthought, like they shoehorned him in The Avengers because he’s popular enough to bump up merchandize.  He barely has a line in Thor, and in all the trailers and TV spots for the new movie, I ain’t seen him talk at all.  Instead of an anti-authority rogue with a shady criminal past, Hawkeye in the movies feels like a one-dimensional, by-the-numbers soldier with a penchant for archaic weaponry.  The Hawkeye we’ve seen on screen to date is less Robin Hood than Rainbow Six.

What They Bring to the Table

There’s one thing we can expect and hope for from all of these characters when we see The Avengers, and that is MORE!  Hopefully Hawkeye will have more to do, and maybe he’ll even get some dialogue.  I assume he’ll actually get to knock an arrow this time, which he didn’t do in Thor, but it would be great to learn a little something about him besides his archery gimmick.  Still, with so many characters to juggle and explore, I won’t be super disappointed if Hawkeye gets the shaft.

Black Widow, on the other hand, must step up her game.  Writer/director Joss Whedon (creator of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series) is known for crafting strong female characters.  If he doesn’t make Natasha a formidable presence on the male dominated, powerhouse Avengers team, and at least hint at some of her complicated back story, then, well, I will do something bad… with rocks…

Nick Fury isn’t part of the team, strictly speaking, so we can expect him to operate mostly as a handler for the Avengers.  Will S.H.I.E.L.D. act as a resource for the Avengers, or will the heroes serve as an arm of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s agenda?  Unknown, but expect Samuel L. Jackson to take a bite of the scenery and just chow down as often as possible.

“Nazis… I hate these guys.” – Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Of all the Marvel movies released in the lead-up to The Avengers, including Iron Man and its sequel, Thor, and The Incredible Hulk, it was Captain America that made me the most nervous.  In most incarnations of the team, Captain America is generally depicted as the team leader, the field captain, anyway.  While the Avengers may get financial and technical support from Tony Stark’s company or the global peace-keeping agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D., only Captain America has the weight of experience and military genius to call the play on the battlefield.  His movie was also the last to come out before everyone assembles this year.  If the movie flopped… If the filmmakers failed to capture the grandeur, the magnetism, the fundamental heroism of the character… If you don’t buy into Captain America, you can’t buy the Avengers.

And leading into the movie, all of the information I was hearing, from the casting of the lead actor (I’ve already said I thought Chris Hemsworth, the star of Thor, would have made a better Cap) to the recent pedigree of the director (Joe Johnson, the visionary behind the unwatchable Wolfman in 2010, and the man who shot Jurassic Park III with only a third of the script), to the less-than historically accurate aspects of WWII (a substitute for the Nazis, and an interracial, international military unit that looks like Hogan’s Heroes meets The Real World), everything made me nervous.  I thought this movie was going to bomb.

… Oh me of little faith…

The First of Many

That old adage about how some men are born great and some have greatness thrust upon them, well, both apply to Steve Rogers, the man who would be Captain America.  We spend the first act of the movie realizing that Steve was a great man long before he was a super-man.  Time and again he throws himself against impossible foes; from the draft board of a dozen cities that refuse to register him for active military duty on account of his pitifully frail body and its shopping list of maladies, to the loudmouth jackass in the movie theater who pummels Steve in the alley.  He won’t surrender to spare himself a beating, and he won’t accept the army’s refusal to train him.  Steve Rogers will not back down from a fight, least of all a war.  When asked directly if he wants to kill Nazis, he says, “I don’t want to kill anybody.  I don’t like bullies.  I don’t care where they’re from.”  His heart is twice the size of an average man’s, thrice as big as his scrawny frame should allow.

Is is for his indomitable spirit and righteous sense of duty rather than some Olympian physique that Steve is selected for the Super Soldier Program.  The program’s inventor and lead scientist, Doctor Abraham Erskine, recognizes that “a strong man, who has known power all his life, may lose respect for that power.  But a weak man knows the value of strength and knows compassion.”

I had a joke for these before-and-after shots about Mark McGwire and steroid use in Major League Baseball but I can't think of it. Trust me, though, it was funny. Like, you'd laugh so hard you'd fart.

I was worried that the filmmakers wouldn’t be able to capture the magnitude of Captain America’s greatness.  They did.  They knocked it out of the park (and that analogy would’ve gone smashingly with my baseball-infused caption above).  By the time Steve undergoes the Super Soldier process, which grants him strength, speed and stamina beyond normal human ability as well as a Herculean set of abs and pecs, the audience has fully bought into this character.  He’s a hero before he becomes a superhero and we get it.

Ironically, though Steve Rogers was great, it’s actually as Captain America that greatness is thrust upon him.  See, Cap was never supposed to be unique.  Steve Rogers was the test subject; he was never meant to be the only subject.  The tragic assassination of Prof. Erskine, however, all but “kills” the project, as the Super Soldier formula is presumably dies with the inventor (until it is administered to Tim Roth’s character in The Incredible Hulk).

Steve was meant to be the beta for an entire force of super soldiers that would end Hitler’s Reich faster than conventional troops fighting a ground war.  Erskine’s death makes Steve special; now he’s the super soldier.  A lesser man would buckle under the weight of such responsibility.  Steve Rogers never buckles for anything.

And that’s all the filmmakers needed to do to win, but they pile on with a fantastic and roaring USO montage before jumping into the typical superheroic action sequences as Captain America fights the good fight.  Iron Man might be the tightest and most critically and financially successful of the Marvel movies, and The Incredible Hulk has a place in my heart for sentimental reasons, but I think Captain America is the best overall.

A Living Legend

This is what Tom Brokaw is always talking about!

Within the shared universe of Marvel Comics, Captain America is more than a superhero, more than an Avenger.  He’s a living legend who fought and supposedly died at the end of WWII, only to wake from suspended animation in present day.  Now he’s a symbol of the greatest generation’s commitment to honor and freedom for all people.  He’s as iconic as the Statue of Liberty.  Imagine George Washington, Michael Jordan, and the Beatles all in one man and you’ve got Captain America.

Portraying that role in film would be a daunting task for even the most seasoned actor.  Anyone other than the genetic offspring of Steve McQueen and Frank Sinatra would be insane to try.  So I was more than a little disappointed when they cast Chris Evans in the lead.  Marvel had already miscast the perfect Captain America as Thor, but now they were filling the role with an actor known mostly for roles in dumb action movies, dumb romantic comedies, and dumb other superhero movies.  I readied myself for disaster.

So, as is often the case, I was pleasantly surprised.  Evans does a solid job in the role that is made easier for him with a stellar cast of supporting actors  Stanley Tucci as Erskine, Dominic Cooper as Iron Man’s father, Howard Stark, and Tommy Lee Jones as Colonel Tommy Lee Jones get all the best lines.  Tucci is the moral conscious of not just the movie but the generation.  Cooper is Robert Downey, Jr.’s Tony Stark in proto-form, basically Howard Hues before insanity and mormonism turned him into a punch line on The Simpsons.  And Jones, well… He walked on that set wearing the costume he brought from home and started barking orders because he’s f***ing Tommy Lee Jones.  Even money he didn’t even know they were filming a movie the whole time he was on set.

The ensemble helps Evans carry the load of Captain America, but the actor truly shines in the first half hour–those same scenes when Steve Rogers is at his most heroic–before the change.  The special effects that render him a ninety pound stick figure complement but don’t overshadow the pain and longing and conviction in the actor’s eyes.  I kind of wish he had stayed that small for the entire movie.  I would have followed him into war [movie] even then.

Why We Fight

There is one flaw common to all five of the Marvel Studios films so far.  The third act tends to devolve into a fairly formulaic scuffle between the hero and villain, be it Iron Man fighting warmongers in even bigger armored suits, the Hulk fighting an Abomination, or Thor fighting his little brother.  In this case, Captain America squares off against his nemesis, Hitler’s own Ubermensch, the Red Skull.

There's skinheads and then there's HOLY $#@%!

What’s great about the Red Skull is there is nothing, no redeeming qualities, no shred of goodness in him.  So when Captain America fights the Red Skull, it’s more than a contest of national champions, and it’s more than a war of ideologies.  It’s fundamental good versus evil.  Their final battle tries to be bigger than fisticuffs by having the Skull consumed by his own power lust.  However, there’s a moment before this when the Skull is taunting Captain America that is jarring in how awkward and out of character it sounds.  Red Skull says, “You could have the power of the gods, yet you wear a flag on your chest and fight a battle of nations.  I have seen the future, Captain.  There are no flags!”  To this, Cap shoots back, “Not my future!”

What?  That‘s your response to a fascist maniac calling you a hollow symbol, a shill for politicians?  Did you not hear what he said?  I get that Cap talking about his future is supposed to be prophetic since part of his schtick is that he gets frozen in time and wakes up in our present–his future–but the way he just avoids the Skull’s statements is the one time in the film where Captain America looks small and weak.  This is the moment where he needs to rise up and declare what he stands for.  Why he fights.  (Hint: It’s not a flag, and it’s not the country the flag represents.)

The filmmakers do their best to salvage this moment by giving Steve Rogers the ultimate victory.  While Captain America defeats Red Skull in combat, it is Steve’s courage and goodness that lead him to sacrifice himself to protect the innocent.  Unfortunately, the scene with Steve piloting a ship to its destruction as he speaks to his girlfriend over the radio evokes a similar scene from the 2009 remake of Star Trek.  That same scene, starring the actor who should have played Captain America, plays a trillion times more genuinely, romantically and tragically.

What He Brings to the Party

What can a man-out-of-time bring to a volatile team-up in The Avengers?  How will Steve Rogers’ sense of righteousness and honor gel with Tony Stark’s sardonic pessimism and Thor’s otherworldly aloofness?  It should make for tension, mockery, and more than a few laughs.

The other trick that actor Chris Evans and the filmmakers will need to pull off is maintaining the Captain’s iconic stature amongst all of these other (sometimes literal) giants.  My concern, when I heard that Evans was cast as Captain America, was that the character ought to be able to stand in the room with Robert Downey, Jr. and Samuel L. Jackson and absolutely command their attention, and I really don’t know if Evans has the chops for that.  Hell, I’m not sure any actor in Hollywood could do it.

Which is why I think the role should have been recast with Tim Tebow.

George Washington, Michael Jordan, and the Beatles: I think you've met your match!

My teen years ran side-by-side with the 1990s, a decade too late for the ubiquity of sex and drugs in the ’80s, and too early for the digitization of society post millennium.  The peak of my adolescence, whereupon I reached that target age for subversive media conditioning and aesthetic formation, occurred while an artistic revolution in Los Angeles birthed an entirely new genre of music.  It was a boom time for comic books, too, my one passion back then besides music.

Comics were never bigger or more bankable than they were in the early ’90s, and, either as a direct result or a maddening coincidence, they achieved this success by eschewing story and substance in favor of big, bombastic and utterly soulless art.  A comic book artist name Rob Liefeld actually starred in a commercial for Levis directed by Spike Lee during this era.

Being a teenager in the early ’90s was about hating “the System”, the status quo, and everything that appeared clean or corporate.  Like being a hipster without irony (Meta-Hipsterism).  I listened to gangsta rappers rage against a brutish legal authority and grunge rockers wail against… honestly, I don’t know what they were mad about anymore, laundry?  The comics I read were equally violent and anti-establishment, like Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One, where the Caped Crusader must rid the streets of Gotham not just from the dangerous, psychotic supervillains, but from the equally dangerous, psychotic police force.  From there I graduated to The Uncanny X-Men, those extraordinary symbols of counterculture youth and discrimination, and a whole lot of stupid comics about big men with bigger guns.

Know what I never, ever read in the ’90s?  What comic I would never even debase myself to even consider picking up at the store or the newsstand?  Captain America.  Captain America was “the System”, he was the status quo, he was clean and corporate; he represented the government, the greatest sin of all because the government was lame.  Captain America was LAME!

Or so I thought.

It might also have helped that Rob Liefeld–the same artist I mentioned earlier, the guy in a blue jeans ad with Spike Lee, yeah, that guy–drew Captain America like this:

The symbol of America, indeed. Also, f*** you, Rob Liefeld!

But let me show you another image of the captain.

"This is what you get for grabbing my boobs, Hitler!"

That image is by Captain America co-creator Jack Kirby, who, believe it or not, is widely considered the greatest comic book artist of all time, and who, along with Stan Lee, created the Hulk, Thor, Iron Man (sort-of), and Nick Fury, all of whom will be starring in The Avengers.  The first time I saw this picture of Captain America punching out Adolph Hitler, long after my angst-ridden, hormone-crazed teen years, I realized how wrong I had been about the captain.

The image above is the cover to Captain America issue #1, cover dated March 1941, which means it probably hit newsstands in December 1940.  In case you spaced out in school and you never watch the History Channel, that’s a full year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. formal declaration of war.  I was wrong to think Cap was lame not because he punched Hitler, but because he punched Hitler three and a half years before the invasion of Normandy!

Captain America isn’t a tool for the White House and Congress, or even the Pentagon.  He doesn’t represent the government.  He represents the people!  Not the American Way but the American Dream–that idea that we can all be better, that we should all be better.  America wasn’t at war with Germany yet in 1940.  Cap wasn’t acting as an agent of anything other than a person’s right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness when he punched Hiter.  He punched him because f*** Hitler!  I assume, at least, that was justification enough for Jack Kirby, whose real name was Jacob Kurtzberg, and who, like scores of other writers and artists of the time, changed his name to something less Jewish-sounding in order to find mainstream commercial success.

Fifteen years ago, the idea of reading Captain America held about as much appeal for me as getting braces.  Today, Captain America is one of the handful of Marvel comics I continue to read every month.  In the post-911 era, when America has been pimp-slapped off its moral high horse, at first by its enemies and then by itself… when the sheer cynicism of our political discourse is more disparaging than any foreign propaganda… when the Vice President shooting a buddy in the face during a drunken hunting trip and gets away scot free can be viewed as a metaphor for what his administration did to the entire world in eight years… Well, for me anyway, it’s hard to feel patriotic without being a little self-conscious.  Strange then, that during this same era, the stories in Captain America–pure action adventure and escapist fantasy though they be–have never felt more thrilling, more romantic, or more comforting.

Art by Bryan Hitch. Seriously, f*** Rob Liefeld!

Come back soon.  Next time I’ll actually talk about the Captain America movie!

“I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea.” – Dylan Thomas

After taking everyone by surprise with their debut outing, Marvel Studios released a sequel to the wildly successful Iron Man in 2010.  I’ll touch on Iron Man 2 a little next week when I discuss Black Widow and S.H.I.E.L.D., but not much because, well, because it wasn’t a great movie.  In short, Iron Man 2 got lost in its own pizzazz and forgot what it was even about.  The third act introduces new plot elements and wraps up ideas that were never introduced earlier in the movie.  It has some fun moments, but the action sequences in the middle of the film are both thrilling and hilarious, while the battle at the end is mostly forgettable.

But a year later, Marvel would return to introduce two new characters (who’re actually quite old, comparatively) in theaters.  2011 was the first year comic book fans and casual viewers got to experience Marvel’s mighty thunder god on the big screen, that is, unless you count Vincent D’Onofrio’s scene-obliterating turn as the mighty Norse-like auto-mechanic in Adventures in Babysitting.

And seriously, if you don't remember this scene, you are not the target audience for this blog.

Are You There, God-With-a-Small ‘G’? It’s Me, Pragmatist

Bringing Thor to the big screen should, in theory, be no easier or harder than making any other genre film.  As the first son of Odin, King of Asgard, a heavenly realm of immortal warriors, Thor is perfectly at home in epic fantasies: Shakespeare meets Dungeons & Dragons.  Want the recipe for nearly every Thor story?  A dash of palace intrigue, sprinkled with the sins of the father, mixed with legions of screaming fire demons and rock trolls, then panfried by a big ass hammer and ball lightning.  Or you can cast him as an otherwordly outsider in a more conventional superhero flick.  The danger is trying to do both, which is exactly what Marvel Studios did–what they had to do–in order to integrate him into the shared-world they created leading into The Avengers.

Thor is a god, a version, anyway, of the Norse god of thunder and storms, worshipped by the Northern Europeans of a thousand years ago as devoutly as the Greeks worshipped Zeus a thousand years before that.  He is immortal and possessed of such near-infinite power that the laws and principles governing our reality do not apply to him.  He is a creature of myth that humankind stopped believing in ages ago.  How do you rationalize that kind of entity in the serious, physical sciences-based universe of Iron Man and the Hulk?  Thor has to cheat a bit to pull it off by putting a qualifier on his godhood.

“Your ancestors called it magic,” the titular character explains, “and you call it science.  I come from a land where they are one and the same.”  Thor and the Asgardians are not so much gods in the Judeo-Christian way we define and understand the word today as they are beings from a different plane of existence.  They might as well be aliens who look like human beings, or people from an alternate dimension where laws of physics allow for increased vitality and longevity.

It’s a cheat, but it works.  It eases the viewers suspension of disbelief for when Thor will eventually have to throw down and brawl with people whose physical powers are augmented by technology or genetic experiments.

Unfortunately, the film tries to straddle the genre line and ends up doing… something uncomfortable to its crotch, I guess.  (I’m tired, dude, there’s only so many analogies I can come up with in a day for a blog that’ll only be read by two people.)  Thor doesn’t quite know what kind of movie it is: epic fantasy or superhero origin.  It tries to be both and ends up being too much and not enough of either.  There are about ten supporting characters with enough development to make one-and-a-half of them intriguing.  There’s a twenty-minute confrontation with S.H.I.E.L.D. that’s supposed to set up Thor’s immersion into the Avengers universe but completely kills the film’s momentum.  Just when events in Asgard start getting interesting, Thor is banished to Earth, where the movie basically starts over from a new character’s perspective.  And just when we’re getting comfortable with these characters, Thor goes back to Asgard.  I know there are ways to tell an epic Thor story that brings him down to Earth and establishes him in “our world” of human heroes, and the story we got was not the way to do it.

Rockstar Supernova

Add seven naked ladies to this picture and you've got a Poison album cover!

I took note of Chris Hemsworth in the gripping and surprisingly romantic prologue to JJ Abrams’ Star Trek, where he played the doomed father of the franchise’s main character.  With his chiseled looks, strong jaw, slicked blond hair and icy blue eyes, I instantly wanted him to play Captain America.  Alas, the studios as well as the petulant, vocal fanboys crowding the interwebs would not abide a non-American actor playing the Sentinel of Liberty.  Those fans have no problem, though, with Korean-born actor John Cho playing the Japanese Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu in the aforementioned Star Trek, since those races look close enough to the same, and anyway it’s not like Koreans have any problems with the Japanese.

Marvel chose not to cast True Blood‘s Norse god of hot vampirism, Alexander Skarsgard, over doubts the actor could bulk up enough to play the muscular Thor, and for fear that being in the same room with him would get them pregnant all the time.  Instead, they took the perfect Captain America, gave him the rockstar hair treatment, and turned him into a passable Thor.  At least as good as D’Onofrio.

The faults in Hemsworth’s performance owe more to an unfocused story.  As an invincible, super-warrior god-prince, Thor is justifiably dominated by his passions and appetites for most of the film, and Hemsworth embraces it, selling some pretty lackluster dialogue, and making a spoiled brat a genuinely fun character to watch.  Which is great, because stoicism and aloofness will have no part in The Avengers.  Motley Crue here has to spar with Robert Downey, Jr.’s Iron Man and at least present a strong showing.

Nobody Hits My Brother but Me

Thor has another glaring deficiency besides the unfocused story and boring characters–man, that sounds harsh, considering I do like the movie, but I’m not going to pretend it’s something better than it is–not like I do with The Incredible Hulk, I mean.  Larger than life heroes need larger than life villains.  Twice now the Joker has stolen Batman’s theatrical thunder, and to date the best part of every X-Men movie has been Magneto.

Thor’s nemesis certainly had that potential.  After all, we’re talking about his half-brother, Loki, the god of mischief and lies!  Are you kidding me?  A #@%$ing trickster god!  Think of the Joker with unlimited power and resources and an eternity of experience, then add a charismatic performance from Tom Hiddleston, and you’ve got a slam dunk, right?

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me after a thousand years of knowing you're the god of lies, shame on me. And also you.

No.  Loki is the biggest flaw in the movie because his actions and motivations don’t make sense.  It ain’t because he’s acting secretive and conspiratorial, either, it’s because the writers dropped the ball.  Loki’s deceits are pitifully obvious and not even that clever.  He trumps his older brother to usurp the throne of Asgard by having Thor exiled for instigating a war with the Frost Giants, and then by shaming his father, Odin, into a heart attack.

But Thor didn’t need much deceiving or provocation to fight the Frost Giants; chances are he would have gone to Jotunheim (don’t ask) and punched out Laufey (really, don’t) whether Loki “encouraged” him to or not, so he can hardly take credit for that grand bit of “mischief”.  And Loki only takes the throne, something he couldn’t obtain normally as the second son, because Odin falls into the “Odinsleep” during their heated argument.  The goal of any second born prince who can never become king through legal means is attained by Loki through luck and other people’s stupidity.  Quite the impressive villain is he!

(By the way, anytime the wife is yelling at me, I just “go into the Odinsleep” until she walks away in disgust!)

And there’s even more nonsensical behavior.  Loki discovers that he’s adopted, that the Frost Giants were his family–that the king of the Frost Giants was Loki’s father, making him heir to all of Jotunheim.  But Odin kidnapped him as a baby and raised him in Asgard to be overlooked and out-shined by Thor.  And when Loki discovers this horrible, monstrous deception, he hatches a vengeful scheme to punish… the Frost Giants!  Yep, he decides to kill the entire race of his biological parents… so that his adoptive family will love him more!

And scene!

What They Bring to the Party

Thor and Loki will both return in The Avengers.  It’ll be interesting to see how the thunderer views mere mortals like Tony Stark and Nick Fury, but more so it should be awesome to watch him fight Iron Man and the Hulk, because the hallmark of every Marvel superhero team-up is that first the heroes have to beat the crap out of each other for a while before they go hunting for bad guys.  Honestly, I’m not worried about Thor.  It’s Loki that has to cover lost ground.  That is, writer/director Joss Whedon has to redeem this character.  That is, Whedon has to make Loki so vile, so unrelentingly evil and dangerous that it’ll take not only Thor, but all of the Avengers combined to save the day.

“Something is happening, I can’t explain… Something inside me, a breathtaking pain… Devours, consumes me, and drives me insaaaaane” – Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical

Of all the heroes who will assemble next month in Marvel’s The Avengers, the Hulk is my favorite.  By a wide margin, too.  The premise of a meek, weak scientist who transforms into an unstoppable rage monster whenever he’s angry or distressed fascinated me from an early age and still does.  I seriously considered taking my groomsmen to the theater to see The Incredible Hulk on my wedding day, and only decided against it, not because we didn’t know if we could get back to the ceremony in time, but because I had alcohol poisoning from the night before and didn’t think I could watch the film without throwing up.  Luckily I got to see it on my honeymoon, and I loved it (the movie… also the honeymoon).  But I might be the only one who did (still talking about the movie… also the honeymoon).

Not Easy Being Green

Unlike Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk didn’t have the difficult job of introducing an unknown property to movie-goers in 2008.  The Hulk is one of the most recognizable icons to come out of comics, and one of the few to crossover into movies or television prior to the flood of superhero movies that began in the late ’90s.  The character(s) of the Hulk and his human alter-ego Bruce Banner first gained popular attention in 1978 in a television series that lasted five seasons, miraculous considering the subject matter.  By today’s standards, the TV show is cheesy, almost farcical, but also much, much better than it had a right to be, which is one of the reasons it has maintained its cult favorite status for thirty years.

The heavy lifting of establishing Banner/the Hulk’s dual nature, history and status quo had already been done.  A new Hulk movie should have been a slam dunk, but it had a big, green obstacle standing in its way.  The 2008 Incredible Hulk film wasn’t the first time the Jade Giant graced the big screen.  A mere five years earlier, Ang Lee, the visionary and acclaimed director of Crouching Tiger, Something Dragon, released The Hulk, one of the most hated (and feared) comic-based movies of the last decade.

Ang Lee wasn’t interested in making a superhero movie; he wanted to make a “monster movie”, a love letter to the Universal and Hammer Horror films and B-movies of the 1950s.  This is absolutely an appropriate direction for a Hulk movie, especially considering the character created in 1962 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby was inspired by the Wolfman, the Monster of Frankenstein, and The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde.  Ang Lee’s 2003 Hulk movie could have been awesome… but it sucked.  It’s peppered with nods of the head to classic nuclear-era sci-fi that ought to have been endearing… but it sucked.  If nothing else, the spectacle of the massive CGI Hulk destroying tanks and helicopters ought to have been thrilling… but it sucked.

After five years of trying to pretend that ungodly disaster never happened, Marvel Studios reacquired the film rights to the character, and rebooted the franchise with a new cast, new crew, new story and new origin.  Director Louis Leterrier’s take on the franchise was much closer thematically to the ’70s TV show and the comics of the early 2000s written by Bruce Jones.  In this version, Banner was a civilian scientist working for the military to further the World War II-era “super soldier” program using gamma energy.  Then, as General Ross says in the film, “something went very wrong… or it went very right.”  Banner has spent years on the run, haunted by the memory of hurting his lover during his first transformation into the Hulk; hunted by the same military handlers who helped birth his monstrous split personality; and plagued with the knowledge that he is a walking weapon of mass destruction, and a bad day for Banner could mean a bad day for hundreds of innocent bystanders.

The Incredible Hulk fared better than the previous film, both with critics and at the box office, but just barely.  Enough movie-goers still had a bad taste in their mouth from the last outing, and more still were confused by weather the new film was a sequel or not that it failed to catch the buzz or acclaim of Iron Man.

Little Man

This is what all molecular biologists look like all the time.

I’ve said before that virtually no casting decisions for superhero movies have ever thrilled me when initially announced, but I’ve also been happy-to-be-wrong with a lot of those decisions.  The casting of Edward Norton as Banner is one of the few that stirred me to pound my fist in the air in celebration.

The awesome scope of the Hulk’s power only works when contrasted with the “puniness” of his brainy, nuclear physicist other-self.  In the Ang Lee version, Eric Bana portrayed Banner.  Now, Bana is a great actor, but he looks like he could play a superhero himself without any CG animation.  Norton, on the other hand, has the slender build and enough of the “everyman” quality to be a believable scientist that needs to Hulk-out in order to be a credible threat to his enemies.

More than merely playing Banner, Edward Norton helped craft the story and had script approval, since he clearly didn’t want to be attached to anything as hated (and feared) as the previous Hulk movie.  Upon hearing this bit of intelligence, I again pounded my fist in excitement.  Norton’s involvement ensured that The Incredible Hulk is very much Banner’s movie more than the Hulk’s.  This was great news for me, but maybe a contributing factor to the film’s less than universal praise.  The fact is, the Hulk in this movie is treated like the shark in Jaws.  It takes a while to see the Green Goliath in action, and the first time we do, he is deliberately cloaked in shadows and smoke.  As an homage to the monstrous roots of the comic, this works.  As the focal point of a major action extravaganza, it’s an irritating misdirection.

The other unfortunate reality is that hiding the Hulk from view for most of the film protects viewers from the unimpressive visual effects and creature design.

Image from Green Giant's lamentable "Eat Your Veggies or I Smash Your Testes" ad campaign.

Ang Lee’s Hulk looked like a cartoon: really, like it straight-up walked out of Roger Rabbit’s Toonland and into the real world.  The Leterrier/Norton Hulk looked a hundred times better, yes, but still like a computer generated image.  His muscles-layered-on-muscles physique looked like something from the comic, which counter-intuitively ruins the effect on the viewer.

What might be more problematic than the Hulk’s appearance, though, was his characterization or lack thereof.  The Hulk of the movie is all id, basically a force of nature as deprived of human characteristics as the aforementioned predator in Jaws.  The Hulk never speaks but two words at the end.  He roars, he bellows, he throws boulders at the sky for daring to crackle with thunder and lightning.  We never get enough humanity from the Hulk to sympathize or even empathize with him.  The result is a bizarre transfer of allegiance to the film’s primary antagonists, as every time Banner becomes the Hulk, we see him and the danger he presents through the eyes of the soldiers and officers trying to enslave him.

Smashy Smashy

The Incredible Hulk comes in at under two hours.  The two-disc special edition DVD includes roughly thirty minutes of deleted and extended scenes.  Every single one of these scenes could have and should have been in the movie.  They’re terrific vignettes that expand on the supporting characters such as Banner’s love interest, Betty Ross, played not-too-annoyingly by Liv Tyler; and her new beau, Doctor Leonard Samson, an underused Ty Burrell of Modern Family fame.  We also get more out of the ruthless General Ross (William Hurt) and the power-hungry Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) as they revel in the dark secrets of the military’s schemes for bio-tech enhancement, such as the “Super Soldier” program that created Captain America.

Every guy in uniform is an insidious bastard until the Hulk actually starts running amok. Then their bastard-ry kind of makes sense.

The characters are given much needed screen time to breathe and justify some of their unknown motivations in these deleted scenes.  But perhaps the most egregious fatality of the editing room is an alternate opening sequence that shows just how desperate Banner is to rid the world of the monster inside him.  He hitchhikes, and then hikes, to the frozen wastes of Canada’s arctic circle where he attempts to put a bullet in his brain.  However, the subconscious surge of adrenaline from suicide is enough to induce a transformation before he can kill himself.

If I ever have the time or the wherewithal, I’d like to recut the movie using all of the deleted and expanded sequences for a more improved film.  All of these cut scenes add heart and character.  What they don’t add, of course, is mayhem, destruction, and the titular hero, which I suppose explains why they were shed from the theatrical release.

Like I said before, I don’t think anybody liked this movie as much as I did.  Telling people I liked it more than Iron Man usually gets me laughed out the room.  You know, the comic book-filled, nerd-ridden room.  But the Hulk is an old favorite and this movie touched most of my fanboy buttons for the character.  Maybe I view it differently because it meant more to me (the movie, of course… also the honeymoon).

What He Brings to the Party

As I’ll ask with all of the characters gathering in next month’s The Avengers, how will the rampaging Hulk effect the team dynamic?

The new, sexy face of Mad Science!

This one is pretty up in the air so far, since Edward Norton will sadly not be reprising his role as Banner.  Reportedly, Norton wanted as much control over the character in The Avengers as he had in The Incredible Hulk, which simply would not be feasible considering all of the other personalities involved with the project.  Mark Ruffalo is stepping in to play Banner, and supposedly had a greater presence in portraying the Hulk, too, for his sequences before being computer generated.  I never would have pegged Ruffalo for the role, but I’ve enjoyed him in movies like Collateral, You Can Count on Me, and Zodiac.  Maybe he’ll impress me.  Hopefully.  And maybe this time the Hulk will talk.  Hopefully.

The last thing I’ll add is that The Avengers had its Hollywood premier last Wednesday night.  While official reviews are embargoed for another two weeks, the early buzz was mostly positive, and the few tweets or posts that mentioned the Hulk were all very enthusiastic.  Maybe this command performance will spawn a third Hulk solo film that can satisfy fans, critics, and the box office all at the same time.

“I’d be tender, I’d be gentle… I’d be awful sentimental… if I only had a heart” – The Wizard of Oz

Marvel Studios’ first (sorta) self-produced film was 2008′s Iron Man, a character most people had never heard of.  While Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Hulk had all seeped into the mainstream as pop culture icons in some way or fashion, Iron Man really hadn’t.  He wasn’t an A-list character, and unless you were a comic book reader, when you heard they were making an Iron Man movie you probably assumed it was based on a Black Sabbath song or that Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots game.  And, ironically, either way you were still kind of correct.

Who Is This Guy?

In the film, Robert Downey, Jr. plays Robert Downey, Jr. Tony Stark, a billionaire playboy who inherits the top spot at his family’s weapons manufacturing company.  He drinks.  He gambles.  He sleeps with Leslie Bibb.  He’s got a fleet of sports cars and a retractable stripper pole in his private jet.  He embarrasses his friends, frustrates his employees, and treats the U.S. Army like marks at a game of Three-card Monte.

What separates Tony Stark from a Kardashian, however, is that he actually performs a worthwhile function in society.  Tony’s a genius.  His understanding of mechanical engineering, electronics and bleeding edge energy sources is unparalleled.  His fame and fortune is absolutely earned.  Earned in blood, it turns out.  Stark Industries could build anything, but they build weapons, weapons that kill a whole lot of people, some deserving and some not.

The munitions Tony designs are leaked to terrorists who turn them against the Army convoy transporting Tony from a weapons demonstration.  The charming and too-young soldiers protecting him are cut down blindingly fast in an ambush that nearly kills Tony.  He’s left with bits of shrapnel in his heart, and the only way to survive is to craft a miniature electromagnet and plant it in his chest like Michael Bay’s answer to the pacemaker.

Now, living on borrowed time with a nuclear reactor in his chest that powers his suit of atomic death armor, Tony Stark becomes the Iron Man, a one-man-battalion dedicated to ridding the world of the weapons and threats he helped create in his company.

The Man Under the Armor

As a comic book fan, I’ve paid attention to the sick amount of superhero and comic-based movies that have flooded the theaters over the last decade, and even I’ll say there have been too many.  In the months or years prior to each film’s release, I speculate on what little information is available, and usually that centers around the actors and actresses hired to play my favorite two-dimensional heroes.

I have only ever been initially happy with two casting announcements for comic book movies.  One was Edward Norton playing Bruce Banner in The Incredible Hulk, which I’ll talk about in a few days.  The other was Gary Oldman playing Jim Gordon in Batman Begins, and that’s just because I think Gary Oldman could and should play anybody.  That said, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by a lot of performances in these movies.  Heath Ledger blew me away as much as anybody with his role in The Dark Knight.  Hugh Jackman has defined Wolverine for a generation of X-Men fans, and no amount of Tony Award Shows can change that.  And Downey, Jr. embodies Tony Stark in Iron Man.

When I heard that he was playing Tony, I thought, He’s just going to play himself.   In a way, he does, except it’s a version where self-love and posturing, rather than coke and whores, cranks him up to eleven.  Downey, Jr. is at his best in the quieter moments, usually with co-star Gwyneth Paltrow as Tony’s gal Friday, Pepper Potts.  With Pepper, Tony lets his guard down and Robert Downey, Jr. plays him nakedly honest.

My favorite scene in the film is one of these moments.  Tony decides to upgrade the arc reactor that’s keeping him alive and asks for Pepper’s help.  No problem, except considering what and where the reactor is, said upgrade is tantamount to a heart transplant.  Pepper has to reach into Tony’s exposed chest cavity, through puss-like “ectoplasmic discharge” before his heart gives out.

This kind of thing happened to RDJ every weekend in the '80s.

This insanely reckless scene–Tony’s third closest brush with death in the movie–is played for laughs with Pepper squirming in disgust and Tony doing his level best to keep her calm when he’s the one in cardiac arrest.  Downey, Jr. and Paltrow play it perfectly, as tender as any young lovers and as matter-of-fact everyday-business as any old lovers.  After the operation, a taxed Pepper says, “Don’t ever, ever, ever, ever ask me to do anything like that ever again.”

Tony responds, “I don’t have anybody else.”  Downey’s delivery is pitch perfect: tinged with regret, but no shred of surprise.  He’s not just discovering that his lifestyle choices have alienated him from every interpersonal relationship that isn’t contractually obligated–”the man who has everything and nothing”.  Instead, Downey delivers the line as if Pepper is the fool for not realizing what she is to him.

They’re not conventional love-interests, which is why they’re so much more compelling as a couple than, say, Toby Maguire and Kirsten Dunst in Spider-Man.

Gearhead

When it comes to superheroes in comics or movies, why they become a hero is just as important, and often harder to convey convincingly, than how.

Tony Stark buys priceless works of art just because they’re priceless.  He drinks before, during and after billion-dollar deals with the Pentagon.  He dates supermodels and seduces Leslie Bibb.

Making him a hero long before the armor.

Why would he dress up in a costume and endanger himself (and everyone who owns stock in his company) by fighting bad guys?  Why, that is, aside from the overwhelming guilt that’s prevalent in so many Marvel heroes?  The answer comes early in the film.  After winning an award, gambling in Vegas, and bedding a hostile reporter, Tony locks himself in his garage to rebuild the engine of a classic roadster.  The money, the fame, the company, the women, they’re all secondary.  His first love is building–building a better world, whether that means designing an advanced missile system or souping up a muscle car, or when desperate, building a personalized weapon suit to defend the innocent from terrorists and war profiteers.

Pictured: Everything lacking from the Fantastic Four movies.

What He Brings to the Party

So what exactly can this emotionally isolated, borderline alcoholic technologist bring to the volatile team dynamic we’ll see in The Avengers?  Comic relief, for one thing.  Iron Man is the most successful and popular of the characters in the Avengers franchise right now, and a great deal of that owes to Robert Downey, Jr.’s performance and the acerbic wit of Tony Stark.

He’s not a team player, he doesn’t follow orders, and he derides authority.  Meanwhile, Captain America and Nick Fury are militarily disciplined, and Thor and the Hulk are physically superior.  How will Iron Man fit into this group?  Explosively, I’m betting, and the results should crackle on the screen in May!

“And there came a day, a day unlike any other, when Earth’s mightiest heroes found themselves united against a common threat.  On that day, the Avengers were born…” – The Avengers #1 (1963)

Promotional Art for "The Notebook 2", courtesy of New Line Cinema.

This May 4th, something extraordinary and historic will happen in movie theaters across the world.  Characters from four different blockbuster movie franchises will come together in a single feature film to blow the little monkey minds of fanboys, comic geeks, and action movie aficionados alike!  Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, the Hulk, and some other dicks are going to suit up, kick ass, and make sure that 2012 is the best Cinco de Mayo ever!

A Shared Universe

Movies based on superheroes and other established comic book properties have graced the big screen every year for over a decade now.  But only now, at last, are the movies embracing one of the most unique and treasured facets of the comics.  The notion of the shared universe, that heroes in one comic can meet, interact with, and often clash with, heroes of another comic dates back to the earliest years of comics when Superman and Batman became the World’s Finest team-up, and shit ton of other guys you’ve never heard of got together to form the Justice Society of America

If you can name any of these guys, don't tell your girlfriend.

Superhero crossovers and team-ups became standard operating procedure in comics as a financial necessity, to literally give readers “more bang for their buck”.  If everybody was reading The Amazing Spider-Man, but not many were reading Daredevil, the creative team working on Daredevil would put Spider-Man in the book and have the two of them join forces to combat the menace of… Stilt-Man.  (No kidding, there’s a “supervillain” called Stilt-Man: his schtick is he walks on stilts.  Seriously!)  Marvel Comics, who owns Spider-Man and Daredevil, as well as all the characters appearing in The Avengers, would have heroes guest appear in other books in the hopes that fans of one character would pick up the other book to see more of their favorites.  And they did; the formula worked!  More exposure, more crossovers equaled more cash.

For some reason–and there is a reason, albeit a dumb one–while Hollywood has been cranking out two or three superhero movies a year since the early 2000s, they never got on the crossover train.  In fact, other than Freddy vs. Jason, I can’t think of any other movie where characters from different properties appeared side-by-side.  Why not?  The X-Men movies and Spider-Man movies both made bank, so why didn’t we see Wolverine pop up in Spider-Man 3 as a way to move X-Men fans to see a Spider-Man film (as if they needed encouragement)?  The reason is two things that constantly stand in the way of everything awesome from ever happening: money and the law.

See, while both Spider-Man and the X-Men are creations of Marvel Comics, Marvel licensed the properties to film studios to make the movies Marvel itself couldn’t afford to make ten years ago.  20th Century Fox owns film distribution rights to Wolverine and all of the characters in the X-Men franchise, meaning none of those characters can appear in another movie without their approval.  If Columbia Pictures, the studio that owns the rights to Spider-Man wants Spidey to fight Magneto or get freaky with Storm, then Columbia has to pay Fox to use Magneto and Storm.  You know what Hollywood studios hate to do?  Pay anybody for anything!

Warner Bros., on the the other hand, owns the film and distribution rights to ALL of DC Comics’ characters, including Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern, so the reason you haven’t seen any of them together in a film is that Warner Bros. is stupid.  Or because they’re busy drowning in the pool of cocaine from all their Harry Potter money.

Avengers Assemble

It seemed like a comic-inspired crossover movie would never happen.  This surefire money-making scheme was doomed, ironically, because of financial hang-ups.  That changed in 2008 when Marvel accrued enough of a stake to form their own feature production company, Marvel Studios.  In quick succession, Marvel released films based on the characters they still had rights to and began, almost immediately, to build on that shared universe concept.

Not pictured: body fat

In the weeks leading up to Cinco de Mayo, I’ll be breaking down all of the principal characters who make up this historic superhero team-up on the big screen.  Instead of giving a movie review of Iron Man, I’ll talk about the character, what he brings to a team dynamic, and how elements in that first film laid the foundation for the next film.  It’s going to get really geeky and technical here for a couple weeks, so if you want to check out now and come back in June, I’ll understand.