If you've ever observed a boy and a girl in the same room on a typical afternoon you might have witnessed this sort of scenario: The little girl sits quietly drawing a picture of something peaceful (Mommy, Daddy, dog, balloons everywhere) when the little boy dashes into the room, bangs the girl on the head with a hammer and then sets the picture on fire.
If destruction is your thing then The Avengers is right up your alley. The plot of The Avengers can easily be described as this: Boom! Bang! Screech! Kaboom! Ding! Dong! Smash! Kazang! with reciprocal reactions from the audience: oh, ah, ah ha ha, oops, ouch, dang, whoa, phew... Marvel Studios obviously think that as a male (are you female? you don’t exist, sorry) you are only interested in seeing things smash into each other, blow up and be torn into pieces, so that’s exactly what you get in this blockbuster that cost $220 million (and already made $280 million ) before being released in the States on May 4.
The story is pretty simple:
The very pale Loki (Tom Hiddleston), evil step brother to Thor (Chris Hemsworth), wants to rule the Earth and gets his hands on a tesseract that will open a portal to Asgard and allow a bunch of aliens and their war ships to occupy the planet. Humans are allegedly dying to be Loki’s slaves, so S.H.I.E.L.D. leader Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) assembles the world’s ‘freaks’ together in the face of the coming apocalypse: the unfrozen Captain America (Chris Evans) prepares his shield, Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) postpones a date with the sizzling Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) gets ready to be mad as hell despite of what his anger management tutor tells him, Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) preps her nicely shaped ass for a few close-ups and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) must polish his hammer for some head smashing and wall bashing.
Instead of joining forces, our superheroes are suspicious, bickering, and stupid, causing a lot of people to get into unnecessary trouble and causing a few untimely deaths. I love how Roger Ebert describes their mis-match made in Marvel heaven: ‘When I see these six together, I can't help thinking of the champions at the Westminster Dog Show. You have breeds that seem completely different from one another (Labradors, poodles, boxers, Dalmatians), and yet they're all champions.’
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Article comments
1 - Tony Boies
Wow...did we watch the same movie?? The aliens were pretty much mindless war drones, never intended to be sentient creatures (that may be explained more in the next film). The preceding individual films spent too much on character development. If I want great emotional depth from an ensemble I'll pop in "The Godfather." This movie delivers what an action film should deliver: action. Nothing is real? Damn right it isn't real....they are comic book characters!