Jack Kirby’s cover for THE AVENGERS No. 1, 1963.
Last Tuesday night I saw
The Avengers, which Hulk-smashed box office records IN THE FABULOUS MARVEL MANNER over the weekend. It wasn’t the summer tent pole movie I’m most anticipating this year;
Ridley Scott‘s
Prometheus and
Christopher Nolan‘s
The Dark Knight Rises both have it beat by some distance on that score. But I’ve enjoyed most of the prior Marvel Studios movies (except for the dreary
Thor, and
The Incredible Hulk, which I haven’t seen), and while I’m no scholar of the oeuvre of
Joss Whedon, the television auteur who is now
The Avengers‘s writer and director, I liked
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and his run as writer of
The Astonishing X-Men comic book.
I have no particular affection for the source comics, the way I do with the various Batman and X-Men films, but I found the movie to be a very affable, funny, well-made early summer blockbuster.
Emphasis early. To my mind, the natural sequence in which summer action films should be consumed is salad in May, the slightly more substantial next course in June and the red meat in July. It’s been this way at least since 1991, when Hudson Hawk and The Rocketeer (both underrated) came out in May, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves followed in June, and the never-to-be-surpassed greatest summer blockbuster of them all, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, came out July 3. Please do not make fun of the way I experience the world.
Sorry, what were we talking about? Oh, right: Here in no particular order are a few of the specific things about The Avengers that really worked for me, along with a few that didn’t. Continue reading →
