"The Avengers"

Can a fanboi please explain the Hulk inconsistency I'm hung up on? Other than "well, he just learned to control it suddenly."

 

Hulk is probably the most ill-conceived major character in the Marvel Universe. I can't stand him or his Neanderthal talk. They really wanted to make a Jeckyll-Hyde character. Lizard filled this role much better. But don't blame Joss Whedon for that.

 

I don't think hulk learned to control it when he gets mad as much as he learned how to turn into the hulk when he wanted.

 

Ok, but in the two hours after he was chasing Scarlett through the sky he learned it? That's where ya lose me.

 

Do you follow @DrunkHulk on Twitter?
Pretty funny.

 

Why would I follow @DrunkHulk when I can't stand regular Hulk?

 

Everybody is more fun when they're drunk. Especially regular Hulk.

 

Turn off your brain? What, were you watching Adam Sandler or something?

It's a well-done flick, especially in the genre of comic-book movies. The characters were each depicted in a manner that could be expected based on the source material.

The film also is an impressive achievement as the culmination of a five-film cycle that many never thought they'd be able to pull off. Marvel's secondary characters were not an easy sell.

It's not as good as X-Men First Class.

Anyway, I wouldn't urge you to turn off your brain. Rather, based on your dislike of Inception, I would invite you to turn it on.

 

Another exposition fest.

 

I think this is fair. But I also think that I'm done with comic book movies. I've tried. People who love them can't tell me I haven't tried. But they just aren't for me. Essentially, I find action movies boring. And, in particular, comic book movies rankle because it's action with a lot of heavy-handed, on-the-nose dialogue, along with silly, overstuffed plots about Tesseracts and Asgardians.

Not for me. I can see why others might like them - they are visual delights, in many ways. But there's a sameness and repetitiveness to them, a formulaic plot hitched to a high concept, that I have trouble staying awake through.

 

The movie that most surprised me out of the group was Thor. I went in knowing nothing (I haven't read any of the comic books for any of them) but thought it was pretty solid. Not as good as Iron Man, but solid. Iron Man 1 is the my favorite of the group.

 

As others have noted, this is part of your problem with Avengers. Because it's not "Avengers, Part 1." It's really "Marvel Universe, Part 6."
It's the culmination of the earlier films, and very much a sequel to the other five. It's like coming into one of the later Harry Potter movies, or "Kill Bill: Vol. 2," or the last of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or any of a million serial-based franchises without seeing the earlier ones. The primary characters in "Avengers" were introduced earlier, their back stories explained, the basis for "Avengers" set up there. By the time we get to "Avengers" it's time to hit the gas and wrap things up.

It's funny that you mentioned that it would work better as a TV show, because in a lot of ways the franchise has been structured like a TV season. Introduction, build, work toward the Big Bad, have the different pieces come together to fight the Big Bad. In that sense, "Avengers" was akin to the first season finale of the "Marvel Universe" show.
It also resembles the comic book format in some ways. In the comics, most of the character development takes place in the solo books. Team books like "The Avengers" are where the heroes come together and blow stuff up, we explore the team dynamic and build the larger universe. That's clearly what they've done here. When "Iron Man 3" or "Thor 2" come out, we'll dive more into those characters. Doing that in "Avengers" would've dragged down the pace considerably and likely given us even more of the exposition you hated so much.

"Avengers" wasn't a great movie by any means. When I saw it, I called it "nerd porn" -- shallow, easily digestable, you hit all the familiar checkpoints, everybody pairs up for a fight scene, and there's the big orgy/fight at the end. But for what they were trying to do, pulling five individual movie franchises and plot threads together; giving everyone their moments and screen time; satisfying both the fanboys (no small feat), casual fans and first-timers; and still coming up with something that was enjoyable, Whedon and Co. did a hell of a job.
In some ways, it's a greater artistic achievement to pull all that off than it is to make an Oscar-caliber film with grand designs on "making a cultural statement."