MCU Retrospective, Part 6—"The Avengers"
In this weekly series, Film Yap writer Andrew Carr revisits each installment of the decade-long Marvel Cinematic Universe. Once a week, Andrew will review one film in the series, in the original release order, reevaluating his previously held opinion of the film and giving each film a new score out of 5 Yaps. All 18 films (plus Avengers: Infinity War, upon release) will be compiled into one definitive ranking. Each entry in the "MCU Retrospective" series will include a short review as well as a historical recap about the film's initial conception and release.
A new entry in this series will be posted every Sunday from now until the weekend prior to the release of Avengers: Infinity War on May 4.
Click here to see last week's entry in the series: Captain America: The First Avenger
History Time!
The stage has been set. All the pieces are in place. With the Avengers trailer sizzle at the end of Captain America: The First Avenger, Marvel Studios had effectively prepared the world for the first-ever blockbuster superhero crossover film. Over the previous four years, Marvel had made its lineup of almost-forgotten or barely-cared-about characters into household names again. It was no longer just a product for the "geek" community. The entire world was excited for The Avengers.
If there were any doubts of that, they were silenced by the record-shattering $207 million the film took domestically on its opening weekend, and totally blown away by the $1.5 billion it grossed worldwide in the long run. The world had embraced Marvel Studios' experiment as one of the most successful franchises of all time.
It's clear in the years since that The Avengers and the surrounding MCU were almost immediately influential. Other studios began turning popular series like X-Men and Harry Potter into more expansive franchises, and today, the concept of the "cinematic universe" is common practice in the film industry. But nearly six years later, does The Avengers still hold up? Is it $207 million good? Read on to find out.
The Review
THE AVENGERS (2012)
Looking back, six years and a dozen films later, The Avengers is a strange relic to behold. On the one hand, it's due credit for accomplishing a lot of things that hadn't been done with the genre before, or doing them on a bigger or more complex scale. Its climax, the 13-minute Battle of New York sequence, certainly set a precedent for scale and creativity among finales in action blockbusters moving forward. Additionally, balancing so many significant characters was a trial that the film confidently overcame (something that the X-Men films struggled with), and its clear definition of acts is model execution of the classic three-act structure.
But on the other hand, this film strangely feels very dated after only six years. I think that can largely be attributed to how far the franchise (and the industry) has come since then, seeing as we've gotten a dozen more films, many of which surpassed The Avengers by miles. Perhaps it's also because of improvements the industry has made in technical practices (how certain stunts, shots, and overall production design are executed), as well as learning how to better write big-budget dialogue. But in hindsight, The Avengers feels a lot rougher around the edges than anyone really seemed to talk about at the time. Even looking back at reviews by professional critics of the film, who were expectedly somewhat harsher than audiences, I see very little mention of the problems that I saw this time around. Let me start there, and I'll get to the good stuff eventually.
To put it plainly, I was surprised by how ugly and messy the first act is. Essentially, up until our heroes manage to get Loki onto the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier (approximately the 50-minute mark, or the first third of the film), I would be stretching to call this a good movie. It's just that rough. With the exception of a couple scenes and a couple characters, the dialogue is just plain amateurish. Even Samuel L. Jackson's trademark attitude isn't enough to elevate some of the downright cornball lines handed to him. But the sloppy execution isn't limited to the script; everything from set design to fight choreography feels the effects of the overall tacky, mid-2000s style: goofy wirework that would feel more at home in the X-Men trilogy, sets that look plastic and sterile, entirely unconvincing alien prosthetics, lazy acting emphasized by lazier writing, and more. It all just feels subpar, as though the film didn't have one of the biggest movie budgets of all time (hint: it did). If the film continued at the standard of quality set by the first act, I would legitimately have a difficult time giving it a positive review.
Fortunately, the ship gets turned around. As mentioned before, Loki's incarceration at S.H.I.E.L.D.'s mobile HQ marks a sudden and welcome lift in execution. After a smug game of verbal chess between Loki and Avengers founder Nick Fury, the film hikes up its pants, and from here on out, it's clear why the film is so beloved. The dialogue drastically improves, swapping middle-school one-liners for iconic and memorable zingers, and more importantly, relatively substantial writing overall, for a blockbuster. The action choreography goes from near-Power-Rangers-level child's play to riveting and creative sequences more on par with what we expect from the MCU these days. Even the cinematography/storyboarding improves; the first act is full of visual spoon-feeding that, at times, feels overt to the point of patronizing.
And most importantly, I think, the chemistry and drama between our heroes begins to be more fully realized. Tensions rise between Cap and Stark as it becomes more and more apparent how their worldviews clash, and all of the heroes begin to bicker and throw jabs at one another under the manipulation of Loki's magical scepter. This in-fighting then sets the stage for very rewarding payoff in the film's finale, when our heroes must finally come together to face Loki's impending alien army.
Even after my shockingly unpleasant experience with the film's first-third, it was almost hard to remember that part of the film after having enjoyed the middle and end so thoroughly. So it's understandable why, at the time, nobody seemed to care about the movie's blunder-ful opening. The latter two-thirds of the film are really just that good. $207 million good. The humor is pitch-perfect, the drama works as well as it needs to, and the action sequences are just plain killer. That long single shot sweeping through the city, showing us how each hero is handling their alien foes, still gets my blood pumping. It may not be as impressive or complex as some of Marvel's action work since, but at the time, the Battle of New York sequence was the cream of the crop, and it's still wild fun.
I've been all over the place with my opinion on this film in the years since its release. I believe this movie was actually my first full-length review I ever wrote, sophomore year in high school. I gave it a perfect 10 at the time. My cynicism would soon be cultivated enough to realize the movie's obvious flaws, and after a couple years, I would place it in the lower half of the MCU, not calling it a "bad" film, but perhaps mostly frustrated with the overwhelmingly positive general opinion of the film. I'm now at sort of a midpoint where, hopefully, I'm more mature and nuanced in my approach to criticism than any of my previous selves. I think the movie has obvious flaws that are worth pointing out, but that doesn't mean it wasn't still a groundbreaking epic of entertainment at the time and to this day.
It feels strange giving what will ultimately be a very positive review to a film whose first act is so weak. Trust me, I have reservations about it. But ultimately, film criticism is kind of an ethereal, subjective practice, and by the end of this movie, it was honestly hard to care about the rough start. Director Joss Whedon and his team managed an astoundingly smooth and entertaining balance of character dynamics, humor, action, and spectacle for the latter two-thirds of the film. It's really The Avengers that defined the MCU as we know it today, and while I think there are certainly negative side effects to that, including an over-adherence to story formula and a general flatness in visual style (there are exceptions, of course), it's also why the MCU works so well. The apparent ease with which the film was executed resonates in the earned confidence of the rest of the franchise. The MCU isn't perfect, and neither is The Avengers. But the sheer scope that both are able to manage, while still managing to tell a story we care about, with characters we care about, is quite a feat in itself.
PREVIOUS SCORE:
NEW SCORE:
The MCU Ranking!
Every week, I'll take each entry covered for that week and place it in an ongoing ranking, which will eventually include all 19 films. While I feel my review of Captain America was more even-keel and generally favorable overall, The Avengers simply reached heights that the good Captain never touched. I have to give the advantage to "Earth's Mightiest Heroes." Below is my current ranking of the MCU, including the first six films: