No, when I say “house of cards” I’m not talking about the really well written, intriguing political drama that you can find on Netflix. I’m talking about the bad kind of house of cards. The kind where layer upon layer relies on each other and eventually it all comes tumbling down because someone left the window open.
Everyone loved the Marvel movie universe, right? Iron Man was a great superhero movie, which took a B-level comic book character and turned him into possibly the biggest name on the Marvel roster. This was due to clever writing, and of course Robert Downey Jr. In fact, could Iron Man survive in movies without him, the same way Spider-Man or Batman survive throughout the ages? That’s a question for another day.
What I really want to talk about here is the overall structure of the Marvel movies (and TV show) and the inherent flaw in their plan. See, the reason why Iron Man was a great movie was that it was allowed to be. While it had small elements that would play into The Avengers, it wasn’t forced to essentially be a prequel to the ensemble piece. The same cannot be said for the other Marvel movies, like Thor and Captain America. Even Iron Man 2 was forced to include characters that were only there to serve The Avengers.
In Captain America: The First Avenger, they couldn’t just tell a good Captain America story. They needed to set up The Avengers. At the end of that movie, Cap had to be in the modern day. So we’re left with one movie set in the golden era of comic books, but made with one arm tied behind its back. Steve’s relationship with Peggy Carter is ultimately a waste of time. The atmosphere that they established for the character and the story is irrelevant, because it’s all going to change before the next movie comes out. Even the costume, which actually didn’t suck in the movie, was replaced in The Avengers and wound up looking stupid. So at the end of the day, Captain America: The First Avenger was a glorified bonus feature which should have been ten minutes long on the Avengers DVD, rather than its own movie.
Thor suffered from the same thing, though it suffered less because the central character isn’t that thrilling to begin with. Still, instead of a Thor movie, we get Thor introducing Hawkeye, just so they don’t have to do it in The Avengers. It’s all about The Avengers, and Thor is secondary to his own movie.
If we look at the TV series, Agents of SHIELD, we see the same thing. The show will never be allowed to tell its own story. It will never be free to be a good series, because everything they do has to fit into the movie schedule. No twist can have a shockwave that hits the movie. Yet the movies will impact the series all the time, dictating the direction of the series (as we saw in season 1). More than that, they are so closely related that if you don’t see the movie and watch the series on the day they come out, one will be spoiled by the other. The show is little more than an infomercial for the Marvel movie universe.
All of these elements are so closely connected and so dependent on each other that Marvel is setting themselves up for disaster. If one movie flops and audiences reject it, how will that hurt the movies that they’ve already filmed that depend on the flop?
You say it can’t happen? I say that it already has. Though audiences seemed to love The Avenger, I say that it wasn’t worth the cost. It wasn’t worth the sub-par Captain America movie or Thor movie. It wasn’t worth taking a potentially good Iron Man sequel and turning it into an Avengers prequel. The Avengers, simply put, was a bad movie. If you want my reason for saying this, read on…
When I last watched The Avengers on Netflix, I decided to keep track of the issues that I have with the movie. People always assume that I hate it because I’m a DC fanboy and have no legit reason to dislike The Avengers. Well, here’s my list. Make of it what you will.
At the end of Thor’s credits, Dr. Selvig meets Nick Fury and is shown the… blue boxy thingy. We see Loki keeping watch over Selvig and it is implied that Selvig is being manipulated by him (Loki makes a comment, which Selvig repeats). Yet, in The Avengers, we see Selvig coming under Loki’s control when Loki returns to Earth. This was either poor writing in Thor, or poor writing in The Avengers. Most likely, both (since The Avengers should have taken what happened in Thor into consideration, regardless of whether it went along with their plans or not)
As the beginning of the movie plays out and we see Loki and his newly brainwashed minions fight with the good guys, it becomes abundantly clear that all Shield agents are just crappy shooters. Not one of them seems to hit any of their targets.
Fury declares that they are going to Level 7… As of this moment, they are at war. To which Carlson responds: “What do we do?” I sincerely hope that super secret agents would at least read their super secret agent manuals enough to know what “We’re going to Level 7” means and the protocols that go along with it! When Captain Picard yells “Red alert!” on Star Trek, nobody says “What do we do?”
Side Note: One of the main problems that I have with the movie as a whole is that it is written as a comic book. They’re taking things from the comics and putting them on screen. In any adaptation, there needs to be alteration. A novel can’t just be filmed as is, because there is a translation to the screen. Comic books can be translated to cartoons easily enough, but once you’re putting things in live action, you need to put more consideration into the “reality” of the story and how things play out. You can’t just rip it from the page and put it on the screen or it will look silly. That opinion informs many of my comments about this movie.
Black Widow goes to track down Bruce Banner. She knows who he is and what his issues are. Yet when he seems to be losing his temper, this super suave manipulator of situations pulls a gun on him, and a tactical unit prepares to move in… with more guns. In what person’s brain did this scenario seem like a good idea? Black Widow would have to be an idiot for this to happen.
Then we move to the giant base in the sky, which I’m sure works great in the comic books, but it is a heaping, steaming pile of WTF when it comes to the movie. What logic is there in bringing the Hulk into this ship? We see that they built a cage for him and that’s swell, except they don’t put his lab in that cage, so the plan is to… ask the Hulk to kindly step into the cage, should he decide to go on a rampage? What is the point of this ship flying at all, when every element of it seems like it would be more secure and make more sense in the water? It’s not because it’s well defended, since bad guys sneak up on the ship with ease. It’s not because it’s super strong, since one engine going out cripples the entire ship.
Granted, the ship seems super fixable. When the bad guys blow up an engine, they can just slap it back together, so all of the parts that were blown up were probably just for show anyway, right?
But when they lose control and begin to fall, why doesn’t the thing just drop like a rock? There is no aerodynamic aspect to its gliding like a plane. And for that matter, why does the cage that Thor’s in fall faster than the ship? I haven’t done the math exactly, but wouldn’t the cage either fall at the same speed as the falling ship, or possibly slower than the way heavier ship?
Captain America says something along the lines of nothing being able to surprise him anymore, and Fury bets him ten dollars that he’s wrong. Captain America pays him the ten dollars when he sees the ship… Seriously? That flying evidence of poor judgment was what could surprise Captain America at that point? The man just jumped how many years into the future? Hell, if I jumped 80 years into the future, I’d be surprised if we didn’t have flying bases.
Captain America’s new costume is super lame. He looks like a Power Ranger. I liked the one from his movie better.
Why would Loki need to destroy that dude’s eye in Germany, just to get a scan of it?
Also in Germany, when Loki is attacking the crowd, Black Widow flies in and orders him to stand down… while she aims her weapons into the crowd. And what are we expecting to happen here? Is there a chance that the guns will work or that he will actually stand down? What is her goal here?
Despite the fact that most of the people in the movie have been seen reading the Shield files, nobody seems to know who Thor is when he shows up. Strange.
The Thor/Iron Man fight is nothing short of stupid. It seems like a fan film at this point, because there is no use for this scene at all, aside from a fanboy desire to see the two of them (and Captain America eventually) get into a spat. Meanwhile, Loki goes completely unguarded. It’s a good thing he wanted to be captured, because he could have easily escaped here. This scene adds nothing to the movie and makes all involved seem like morons.
When the Avengers find out that Shield was designing weapons, they are all offended. How does this make sense? Captain America is military, so should have no issue with weapons to be used against a strong enemy. Iron Man is a weapon of mass destruction in and of himself! And Thor throws destructive lightning around like it’s nothing! Why would any of these people be offended by the idea that human would design weapons to be used against enemies that have proven stronger than them over and over again in the past?
And the whole “nuclear options don’t work” line is stupid. Nukes ended WWII, whether you see it as good or bad, it happened. And mutually assured destruction kept another world war from breaking out a couple of decades ago. Nuclear options work… which is why we try so hard to keep our enemies from getting them.
Thor seems to think that fighting is petty, which is silly for that character.
During the fight on the ship, Fury has to tell a navigator how to steer the ship. This is just sad.
The movie is entirely dependent on the incompetence of the good guys. In fact, it seems like most of the fights in the movie were good vs. good! They fought themselves more than the bad guy. If they could do their jobs, the movie could have been cut down to a half hour sitcom episode.
The security on the ship is just horrible. Despite the fact that there are countless extras playing Shield agents, none of them seem to have any weapons, or any ability to actually do anything… except play video games. Only the people with speaking lines seem to do anything. It’s just odd.
Why do people bother to shoot at the Hulk? Are they trying to make him even more mad? And when he is on a rampage, why doesn’t he actually kill anyone? He attacks, attacks, attacks, but people are miraculously undamaged.
When Carlson approaches Loki with the weapon, why does he engage him in conversation, rather than use the element of surprise to take the mother f—- out? At this point, Carlson deserves to die.
But why would Carlson’s death rally the Avengers. Most of them had little or no interaction with him. How many people died during that attack? Why should he be the one who matters to them?
Tony Stark is a genius, right? So, why would it take him so long to realize that the bad guys would be using his own tower, which is really the only place that they could go through with their plan?
Loki tosses Tony out the window. Mid-air, his suit comes and he puts it on. Right before he slams into a crowd of people (who are standing there, waiting for him to fall on them), he rockets into the sky… with rockets powerful enough to stop his fall and propel him upward, and yet don’t burn the crap out of the people who are only a couple of feet beneath them. What technology is that?
As the alien dudes pour out of the portal and invade New York, they seem to be trying to avoid killing anyone. They shoot everything in sight, except for the people!
And during the attack, as things are crashing and things are exploding, it is strange how the damage only seems to effect the surface of the buildings. I think one building actually fell, while the others just had dings taken out of them or windows broken… this when suffering major explosions which should have blown them apart.
Why would Hawkeye be saving a bus full of people when the city is being invaded. While he saved one or two people, ten other people would have probably just died… if the bad guys were trying to kill people.
Out of nowhere, Hulk can control himself. Throughout both versions of the Hulk movies in the past as well as the beginning of this movie, the point has always been that he is completely incapable of controlling himself, Hulk can suddenly take orders, work with allies and carry on pretty much like any other human being with a temper.
While the military should have been all over New York at this point, I think we see something like one truck pull up. No planes. No army of soldiers fighting with the Avengers. Nothing. Where are they? On vacation? This is kinda their thing!
I’m not familiar with the comics… does Black Widow have powers? Because she can handle g-forces like nobody’s business, and seems super human as she attacks the aliens and forces them to fly her around. They haven’t really mentioned any powers in the movies, have they?
The pointlessly shadowy people who are giving Shield orders decide to nuke New York… because this seems like a perfectly logical plan to them? Rather than attack the beam that’s shooting into the sky, or send a nuke through the hole where all the aliens are pouring out, they decide to nuke their own citizens… which means they are the ONLY people trying to kill these citizens! And what will this accomplish? They’re not actually targeting the enemy!
Hulk slams the crap out of Loki… then leaves him. Loki is slightly dazed but pretty much fine. So, why are we just walking away from the bad guy who we’ve been trying to stop for the entire movie again?! KILL HIM!
Captain America and Thor are fighting together (on the same side for once!). Thor asks, “Ready for another bout?” to which Captain America says “What, are you getting tired?” (or something like that). This exchange makes no sense. Thor might as well ask Cap what happens to a toad when it gets struck by lightning.
Black Widow has a plan to close the portal and stop the invasion. Unfortunately, she never tells anyone. As a result, a nuclear attack is ordered on the city. Way. To. Go!
Pepper’s phone is on vibrate? For real? This woman’s entire life would be that cell phone. She would probably want to be ready for a call from Tony at any second. She would be talking to Rhodes. She would be doing a lot of things… none of which would be putting her cell phone down on a table, on vibrate, and walking away!
The nuke goes off, destroys the mother ship, and all of the bad guys in the city die. Moral of the story is that the next time we’re at war, we should look for our enemy’s mother ship, because that thing is one giant, super convenient light switch.
And can I just say that the bridge/overpass/whatever thing that the Avengers were coordinating their fight from was the best bridge/overpass/whatever thing ever? It was hit by how many exploding things, and never went down! (but then, most of the city seems to be explosion-proof)
At the end, I’m just left with the impression that the movie is nonsense. ¾ of it seemed to be spent with stupid in-fighting between the good guys, while the bad guy twiddled his thumbs. And when the invasion started, the invading force was super nice about not killing people or destroying things. Comic books are fun, but there must be a translation when going to live-action. Man of Steel is getting a ton of crap because of all the destruction and death, but at least it was realistic for that scenario. Superman is also getting crap for not helping clean up, but The Avengers literally ends with a scene of the Avengers sitting around, eating dinner, while victims of the attack are cleaning up the rubble.
This movie needed to be awesome, just to make it worth sacrificing the other Marvel movies. It needed to be a home run. It wasn’t. It was a cartoon, with a larger budget. In the process of being a bad movie, it took down how many other movies with it? I really don’t care how much money it made or how popular it was. At the end of the day, to me, it just wasn’t worth it.
And the next time this happens, the audience might see the flaws. If the Avengers was received as badly as it should have been, the entire Marvel movie and television universe would have imploded.
Tags: Black Widow, Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man, Joss Whedon, Man of Steel, Marvel, SHIELD, Thor
Kyle Andrews Blog 