So We Went to See The Avengers…

…and I didn’t like it.

No, I’m not a film snob. My proof? I enjoyed Nacho Libre and have watched it at least a dozen times. Really.

I was disappointed with The Avengers despite already being predisposed to liking it. For starters, I tend to enjoy just about anything Joss Whedon touches, my favorite being his Firefly series and then his subsequent Serenity film. And lest it be assumed, I’m also not averse to superhero flicks. I didn’t watch all of the individual films leading up to it, but I did watch a few. Iron Man (the first one) and Captain America were awesome. Thor I skipped, because frankly, Norse mythological figures don’t seem to translate well on film. Okay, the truth is that I haven’t seen many film depictions of Thor and Loki, and to be fair, the films depicting them that I have watched have had them visiting modern day America, and that automatically introduces the cheese factor (The Son of the Mask is one such atrocity). Frankly, I think these gods fare better in Asgaard and should stay there. And yes, I know, I know…these characters were a Marvel interpretation of these figures, but still. I guess this is where I admit that I have never been a comics fangirl. I did enjoy reading a few of the Archie comics as a kid, but that’s the extent of it. Oh, and I didn’t see a single trailer for The Avengers, nor did I read a single review, for fear that it would sabotage my film-going experience. I wanted to go in as fresh as possible, and without ridiculously high expectations.

So what didn’t I like about it?

Honestly, I felt it dragged. Most of the film involved just gathering all of the Avengers together.

I still don’t like Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. Didn’t like him much as Mace Windu either come to think of it.

Wait, were there aliens in this movie? I was all excited about the aliens, but then there weren’t any aliens, i.e., until the very end. I realize that there wasn’t time to go into the backstory here on the Chitauri (this particular race of aliens), but that didn’t really matter to me. In the film, they kind of reminded me of the army of clone troopers in Attack of the Clones, providing a legion of paper targets for our superheroes to crush. For the record, I really disliked the Star Wars prequels.

The problem with getting this many characters together in one film is that you don’t have much time for character development. Ultimately, I felt that there wasn’t enough heart, and this bothered me most of all.

Loki. ‘Nuff said. Too much camp. I enjoy camp. Sometimes. But I like my baddies to be bad, and menacing. Three-dimensional baddies are best. Loki was just plain silly.

Thor. Every time he was on the screen, I kept thinking “Fabio” and his “I can’t believe it’s not butter,” line. Yeah, that was kind of a bummer.

Dialogue that often felt like a formulaic series of “Insert sarcastic quips here.”  Tony Stark had the best lines, obviously, but I was expecting them, and they fell short. Thankfully, the rest of the audience in the showing I attended wasn’t as jaded as I was and laughed heartily and often. Good for them. Really.

The Tesseract. What? Another cube? Is this Transformers or something? I kid, I kid! Actually, I’m aware that this is like the Cosmic Cube and that this is the sort of powerful object that played a part in the comics. And oddly enough, it didn’t bother me at all in Captain America. Go figure. I guess the connection I felt with the story in that instance, kept me from dwelling on it too much. I guess this may be a silly critique, seeing as I knew it would somehow factor into this film, but again, the story at large didn’t capture my interest this time around, and I was just plain uninterested in the darn thing.

The plot. I didn’t care for or understand Loki’s motivation, and the conflict resolution just wasn’t believable. I mean, it’s fantasy, yes, but even in the world of the movie, I was left unconvinced.

The superheroes. On their own, they’re great. I couldn’t help but feel that they lost so much of their, um, uniqueness (?), working as a team.

The Hulk in particular. I was really looking forward to him. And I liked him. I really did. BUT, he didn’t grow larger the angrier he got. And then all of sudden, later in the movie, it seemed like he could control his anger perfectly well, when just earlier in the film he lost it big time on Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow.

There’s more that I didn’t like, but I’ll spare you. Perhaps if I was an avid Avengers comics reader I may have applauded along with the rest of the people at my screening. I am not beyond thinking that perhaps I’m missing something big here. Perhaps I do have to have more of a familiarity with the comics to enjoy this film. Really, the amount of hype and love being strewn about the net with regard to this movie is unreal. But hey, I’m happy for them. There’s nothing worse than alienating diehard fans. Joss Whedon appears to have given the mega-fans exactly what they wanted. I’m obviously in the minority here.

All that said, there were a few bright spots for me. Granted, very few. And here they are:

Mark Ruffalo. I enjoyed him as Bruce Banner. He was infinitely better than Bana and Norton. Infinitely. He was subdued, and funny. Actually, I thought that of all of the superheroes, he was the most likeable.

Jeremy Renner. Okay, I may just like him, period. And I can’t say that I hated him as Hawkeye. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I sort of like the lonely brooder skilled type of superhero. It’s funny though, because after the film, my kids mentioned him as the guy that shot arrows. There wasn’t much time spent on him as superhero Hawkeye, but rather, evil minion Hawkeye. Really, he was kind of the forgotten hero here. Not much screen time, and no story building for him. BUT, I don’t mean to go off on a negative tangent again. I’m just lamenting the fact that there wasn’t more of him. The bits that were in there, I enjoyed though.

Oh, and I liked seeing the Black Widow kicking butt. I love it when women can hold their own.