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petroniaOr, I slowly begin to realize I have committed myself to writing 5-10K words of analysis on one commercial superhero movie. XD; Though to be fair, my thoughts on IM2, etc. are all in here as well.
(I rewatched it thinking, now that I know what "the Avengers Initiative" is, and where Fury/Natasha are coming from, maybe I will feel it is a better movie? No. No, I do not. It's frustrating because I find the first 1/3 of the movie really absorbing, and I enjoy the Mickey Rourke-Sam Rockwell combo better than any other villain in this continuity. But the thing screeched to a halt after the Monaco sequence. Even then it would just have been a superhero movie with a lull in the middle and some deus ex machina-ing, but the third-act action is boring, which is unforgiveable. I think it's the drones. I mean, have you watched Gundam? Drones are useful IRL and inherently boring. I spent a good decade thinking Treize Khushrenada was a nutter, until I realized his value system was that of an mecha anime TV series director and not that of a military commander. Then it all made sense.)
Part 1 | Part 2 (the comments are probably more interesting than the posts)
On the bridge of theEnterprise Laputa Helicarrier. This is the physical location of most of the film's second act, the first act being character introductions. So far everyone is civil, but Stuttgart is the inflection point. XD; Fury meets Bruce Banner, which consists of plot talk about gamma rays, and Bruce not being fooled. I also got q. excited about the Helicarrier reveal, because I wasn't expecting it -- never thought about it, really.
Loki vs. Hawkeye. Realized on watch #3 that I'd conflated the scene where Loki is threatened by the Chitauri, and the one with the plot stuff about iridium. Clint gets short shrift in The Avengers, for the same reason Natasha gets short shrift in IM2 - he's not himself for the majority of the film. Except you can extrapolate, sorta, because Selvig (who was a canny dude in Thor) is himself without any kind of judgment beyond his happy scientist discovery flow state. One supposes the Clint here is himself, in his hyperfocussed agent mission flow state.
Skipping ahead a bit, one weakness is that I can't figure out the rules of Loki's "glowstick" (sacrificed to running time, one suspects). It runs off the Tesseract's power, yes? That is why Loki says "the Tesseract showed you..."? But other than overt brainwashing, is it also meant to subtly warp the mentality of those in its vicinity, aka the argument where Bruce picks it up? That is, the only way Loki's gambit actually makes sense is if he knew Bruce were going to analyze the staff (a reasonable hypothesis), and the staff were programmed to make Bruce hulk out. But if so, this was really, really not clear.
Loki vs. Captain America / Loki vs. Iron Man / Captain America vs. Iron Man 1 (Tony Stark vs. Natasha Romanov). The first actual superhero vs supervillain fight! I can't decide whether the "kneel before me" / "last time I was in Germany" scene was great or anvil-icious, but I can get behind Hiddleston's pseudo-pentameter delivery, and the glee with which he de-eyeballs that poor scientist. (Although it took me a second watch to figure out why he was doing it. On watch #3 I tried to figure out if the opera house was playing Wagner, because rotfl. Can't quite tell, not brave enough to beard the Loki tag on Tumblr for possible screencaps.)
Hello, tailor had a great post about Loki's performative dress style that still applies.
Another nice brief character moment here - Tony doesn't trust Natasha (she said), and she isn't cut up about that, but she can't help a quirk of the lip when he hijacks her PA. And that captures exactly how the viewer feels, too, at that moment (the movie mirrors its audience very well). So much for Tony and Natasha.
This is also Steve and Tony's first meeting. They're on the job, in costume, working together. Tony calls Steve "Captain." Steve calls Tony "Stark," not "Iron Man," but he doesn't mention Howard once, not even when they butt heads later. He read the brief but was clearly reserving judgment. He had no problem with the guy - for 30 seconds, until Tony was a dick to him for no reason. On first watch I basically whited out for a minute, like, did Tony Stark just say "Capsicle"? In his out loud voice?
Mind you, he says "reverse the polarities" later, too.
Tony is predisposed to not like Steve by reading about him (he seems like a by-the-books military guy on paper, plus Howard Factor(tm)), just as he's predisposed to like Bruce. It's probably still a test with a win condition, because Tony's an engineer at heart, but I'm not really sure what said condition is - not that the onus should have been on Steve to pass it.
Then Thor shows up, setting off a quarter hour dedicated to the inner 8-year-old boy. If you do not have an inner 8-year-old boy at all, this is probably where your boxcar unhooks from the locomotive of pacing, because it's not a one-off. XD;
(cont.)
(I rewatched it thinking, now that I know what "the Avengers Initiative" is, and where Fury/Natasha are coming from, maybe I will feel it is a better movie? No. No, I do not. It's frustrating because I find the first 1/3 of the movie really absorbing, and I enjoy the Mickey Rourke-Sam Rockwell combo better than any other villain in this continuity. But the thing screeched to a halt after the Monaco sequence. Even then it would just have been a superhero movie with a lull in the middle and some deus ex machina-ing, but the third-act action is boring, which is unforgiveable. I think it's the drones. I mean, have you watched Gundam? Drones are useful IRL and inherently boring. I spent a good decade thinking Treize Khushrenada was a nutter, until I realized his value system was that of an mecha anime TV series director and not that of a military commander. Then it all made sense.)
Part 1 | Part 2 (the comments are probably more interesting than the posts)
On the bridge of the
Loki vs. Hawkeye. Realized on watch #3 that I'd conflated the scene where Loki is threatened by the Chitauri, and the one with the plot stuff about iridium. Clint gets short shrift in The Avengers, for the same reason Natasha gets short shrift in IM2 - he's not himself for the majority of the film. Except you can extrapolate, sorta, because Selvig (who was a canny dude in Thor) is himself without any kind of judgment beyond his happy scientist discovery flow state. One supposes the Clint here is himself, in his hyperfocussed agent mission flow state.
Skipping ahead a bit, one weakness is that I can't figure out the rules of Loki's "glowstick" (sacrificed to running time, one suspects). It runs off the Tesseract's power, yes? That is why Loki says "the Tesseract showed you..."? But other than overt brainwashing, is it also meant to subtly warp the mentality of those in its vicinity, aka the argument where Bruce picks it up? That is, the only way Loki's gambit actually makes sense is if he knew Bruce were going to analyze the staff (a reasonable hypothesis), and the staff were programmed to make Bruce hulk out. But if so, this was really, really not clear.
Loki vs. Captain America / Loki vs. Iron Man / Captain America vs. Iron Man 1 (Tony Stark vs. Natasha Romanov). The first actual superhero vs supervillain fight! I can't decide whether the "kneel before me" / "last time I was in Germany" scene was great or anvil-icious, but I can get behind Hiddleston's pseudo-pentameter delivery, and the glee with which he de-eyeballs that poor scientist. (Although it took me a second watch to figure out why he was doing it. On watch #3 I tried to figure out if the opera house was playing Wagner, because rotfl. Can't quite tell, not brave enough to beard the Loki tag on Tumblr for possible screencaps.)
Hello, tailor had a great post about Loki's performative dress style that still applies.
Another nice brief character moment here - Tony doesn't trust Natasha (she said), and she isn't cut up about that, but she can't help a quirk of the lip when he hijacks her PA. And that captures exactly how the viewer feels, too, at that moment (the movie mirrors its audience very well). So much for Tony and Natasha.
This is also Steve and Tony's first meeting. They're on the job, in costume, working together. Tony calls Steve "Captain." Steve calls Tony "Stark," not "Iron Man," but he doesn't mention Howard once, not even when they butt heads later. He read the brief but was clearly reserving judgment. He had no problem with the guy - for 30 seconds, until Tony was a dick to him for no reason. On first watch I basically whited out for a minute, like, did Tony Stark just say "Capsicle"? In his out loud voice?
Mind you, he says "reverse the polarities" later, too.
Tony is predisposed to not like Steve by reading about him (he seems like a by-the-books military guy on paper, plus Howard Factor(tm)), just as he's predisposed to like Bruce. It's probably still a test with a win condition, because Tony's an engineer at heart, but I'm not really sure what said condition is - not that the onus should have been on Steve to pass it.
Then Thor shows up, setting off a quarter hour dedicated to the inner 8-year-old boy. If you do not have an inner 8-year-old boy at all, this is probably where your boxcar unhooks from the locomotive of pacing, because it's not a one-off. XD;
(cont.)
no subject
Date: 2012-05-15 05:04 pm (UTC)Me too! But I was excited because it's a Final Fantasy airship. The moment when the camera pans over the bridge and then along the sides and there's a whirring sound, I knew it was going to turn out that way. There's a moment exactly like that in either FFX or FFXII (I think it was FFX, though).
Tony is predisposed to not like Steve by reading about him (he seems like a by-the-books military guy on paper, plus Howard Factor(tm)), just as he's predisposed to like Bruce. It's probably still a test with a win condition, because Tony's an engineer at heart, but I'm not really sure what said condition is - not that the onus should have been on Steve to pass it.
<333
no subject
Date: 2012-05-16 12:12 am (UTC)There's a few scenes in this movie where something about the execution really worked for me, rather than the concept - Tony going through the portal was one.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-17 03:15 am (UTC)RE: "last time in Germany," I vote anvilicious. In general there was plenty of show but also no shortage of tell in the film, imo--I mean lol @ Coulson announcing the narrative purpose of his death with his last breath.
Put me down also as one of those who would cast Hiddleston as Magic's Price-era Vanyel for a nickel.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-17 05:42 am (UTC)I don't really like Coulson's death for that exact reason. It just slid too far into the meta-game. In a weird way, Tony's almost-death at the end touched me more - I mean, for Doylesque reasons you knew he wasn't going to die, but I couldn't imagine a more fitting death for the character.
Never going to unsee Hiddleston as Vanyel, crying
no subject
Date: 2012-05-17 05:45 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-05-18 02:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-19 06:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-23 06:17 am (UTC)