Box office dollars assemble!



I believe Avatar is currently the record holder for highest grossing film. I'm fairly confident that the record is in jeopardy.
The Avengers, the Joss Whedon helmed super-hero spectacular, is the culmination of Marvel Studios collection of super-hero films; Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, and The Incredible Hulk, all pretty damn good films in their own right, set up something that most thought may never be accomplished. A super-hero TEAM movie. To say this was a risk, to use several films to provide the foundation for an extravaganza like The Avengers, is like saying the Himalayas are "hilly".

But I'll be damned, they did it!

I honestly can't think of another movie that I had this much fun at. I wasn't alone if the reactions of the audience was any indication. There was fist pumps and cheers. There was gasps and laughter. There was APPLAUSE at not just the end but several times DURING the film! When was the the last time THAT happened at a movie you went to?

There have been so many trailers and sneak peeks that you can't throw a shield and miss so I'm I don't think I'm spoiling anything with some plot details.

Loki is back and has found some new friends (The origin of these friends you will discover, if you are a Marvel aficionado, in Oh! so glorious pleasure at the end of the film!) He uses powers granted to him by these new allies to capture the Tesseract (Cosmic Cube) and let loose the evil armies. The subjugation of Earth to avenge himself on Thor is his driving motivation.

SHIELD comes the forefront as Nick Fury tries to bring "Earth's Mightiest Heroes" together to fight this new and overwhelming force. Wouldn't you know it...He succeeds!

The rest of the plot, and there is much to this plot (it was written by Whedon), is not going to be spoiled here. What I will say is that what happens is an incredible amount of fun! This is super-heroes done right! This may be the BEST, no the GREATEST, no the best AND greatest super-hero movie that has ever been!

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"Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars"

The only time I've seen this happen is in an American cinema, watching Star Wars Episode 2 (evening showing, adult audience as far as I saw). The only time I've heard this happen in a British cinema is when there was an audience full of children watching Ghostbusters. I thought the American audience was a bit odd.

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For a Star Wars ep. 2 showing?? Yeah. Odd.

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"Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars"

That Count Dooku vs. CGI Yoda fight scene was really cool, I guess... The oddity of it increased when one considers that the scene in question was in the trailer, so it was hardly a surprise.

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I really wanted to post a review on this film, but Timelord beat me too it.

However, I would like to discuss the hard too see, but very evident similarities in Joss Whedon's Firefly/Serenity work and the Avengers.

I usually hate humor in films trying to tell how serious the threat is, however, the only time I have really seen it work is in Firefly and now I see it working in Avengers.

Joss really knows how to tell a story with an ensemble cast, tie in doom and gloom, but yet the little slices of humor stitched in only served to add to the story, not jar the audience out of the story like so many films do.

Many Star Trek films have an "epic fail" with throwing in humor while trying to tell a serious story and in my opinion this is one of the main reasons why TNG films S***.

Avengers is going to rake in a lot of cash and deservedly so, major kudos to Marvel & Paramount for taking the big risk by using several films to lay a foundation (thank you Timelord) and then pulling out the big guns by bringing on Joss Whedon to weave your epic, multi-character story for the big pay-off.

Freaking brilliant!!!

In my opinion, Joss Whedon is in danger of entering the rarified air of the likes of Ridley Scott, James Cameron, Steven Spielburg and Lucas (before he went off the deep end)....seriously, has anyone seen anything that Joss Whedon has had a major hand in creating that actually sucked?

I cant think of anything.....go see Avengers....really....seriously...dont miss out, go see it now.

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"All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct." -- Carl Sagan

scorp, I think you've previously said that you don't like Batman Begins / The Dark Knight, which I regard to be the best comic book movies I've seen, which makes it difficult for me to relate to your opinion on other comic book movies. If you had to draw up a 'top x comic book movies' list (however many movies you like), can you give me a rough idea what it would look like?

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I think you have me confused with someone else, I loved Batman Begins and I found dark Knight to be goosd, but not as good as Batman Begins.

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"All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct." -- Carl Sagan

May have been me honestly. I liked Batman Begins well enough but thought Dark Knight to be highly over-rated and even question whether it would have gotten the accolades it did had it not been for the untimely death of it's star.

If I were to give you the list, (and keep in mind that it has been a while since I've seen some of these, so think of this as a list of what films I'd be willing to watch over the other.)

1. Avengers
2. Watchmen
3. Iron Man
4. Spider-Man (Tobey Maquire initial Spidey role)
6. Batman (Micheal Keatons)
5. Batman Begins

and from there pretty much a draw on every other film I can think of.

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"Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars"

Na The watchmen was an overrated letdown

I think if I say that movies with obviously CGI fight scenes tend to cause me to disconnect quite quickly, you can guess which ones I'd strike off the list

The only superhero movie I can readily think of that obviously made extensive use of CGI for key scenes that I liked was Superman Returns. I think that's because where they could, they would use the actor and superimpose if required. I think when CGI is required to make that superhero actually work reasonably well in the first place, it makes me feel like I'm watching a kid play with action figures. Perhaps it's because in pre-CGI films, a good film would capitalise on decent puppets/mock-ups or using the actors, make use of clever angles and pyrotechnics, and if it's done well, it looks real. These days, a lot of the time, they set back and let the CGI boys do a scene that has all the clever direction of a Street Fighter 2 round. I think if a director wants/has to go for a pure-CGI scene, it has to do something (be original/inventive) that breaks me out of the mindset that I'm watching computer graphics and that if they like, they can ignore the laws of physics and turn the characters into a couple of fighting bananas.

Batman Begins, Dark Knight and Watchmen would definitely be at the top of my list. V for Vendetta would have to be high up the list (despite obvious plot flaws and a very unrealistic neck breakage). X-Men (Patrick Stewart, 2001) would be there as well. Batman (Keaton) would get an honourable mention because that was the best until Batman Begins came along, it has a lot of style and gets the job done.

Iron Man / 2, Captain America, and Thor are all movies that I might possibly watch a second time if they happened to be on television.

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Forgot about X-Men.. Oh geeze.. I forgot First Class!! That was great too! Think I would have to put that ahead of Watchmen

I don't mind the CG so long as it doesn't look like a cartoon. Some older films, even the first Spider-Man, the Matrix and if I can use some scenes of the Star Wars prequels as examples, I think stop looking "real" and look like Saturday morning cartoons. That can throw me out of a movie. Recent films however have gotten better and better on that front and the characters maintain there look despite what they are doing. I'm all for practical effects and camera tricks, but so long as you can keep everything looking "real".. I'm OK with the CG.

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"Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars"

I was pleasantly surprised that this movie was, on the whole, better than Capt. America / Thor / Iron Man 1/2. I think it was the plot that made it better on the whole, the other movies' plots were too simplistic and unoriginal, and in places the execution wasn't that good. There were a few funny moments in this movie, but I can't remember thinking "that was a good touch" about any particular moment in this film.

I think this movie suffered from its "PG-ness". Apart from one character, did anyone else of consequence die? Even the human heroes seemed a bit superhuman and invulnerable. IMO it gave it a bit of a Saturday morning cartoon feel, during which under no circumstances can anyone die because that's not suitable for kids.


Flaws: There weren't many, but here goes.


Why have so many people gone head-over-heels for this movie? It's like a load of movie virgins saw this and it was the best movie ever, according to a billion gushing reviews on IMDB. I'd summarise it as a good action *flick*, as in, if you want to watch an action movie that has decent action and an adequately plausible plot, that's what this movie does. In terms of wanting to watch a movie that adds something new to the genre and/or has some interesting and fairly unique/special scenes in, I don't think it does.

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Saw the movie and loved it but I couldn't care for Hawkeye who might as well been a wooden statue. The 2nd post-credit scene at a shawarma restaurant had me roaring. The one thing I didn't like was hearing that B. Banner was indestructible since he was unable to kill himself, which could lead to a Superman type = boring. Why they couldn't get Ed Norton for the movie and yet he's in the "Dictator" for 20 seconds?? I would have liked to seen him in this film after watching the last Hulk movie.
On the Hulk: Loki didn't have control over the Avengers, but he was able to cloud their judgement and influence them enough to cause the problems, send Hulk into an out-of-control rage, and provide another distraction to allow Hawkeye to bust Loki out. I noticed this when Banner was holding Loki's staff and didn't realize it.

As for SHIELD, they didn't do much during the alien invasion except turn on their leader, And a nuke did take out an alien invasion in "Independence Day" so there you go.

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war is some crazy sh** -alexander the great

Fair point.

Re: post credits scene(s) - there was the one on the alien planet that I saw, but that restaurant one (which I just watched on YouTube) wasn't in the non-US release.

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Yes it is you have to wait till the very end of the credits after the thanos teaser