How does The Avengers treat its
characters?
A conventional review would be pretty
blasé. We all know that Joss Whedon is an incomparably popular and
capable writer with a fetish for creating strong women and then
ruining their lives. We all know that this film was designed as an
insane summer blockbuster, with explosions occurring probably at an
average of one every five minutes or less. Of course it's going to be
entertaining as hell. It's hard not to be when you're talking about a
power fantasy where you watch incredibly powerful people (and gods)
rip the hell out of aliens so generic that you can't even remember
their names.
Anyways, all of that aside, what really
caught my interest were the characters. Unlike the average movie-goer
who witnessed the multicolored super-powered clusterf**k, I've read
the comics behind every single one of these characters. To say that
I've read all of their comics would be ridiculous, but I've
read enough to get a sense of what these characters were meant to
look like and act, as well as their failures that may or may not have
been improved upon by the movie. So, without further adieu, here
goes. Comics versus movie in an epic face-off.
.
Clint Barton – Hawkeye
In the comics, Hawkeye is frankly one
of the least interesting characters in The Avengers roster.
What he basically boils down to is a badass with a bow who can hit
anything without trying. … That pretty much sums him up, which
means the movie honored his character precisely. On a power level,
the only difference is that, in most of the comics, Barton is
downright dangerous with anything. If there's a shard of glass
nearby, he can stick it in your eye without effort. If he's got a pen
in his pocket, he's dangerous. In one memorable moment from The
Ultimates comic series, he manages to break himself out of prison
single handedly by ripping his own fingernails out and flicking
them into the guards' throats so hard that it kills them. It
would have been interesting to see the movie Hawkeye do anything
other than play around with his bow like he did but, in the end, it
isn't a huge issue.
What movie Hawkeye improves upon
however, is making his character less of an asshole. In the comics,
Barton is legendary for being a prick and hard to work with, a
hothead far more likely to disobey orders and act independently
instead of work as a team. Thankfully, the movie avoided this. Though
you definitely get a sense of Jeremy Renner's self-confident streak,
we see that, with regard to the Black Widow, he's got a heart behind
it. Their scene where he is struggling to free himself from Loki's
mind control is indicative of this, along with the knowledge that,
once upon a time, Hawkeye was sent to assassinate the Black Widow but
chose instead to bring her in and rehabilitate her. Though these are
pretty much the only gems of his character that I remember, it is
worth considering him a success since I came out of the movie wanting
to know more about him.
.
Natasha Romanoff – The Black Widow
The Black Widow is a character who
really deviated hard from what I know of her in the comics. In the
comics, she genuinely lives up to her name. She is hand picked by
SHIELD to do the dirty work that they want off the record. She's
completely fine with sleeping with her targets and then killing them
without remorse. Black Widow is easily the darkest of the characters
(in the comics) because she almost never allows her badass amoral
side to crumble. Whenever it does appear to, it is often a ruse.
Scarlett Johansson's (or, should I say,
Joss Whedon's) Black Widow acts more like she's reformed. She makes
constant hints to a darker character within her that existed in the
past. Whenever she does, you can pretty much gather from those
descriptions exactly what the comic Black Widow was. However, unlike
the comics where she generally gets as much 'screentime' as Hawkeye
(which is, not very much), in The Avengers it almost felt like
Black Widow could be considered a main character, if not the
main character. A great deal of focus is put on her and, to my
surprise, on her vulnerabilities. Some of the tensest moments of the
movie are when her facade seems to crack and we see a scared little
girl. Her scenes with Hulk and Loki are incredible and Scarlett
Johansson manages to give the character significantly more heart than
I've ever seen her have. You have to keep in mind that, in the
comics, it is constantly up in the air whether Black Widow will
actually betray the team or not, she's that opportunistic. In the
movie, we see a Black Widow that, while not precisely loyal to her
comic book origins, still manages to achieve that perfect blend of
sexiness and sensitivity. It's a change, but it's a good change.
.
Thor
Though his power level is one of the
strongest, it's remarkable how uninteresting they made Thor's
character. The problem with Thor in The Avengers is that they
took away anyone with who he might meaningfully connect. Odin is back
in the prequel, as is his love interest, Natalie Portman. Everyone
else either seems deliberately out to get under his skin (Tony Stark.
Nick Fury, to some extent) or simply amusing or incomprehensible to
him (“You humans are all so strange”). His interactions with
Loki, while a trifle sad, are rather hard to believe or get invested
in. It is just too painfully obvious that Loki just isn't going to
listen. Thus Thor is left surrounded by colorful characters but with
nothing to do but twiddle his beardy hairs.
However, they still do a great job of
balancing his power level and that's perhaps the most important thing
of all. Thor is a god. Not only that, but he's a martial god,
meaning his powers and skills derive from kicking ass. For those of
you who saw the prequel, we know he's single handedly capable of
destroying an entire world by himself if he wants to. This is like
putting a pro football player on a team with fairly skilled teenagers
and expecting it to play evenly. This was probably my number one
concern with this movie: that Thor would render the rest of the team
meaningless.
But that's pretty well avoided. Sure,
those lower down the power food chain have to do less glamorous
things like rescue civilians a lot, but they still get their time in
the limelight. Despite the total power discrepancy, both Iron Man and
Captain America manage to prove to the audience that they aren't
total pushovers. And the Hulk spends a good amount of time using the
Thor like we might use a pinata. Altogether, though, Thor was
disappointing, felt like he got the least screentime, and almost came
off feeling like a minor character.
.
Steve Rogers – Captain America
Captain America is one of my favorite
comic book characters. He's a man who embodies everything idealized
from an older generation. He's polite, calm, commanding, thoughtful,
capable, deadly, and stands for the idyllic America that is within
our cultural memory. Steve Rogers is a character who is less powerful
than most everyone around him and yet, through sheer determination,
grit, and training, is arguably the most dangerous of them all. He is
the leader of The Avengers, and is able to keep all of the
dysfunctional personalities in line through a combination of standing
up for what he believes is right and by serving as that team dad who
you know will never fail you. He has a gravitas that makes people
watch in awe as he shows up to save the world just one more time, and
he doesn't even require thanks.
Sadly, Chris Evans is no Captain
America.
To be fair, part of this is Joss
Whedon's fault. And we have to acknowledge that it is devilishly hard
to write a good Captain America story. The man is near faultless and
represents everything good in this world. To be frank, like Superman,
he is an impossible character because nobody like this exists or
has ever existed. Characters like Superman and Captain America
are the essence of what we aspire to be, it isn't what we are.
Consequently, to write a good Captain America story you have to give
him an existential problem with which we can empathize.
Some of the best Captain America
stories are written about how, though he now lives in the present
day, Steve Rogers is still a man from a different time. The
discrepancy between what he knows as right and normal and how the
world has changed is an interesting one. The Avengers tries to
put some focus on this issue but ultimately fails. Having everyone
make fun of him for being an old man unable to understand the present
day just doesn't do it. By the end of the movie, he takes charge, but
I didn't feel like he deserved it. It felt almost like Tony Stark was
only letting Rogers lead so as to humor him. It didn't help that, in
the final battle, what he does feels the least epic of anyone there.
Joss Whedon tries to give him that sort
of legendary feeling among the people that he saves, but it just
doesn't quite do it. Casting the old 'Human Torch' from the Fantastic
Four movies as Captain America also just wasn't quite good enough.
Chris Evans gave it his all, but it's arguable that an older man
would've given the role the proper weight. Instead, Chris Evans just
looked insignificant when compared to the personality of Robert
Downey Jr and the size of Chris Hemsworth. I think Joss Whedon knows
what it takes to write a good Captain America (the seeds are there,
but just weren't planted right), so we can just hope that the sequel
gives Captain America the time he needs to be taken more seriously as
a character.
.
Bruce Banner – The Hulk
The Hulk was an unexpected and
interesting deviation. To put it frankly, Edward Norton's Hulk is
closer to the comics than Mark Ruffalo's. In the comics, they tend to
focus majorly on the personality conflicts that come from having a
Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde thing going on. Edward Norton managed to capture
that brooding nature spot on, as well as the yearning for a normal
life that comes with it. That Hulk movie also captured perfectly the
blend of Banner's incredible intellect and the Hulk's savagery. It is
an interesting dichotomy and, given the nature of the comics and
Banner's huge issue in controlling his alter-ego, I half expected the
Hulk to turn out to be the real antagonist.
Despite all of this, though, Joss
Whedon seemed to want to go with a Hulk who was... funny. And I'm
still not sure what to think of that. Mark Ruffalo's Hulk seemed to
make constant light of his uncontrollable power and, even though
Black Widow freaked out all the time about it, nobody else seemed too
worried. Part of what threw me off was what must have been a plot
hole: why on earth was Hulk uncontrollable on the aircraft carrier
but suddenly subject to Banner's will in the final battle? It didn't
make any sense where that transition came from, and so just got me
confused.
All in all, though, the Hulk obviously
wasn't a main character and so the issues of depth aren't that
important in the scheme of things. He also got some of the best
scenes, what with arbitrarily beating the crap out of things to
slinging Loki around like a sack of potatoes. Puny man, indeed. I
suppose time will tell as to which depiction of the Hulk (Norton's or
Ruffalo's) is better. I can't decide.
.
Tony Stark – Iron Man
Really, I can't do much else but say
what everyone else has said. Robert Downey Jr. is the real life
incarnation of Tony Stark. He inhabits the character
completely and improves upon his comic book original, whose main
difference is that he's far more of a self-righteous, navel-gazing
prick. By contrast, Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark is self-aware,
impetuous, and just completely awesome in every way.
.
Conclusion
All in all, The Avengers was a
great movie with a plethora of characters that ran the gamut from meh
to average to exceptional. Though Thor and Captain America were
personally disappointing for me, everyone else fit the bill or even
exceeded expectations. And I didn't even mention Tom Hiddleston's
Loki, who absolutely rose to the challenge of being a terrifying,
powerful, and yet flawed villain.
I'm not sure how the sequel can meet up
to this one's standards, though, without getting incomprehensible.
For those not in the know, the scene at the end pretty much indicates
flat out that Thanos the Mad Titan will be next movie's villain.
There's nothing inherently wrong with that; the comics that I've read
with Thanos in them are pretty damn interesting and good. But the
problem is that, to face Thanos, the Avengers will have to leave
Earth. We've already had an extraterrestrial invasion in the form of
the Chitauri. For Thanos, things will go into a cosmic scale, and I
highly doubt that they'll be able to retain the average movie-goer's
attention as well on that level. And that isn't even going into how
much it'll cost to CGI everything.
In the end, though, I have hope that
The Avengers will continue to be awesome, especially if Joss
Whedon comes back for the sequel. It's definitely worth seeing,
particularly in theaters, and its success tells us that comic book
movies will still be made for a long time to come.
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