I reveled in the very Joss-iness of it. Finally, my favorite creative mind has broken through to the masses.

Moonie,

LSPE

Some of the characters were appealing. Loki was good. Mark Ruffalo is always appealing, Downey, Jr., too, blah blah blah. It was a good cast, but they had nothing to do. The requisite snark and work-poorly together hour, then the requisite learning-to-work-as-a-team half hour, followed by the requisite hour of Transformersesque battle of famous landmark destruction. Boring on every level.

I'm frankly amazed how unengaged I was throughout this film. There were some very funny quips, but that's about it. And after two movies already, I think I'm pretty much done with Tony Stark's snark schtick.

I know there's a freedom-from-origin-tory provided by the prior movies, but that doesn't mean a lack of any arc or vaguely complex characterization works just as well. Scarlette's Black Widow was perhaps the most interesting character on this score, and she had no previous movie (nor, like the Hulk, was she famous enough to know without the benefit of a previous movie - or, more accurately, two previous movies Marvel would like to disown.)

Granted, it's really tough to juggle a bunch of heroes and/or villains and come up with a gripping story that doesn't seem all over the map, haphazard and narratively sloppy. In fact, I can think of only one super-hero movie that managed that feat well (Tim Burton's Batman Returns). But The Avengers most certainly - imo - did not rise to this formidable challenge.

In fact, it is a complete and utter failure in my book. I don't care that four prior films have primed the audience pump and it's making more money than God. Popularity is not proof of quality. YMMV, but I thought The Avengers sucked. (oh, and for record, I enjoyed three of the four prequel movies, so it's not like I hate the genre or the Marvel films.)

I guess I'm flipped because I only really liked one of the previous five movies (though I didn't see The Incredible Hulk, so maybe it is brilliant) but loved this one.

I agree very much that it ends up in the conceptual place at the last last Transformers movie (except in New York instead of Chicago). But I think it handled it so much better that it really demonstrates that Michael Bay's flaw is not in what he was trying to do but in how he executed it.

But I'm not necessarily looking for character growth. As long as the movie doesn't try to go deep (as Nolan has with Batman to great effect) I'm more than happy to view movies like this as essentially entries in an old fashion super expensive serial.

That said, though not necessarily huge narratively in themselves I thought three of the four (excepting Thor, but he's a demigod, what is there to change) was taken through a significant moment in their development.

Bummer you didn't like it. Now we all wait for Promethius.

Is Prometheus meant to take place in the Alien universe?



(Lordy, I miss the days when movies were each their own universe, and I didn't have to keep track of which multiverse a particular story happens in).

My understanding is that it takes place in the Alien universe (though around a hundred years earlier than the first movie) so has universe building in common but that the events of the movie are unrelated to the events that would happen in the Alien movies.

Are you saying... HEY, WAIT A MINUTE

I'm wondering what was Whedonesque about The Avengers (or what elements had "Joss-iness"). My Whedon exposure has been limited to Firefly and Cabin in the Woods, so maybe I'm not familiar with his signature style. I couldn't discern any particular style in The Avengers.