The Avengers Film Series- Ranked and Reviewed- Part One

As part of my ongoing (and inexplicable) efforts to isolate and bewilder the fine honey community, I'm going to rank The Avengers series and then review them. Normally, you would think that this would include 3 or 4 films. But The Avengers was a bold move trying to bring cross-film continuity into cinema. By that, I mean in order to understand plot elements in Captain America, you had to have seen Thor. It was a huge gamble because if any one of the five films that set up The Avengers was a dud or if the film proper was awful, the whole exercise would have been futile and would have been a spectacular way to burn a billion dollars. I'm not actually being poetic there. I looked up the budgets for the six films and it ended up equaling precisely 1 billion dollars ($140 mil for Iron Man, $150 mil for Incredible Hulk, $200 mil for Iron Man 2, $150 mil for Thor, $140 mil for Captain America, and $220 mil for The Avengers). Obviously, this gambit wound up being a wild success as The Avengers alone grossed $1.51 billion worldwide which means that, ultimately, the other films could have been released for free and they still would have made a 51% return on investment. But I digress, this blog isn't going to talk about the economic qualities of the Avengers Initiative, but rather the cinematic qualities of each film.

As you know, I tend to be a bit long-winded when I blog. So I'm going to try and keep this installment under 2,000 words. In the first part, I'm going to rank the films from 6 to 1 (with 6 being the blandest and 1 being the best). In the second part, I'll provide my viewing recommendations so you can experience the Avengers with minimal time requirement.

"Should we do something?"
"No, just stand here and look cool for the commercials!"

6. The Incredible Hulk

The Incredible Hulk was Marvel's follow-up to the universal success of Iron Man. Full disclosure: I never actually saw much of The Incredible Hulk. I can honestly say I've only seen the last 20 minutes on FX on night when I was bored. The story is well-known by the society's collective consciousness (due in part to it being Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde if Mr. Hyde took steroids) and the film just never looked that intriguing. Unfortunately for the Hulk, most of America, Marvel's casting studio, and even Marvel's movie gurus agreed with me. Not only was Hulk the least financially successful of the Avengers prequels, it was also the least significant to the overarching story. All that happens is that Bruce Banner becomes the Hulk because they're trying to recreate the Captain America Super Soldier Serum. And somehow Bruce Banner transforms from Edward Norton to Mark Ruffalo between films. If they can successfully change actors between films and no one will comment on it, you know you have a dull story. The last piece of evidence to support this being entirely forgettable is the Hulk sequel has been put on hold until after the Avengers sequel. So everyone else will get a second (or third) solo outing before they'll even consider making a follow-up to The Incredible Hulk. Yawn.



5. Captain America: The First Avenger

This costume is actually more historically accurate than most of the film!

This will undoubtedly be the most controversial part of this article because there is a lot of love for Cap out there. The thing is I absolutely love the first half of this movie. It does a great job of establishing Steve Rogers's personality. It also uses its setting very effectively. Probably the best scene is when Steve and the other GIs are running a half marathon and they're told that whoever retrieves a flag from the top of the pole will get to ride back to the camp in the jeep. The stronger GIs try climbing and fail, but Steve Rogers just removes the supports and picks the flag up when it falls to the ground. The problems with the film begin, paradoxically, once Captain America actually gets down to super-heroics.

Captain America goes to rescue an elite infantry battalion from Hugo Weaving's doom fortress, which should be exciting. Except once the actual rescuing goes down, the film starts to get really weird really fast. For starters, it gets a very bad case of revisionist history. Before I go on, let me acknowledge that I love the film 300 and I also understand that every period film necessitates some degree of revisionist history or else it would be a documentary. Some revisionism can be funny (such as how Forrest Gump being integral to tons of American history) or establish a theme for the movie (like the over-the-top machismo of the Spartans in 300). The problem Captain America faces is it stretches the revisionism too far in too many places and is far, far too politically correct for its own good. It starts with little things like the scientist who makes the Super Soldier Serum being a Jewish refugee rather than a natural-born American. But that's fine because a lot of intelligent Jewish people emigrated to America during the 30s and was one of the primary reasons American universities overtook German universities in terms of global prestige. But then it starts getting into more serious offenses such as official US Military propaganda showing black and white soldiers marching side by side with Captain America, even though the official integration of military regiments happened after World War II. Essentially, Captain America denies that segregation ever took place and I'm not sure why. If anything, it would have made Captain America's multi-ethnic team of rainbow diversity a moment of important character development rather than just stupid political correctness. But the film insists on imposing modern values on the 1940s to the point where they have a petite British woman punch out an American soldier (because grrrrrrrrl power > physics).

But the worst offender is this strange aversion to showing the American flag or German iconography such as the Swastika, Reich Eagles or even the Iron Cross. It's very unusual for a film set in World War II to be so bloody afraid of the setting. You maybe see one part of one swastika and maybe one American flag. This culminates in HYDRA, Hugo Weaving's gang of bad guys, deciding to secede from Germany and go rogue because apparently the Germans didn't want super weapons. This leads to Captain America battling a wierdly modern arsenal. By wierdly modern, I don't mean like stealth bombers or Abrams tanks. I mean monster trucks with laser cannons attached to them. And all the HYDRA troopers shoot laser guns. Because Hugo Weaving found the Rubik's Cube of Destiny that Odin left behind because Norse is the One True Faith after all. Which sounds better than saying "Screw you for not seeing Thor".

Because a high center of gravity and huge tires are exactly what you want from your tank!

It feels like a World War II movie written by a person who doesn't actually know anything about World War II. At the end of the film, Captain America leads a daring raid on Hugo Weaving's compound in Switzerland (because screw neutrality!) and leading the troops on this raid was the aging colonel played by Tommy Lee Jones AND the sassy British brunette love interest, Peggy. Why exactly are a high ranking officer and his adjutant leading a dangerous assault on a heavily fortified position? Is this like the Battle of Hastings in 1066, where King William was expected to lead his troops in a charge on enemy lines? But I've been sidetracked by the stupid historical inaccuracies and haven't talked about the stupid characterizations.

What tears me up inside is I actually really like the main characters. I think Peggy is a great female lead and Tommy Lee Jones makes an excellent gruff father figure and it was an awesome bonus to see Tony Stark's dad, Howard Stark, play the role of 1940's billionaire playboy (like father, like son!). The problem is most of the second act of the movie doesn't focus on these interesting characters and the dynamic between them. Instead, it focuses on Captain America's multi-national squad of politically correct do-gooders featuring: one British guy, a black guy, a Japanese-American (who were definitely not put in internment camps), Steve Rogers' best friend Buck, and some guy who got an Army Issued Bowler Hat that had his corporal stripes on it. I seriously don't know what stereotype he's supposed to be, but he looks more at home in the Civil War than in World War II.

Because who needs helmets! Gear in World War II was super DIY, right?
Also, any ideas what he's supposed to be?

The weird part about this group is that he finds them all in the same prison block (because SYMBOLISM!) even though, logically, they would be in their own regiments and they only ever mention one regiment being imprisoned and OH GOD I AM GOING ON ABOUT HISTORICAL ACCURACY. Anyways, Captain frees them and then they march back to Tommy Lee Jones's base camp just in time for Tommy Lee Jones to say that recon has shown no signs of Captain America. I guess recon forgot to look on the main roads into camp for people marching directly at them, because Captain America's prisoners pretty much get to the camp before anyone does anything. I guess all Hugo Weaving had to do to succeed was attack because Tommy Lee Jones wouldn't see it coming. From here, it goes into a montage of Captain America doing cliche heroic things with zero tension as everyone of his squad of political correctness survive every fight without so much as a scratch or a bit of character development. I almost wish I had Captain America on DVD because then I could see how many deleted scenes there were. It feels like they cut out at least a half hour's worth of content from this part of the film alone.

The movie also ends with some extremely tired gimmicks. After Captain America makes a heroic sacrifice to foil Hugo Weaving's plans, his squad of predominantly Americans gather for one last drink... in London. With people waving Union Jacks everywhere. Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill, but wouldn't it have made a ton more sense for this scene to be in New York? Since Captain America wakes up in the present day New York and stuff. And it would have been a cool contrast to see 1945 New York in one scene and 2011 New York in the next and it would've given us the same feeling of shock Steve Rogers goes through himself. And, ya know, post-war New York was the scene of one of the most iconic pictures in human history. But I guess that would involve showing a lot of American flags and patriotism and who wants that from a film called Captain America. It was probably smart to stick with the British flags, when I put it that way.

The film has a great ending with Steve Rogers waking up to see a changed world and Samuel L. Jackson, who improves the ending of any film by 25%. But, unfortunately, they had to include one last stupid decision in the plot. For some reason, SHIELD tries to trick Captain America into thinking very little time has passed while he was frozen. To do this, they have people dress up in period outfits and dress up a room like an old-timey hospital and even include a period baseball radio broadcast. But Steve sees through it when he reveals that he was AT the game on the radio broadcast!

You mean to tell me they put all this time and effort into creating this charade and they forgot to look up when Captain America served?! Or even when he was frozen?! You could have picked any baseball game from the end of World War II through 1950, five years worth of baseball, and been perfectly fine. Plus, what was the end game here? Ease him through the past 70 years? How would that work?

I would love to go on, but I've shattered my 2,000 word rule. So I'll go over the next films in part two!