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Captain America: The First Avenger is fine. It's not fantastic, it's not awful, it's fine.
Chris Evans is actually perfect for the role, from what I can tell (not having read the comics). I would love to see him pushed in more challenging roles than those he's done so far. And Hugo Weaving is
surprisingly restrained playing such a ridiculous character, which is
good I guess, because it would be easy to take it too far.
There seems to be an element missing to connect the montages and action sequences to the emotion of the story. So it's a bit disjointed to me. I actually prefer the origin part of the tale rather than once the action kicks in to gear, which is not the norm for this type of film.
Final Thought: Skinny, short Chris Evans? CGI is freaky.
Up Next: Casablanca (1942)
The thing about Batman for me (and many others) is that he's a superhero who isn't a superhero. No special powers, no radioactive catalysts, no botched experiments, no mutations. Just a vigilante guy. And that's where much of the fascination with him lies, in the idea that, given the means, anyone could be him.
And what makes Batman Begins work for me is that it recognises that. We're not in a cartoon world, we're in a gritty, everyday but heightened reality that is almost believable. The punches have weight behind them and the falls hurt.
There's so many movies adapted from comic books now. I can understand why, there's so many stories all laid out already, a catalogue of complex characters and a fanbase at the ready. That raises the expectation though, so it's amazing that the number of good quality comic-based films is relatively high.
Final Thought: Gary Oldman should be in every movie, please.
Up Next: Be Kind Rewind (2008)
Not to be too much of a fangirl about it, but Joss Whedon's work is pretty great. I remember watching the original Buffy movie any time I had a sleepover with my friends as a teenager. Then when I heard that there was going to be a TV show, years later, I counted down the minutes until the first episode. I faithfully watched and recorded every show (I still have the collection of VHS) and, as it was moved to later and later timeslots, I enlisted my father to carry on the taping for me (though once I got a TV of my own, I'd sneakily watch it anyway in the middle of the night).
This loyalty carried on to Angel when it started. Then Firefly came, and I was skeptical, plus it screened at 1am on a school night in Australia, so I only got around to seeing that on DVD before going to see Serenity, and I wished I'd seen it sooner. Dollhouse took a few episodes to convince me, but convince me it did. And don't get me started on The Cabin In The Woods... I'll talk about that when I get to it in this project (which I am planning to time precisely to coincide with the DVD release so I can include it).
Anyone who is a fan of Joss Whedon has absolute trust in any project he takes on, occasionally blindly so. But in our defense, we're yet to be given a reason why we shouldn't.
Thankfully, The Avengers continued his trend of quality products.
It's oh so fun.
There was a lot of pressure, poor guy, because they've been setting up for this film for a long time, what with all the individual hero movies to introduce us to the characters.
I don't really feel qualified enough to comment much on the characters themselves, not having read the comic books. But I will say two things:
The last two incarnations of the Hulk have been so tortured - it's really nice to see the character romp around and have (violent) fun. I'm not an authority on the Hulk, but for me think that's why it works.
And, as an Aussie, I love how good Chris Hemsworth is as Thor.
Final Thought: Stan Lee's cameos just get better and better.
Up Next: Babe (1995)
