Less a Review and More of a Nitpicking of THE AVENGERS

So, The Avengers. I kept hearing this global phenomenon was not just eye candy and fanboy dreamboat fodder—I kept hearing this was a “good film.”

Disclaimer: I smiled a lot, stopping just short of clapping like a little kid. The movie was a good time, an event. I’ll probably watch it again. But a good film?

If good means having a comprehensible plot and a strong villain, this wasn’t a good film. The first act was long and disjointed, introducing the characters that I would bet a majority of the audience already knew, and were tapping their toes waiting for the “good stuff.”

The second act was more about the superheroes “infighting” than actual development of the looming threat of Loki, who got himself imprisoned, a la, Heath Ledger’s Joker, only with an inferior plan and far less charisma and menace. He just sort of hangs out in a glass lockbox until needed, just like the fire axe at your place of employment.

And that glass—the glass that Thor can crack when he’s really mad and wanting to get at Loki, but he doesn’t outright break out of it. Not until he’s a few inches from the ground and he really needs to break out of it to—what?—he’s still falling the same speed and the fall won’t harm him anyway because he’s fucking Thor for God’s sakes, he falls from places, it’s sort of what he does.

This is a slippery slope, applying logic to a film like this. I can hear the chorus swelling—it’s supposed to be fun, you’re overthinking it. Yeah but you know what? Thor looks stupid in that sequence. In a good movie, the villains are brilliant but the heroes eventually outsmart them. This movie? Not really.

Don't worry, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, either.

The problem truly lies with Loki, who has recruited a scary-looking alien force to capture Earth for him. The problem is, he’s completely under-utilizing his own skills. He can turn people into his mindless slaves with the touch of his scepter and he can also create holographic images of himself and/or teleport, we never really get the full grasp of that since it’s hardly deployed usefully or consistently. You would think that holographic images and/or teleportation would come in handy before daring the Incredible Hulk to smash your ass, but I suppose he forgets about this handy power that he uses exactly twice.

Did I mention he can also turn people to his side with the touch of the scepter? He has Nick Fury dead to rights in the first ten minutes. He turns two important characters to his side but never really pulls that trick again and completely wastes an opportunity to kill and/or “turn” Nick Fury, which would really f things up royally for the good guys. Probably the screenwriters as well, which is why it doesn’t happen.

The “heavy” stuff is hinted at, such as WMD’s and the use of torture on prisoners. Yet it is quickly dismissed. I found myself drawn to Captain America the most—fish out of water, by far the most vulnerable of the superheroes with a perfect opportunity to have his duty and loyalty played against his honorable sensibilities with torture and whatnot.

The third act paid off nicely for pure visual spectacle and that melted honey feeling of the heroes finally working together (even if the alien army was about the worst fighting force you could ever recruit) The Incredible Hulk stole the show, both for character arc moments and comic relief. Tony Stark was refreshingly back to being funny and cheeky instead of smug and unlikeable (I’m looking at you, Iron Man 2). There was a lot to like and with the hodgepodge of characters, this may be the most one can ask for from the first Avengers film.

But a “good” film? Not with that first act, not while its essentially plotless. Not when these films depend largely on the cunning of their villains and Loki lacks both the intelligence and physical disposition to truly put our heroes in jeopardy. Combine this with the many gripes of logic the comic canon may fill in while leaving the casual viewer wondering, “huh?”

A small list of those types of gripes (in addition to the Thor glass gripe listed earlier):

1 - The poorly guarded, laughably defenseless mothership explodes and the obviously flesh and blood creatures either have a “let’s make it convenient for the heroes” brain switch located in the mothership or simply cannot take the sight of so many pecs flexing on screen causing them to faint.

2 - Loki watches Thor and Ironman and Captain America have a “he started it” fighting moment but doesn’t take the opportunity to escape and is magically in captivity in the next scene—but wait, Fred, he wants to be imprisoned! Yes, so he can instigate the Incredible Hulk, which at the top of the “this plan sucks” list that he cannot reasonably think he can pull off.

3 - The MacGuffin—I’m sorry, the Tess-er-act—is stolen, taken to Germany for a little under the hood work, then brought right back to Stark Tower to open the portal over New York. So, umm, why the fuck did they bring it to Germany?

4 - The Avengers flying battleship thingy has a cool invisibility cloak—that is probably the worst cloak in the history of science fiction films, as it is instantly found by enemy forces and we see the ship during the entire movie. I guess after it got turned on, someone just turned it off to save energy as part of a “go green” initiative? Not that someone wanting to find the ship couldn’t hear the thing from a billion miles away.

Gripes aside, I love superhero movies and this had a lot going on. The sheer scope of the final battle, the dynamics of the hero personality clashes, the creative use of their powers and collaborations, and the emergence of Ruffalo/Hulk were all highlights for me. This one felt a lot like a traction-gaining exercise, depending on the allure of the heroes on screen together instead of “wasting” a more menacing villain on the first, guaranteed blockbuster. I see from the cookie that the second one could feature the villain I’m craving, and maybe in Avengers 2 we’ll see the superhero sweet spot that was struck by superior sequels such as Spider Man 2 and The Dark Knight.

One can only hope. Oh, and spoiler alert.

Heroes Save Cats

At the beginning of the film "Our Idiot Brother," we meet Ned at an organic fruit stand. A father is buying veggies there, his daughter in tow. Dad pays for the veggies even though Ned looks like he'd just as soon give them away for free. The daughter grabs a strawberry and eats it. Dad scolds her a little bit, saying they didn't pay for the strawberry. Dad walks away, the girl follows, but Ned calls her back to the vegetable stand and gives her an entire bowl of strawberries for free, a smile across both their faces.

I started paying attention to "Save the Cat" scenes after I read a great craft book of the same name. The book's by Blake Snyder and I recommend it for aspiring screenwriters, movie lovers, or anyone who wants to put a few more tools in the storytelling toolbox.

The crux of the "Save the Cat" scene is basically, have your hero do something great to immediately get the audience on board with them. A good save the cat scene creates an immediate connection with the hero. And in my execution of it, I've found it doesn't necessarily mean the hero has to be a likable person, but a good STC scene builds up some capital--the audience will hang with the hero through a few rough patches if they're on board with a good STC scene.

Think Pulp Fiction, where these guys don't necessarily save any cats, but rather, engage in a funny and unique conversation about hamburgers and France and whatnot. Aren't you sort of on board with these guys before they start blowing people away? Don't they seem fun to hang out with before they pull those guns out of the trunk?

Action movies typically start by putting the hero in an action-packed save the cat scene, where we not only get a dose of the action we bought our ticket for, but it establishes the heroes skills and morals. I think of Bruce Willis in Die Hard with a Vengeance, popping aspirins after a hangover, talking lotto numbers and smalltalk with the cops in the back of the truck with him, even though he's about to put himself in a life-threatening situation.

It works in books as well. In my novel The Samaritan, I didn't set out to create an STC scene, but I recognized where to start the book by asking one simple question--at what point would a reader instantly connect with my narrator? It was the chapter where he lets the cool girls in the grade school put him through a mean prank because it meant he had their attention.

No matter what the story medium, getting your audience to "go along for the ride" with your protagonist is truly an area where actions speak louder than words. And since most films contain a scene like this, usually in the first ten minutes, you can impress the hell out of your friends by keeping an eye out for it.

Inception Ending Explained. Yes, This Will Ruin the Ending if You Have Not Seen It

Let's skip the introductions here.  Do I really need to say spoiler alert?  You've seen the movie.  You know the ending.  You are curious to discuss. 

So the big, lasting piece of the discussion is the last shot and what the cutaway from the totem means.  Was it all a dream?  Or has Cobb returned to reality?  I have seen 6 separate explanations of the film.

1. All of Inception is Cobb's dream.
2. Everything after Cobb's sedation test is a dream.
3. Saito pulls a "Mr. Charles" on Cobb.
4. Adrienne is a therapist and is the architect to cure Cobb.
5. We see reality during the film, but the end is Cobb stuck in limbo or a dream.

6. We see reality near the beginning of the film, and Cobb is in reality at the end of the film (the happy ending).

Yet with a film that has 5 distinct dream layers, there is a deeper level that no one is considering.  So I shall consider it. 

Cobb's children are older, as we see in the casting of the children.  The kids are cast in two different sets, two years apart.  So the children Cobb encounters at the end have aged.  Would they not have stayed the same if it was memory or dream? Cobb has won and entered back into his reality.  The happy ending is his.

Yet Cobb's reality is Christopher Nolan's dream.  It is a reality within a dream, and we, as viewers, are experiencing that reality through the sharing of Chris Nolan's dream. 

We cannot see the final totem fall.  It spins perfectly in the dream state infinitely and never even wobbles.  In this case, it wobbles, and we are abruptly "awoken" not before it falls, but as it falls. 

The cut signifies not that Cobb has indeed returned to reality, but that Cobb and we as viewers have both returned to reality.

Cobb is the protagonist.  We experience the film through him, so we share his totem.  Once it is established how the totem works, we have begun to share it since we know its secret.  Notice that Nolan does not let it fall when he is splashing his face--it doesn't seem to make sense in the context in the film, other than to confound, but instead, I think it is meant to preserve Cobb's reality and our dream state as viewers.

So at the end, the totem spins.  If it falls, we are in reality (the real world), and it proves that Cobb is in his reality.  So it wobbles and as it falls, we are thrust back into a darkened theater and do not get to witness Cobb going back to the table and seeing it on its side. 

I do not believe for one second there is an "open ending" to the movie.  Nolan doesn't appear to work that way with his other mind-benders.  So I would like to think that as complex as the film seems,there is a definitive answer to this "maze," but as we learned in the film, only the architect (Nolan) knows that path through the maze so that projections or dream-sharers (us) cannot navigate it easily.  The film is the maze of his dream. 

Either way, Nolan has done quite a trick--performed "inception" on us, planting an idea that grows like a virus . . . the ending was his idea, but has created an outpouring of theories (including this one) that makes us think the ending was our idea.  Neat.  I believe it when I hear it took him 10 years to finish writing this movie.  It seems that damn complex to me. 

Any other good ideas out there?  Let's shoot some holes in my meandering theory until I can see the film another time or two.  Fire away in comments.