The Avengers

The movie is great, amazing even. It is exactly what it was built up to be, and possibly even more. It is full to the brim with Whedonesque humor and amazing fight scenes, as well as good character development for those who didn't get their own movies, though doing less for those who did. The humor I think was quite possibly the best done part, with laughs at all the right moments, and none during the tense moments.

Loki works well as a villain in this movie only because he is clearly not the biggest threat, he is captured early on and shows that he is merely the one who opens the gate, the aliens are the true villains. This works especially well because we have seen him beaten before, whereas this new threat is untested, and when fighting earth's mightiest heroes they better be good.

As for the heroes themselves they were amazing, with the sheer power of Hulk and Thor shown extremely well in their fight scene, throwing around power that would cripple any lesser being. The Hulk I think is actually one of the best characters in the movie, because everyone is waiting for him to come out, but Banner still puts on a good performance and gives a good reason for not wanting him to. Iron Man is shown to be one of the most versatile if not most powerful members, dueling with Thor on almost equal footing, if only because ranged spam defeats melee. We got Captain America showing the power of a vibranium shield, and Hawkeye showing that an arrow can do a lot more than expected. The only one who kind of disappointed was Black Widow, but since she was out of her element it was fairly expected, and she still performed admirably.

Let me just say that Hawkeye actually works really well. Before I felt he would be clearly outclassed and be reduced to basic ranged support, but as a villain in the first half and competent spotter and precision damage worked really well, with explosive and EMP arrows allowing him to deal with robots. He also got a fair amount of characterization through Black Widow despite his little screen time. I mean previously he had what, like 1 minute in the Incredible Hulk? Samuel L. Jackson did everything that was expected of him, pulling off the all-knowing leader well, and delivering the cool confidence necessary for the role, I now know exactly why they chose him as the inspiration for Ultimate Nick.

The plot was solid, and the 2 and a half hours just don't seem quite enough to contain everything that was shown in the film. I don't know what to say, other than I'm not really familiar with the aliens they used, but I only really know the Skrull empire, so I don't know my Marvel aliens that well. They worked well as mooks, though it would have been nice if they had some big bruiser elites for the Hulk and the like to fight on sort of even terms. Also the Hulk is now officially invincible, in that a headshot while Banner did not kill him. Maybe he can be killed in Hulk form, but I seriously doubt it. So he will definitely be a foe of the Avengers at some point in the future, possibly at the end of 2.

I've got more to say but it'll be better organized in the morning. The long and short of it was the movie was amazing, and I have more faith in Joss Whedon than I did before, at least his scriptwriting prowess, and this is coming from someone that has loved everything he has previously done, excluding some seasons of Buffy and Angel. I don't like assigning numbers to reviews, but this is the closest to a perfect Avengers movie we'll ever seem, and it was beautiful.

X-men: Just About First Class

X-men: First Class recently came out, and is the fifth film in the franchise, and the third good one. Interestingly enough they decided to not go for the entire remake thing, but made something which almost fits in to the series, if you ignore a few parts of some of the films, like the prologue to X3 or the non blue Hank McCoy in X1. Accepting that this may upset some fans, and I have heard quite a few complaints about it, it's still a really good movie. Maybe not revolutionary, or the best quality film making, but as good as one can expect from a superhero movie.

The actors chosen fit their parts extremely well, with Kevin Bacon making for an excellent villain, who is assuredly not a Nazi, despite many claims to the contrary. Magneto's slow decent from hero to villain is done excellently, with the fact that there is no real 'turning to the dark side' moment, as opposed to some other trilogy I know of. And that is what they're trying to do with this film, set up for a new trilogy, which if I know my superhero movies, will have a good second film and then all go to crap.

The characters are portrayed well, if differently from their comic book interpretations, another thing which tends to piss off fans, but you can tell by the way they're making this film that they were trying to appeal to a wider audience, not just the small group of diehards. The soundtrack was good, and fit the film well, and the background to the film, the Cuban missile crisis, was extremely well done, and gave some scope to what would otherwise just have been a personal story.

That's not to say the film was perfect, some of the cinematography was below par, shots lingering far too long, and some jokes which kind of fell flat. The passage of time was also really not shown, and what should have been months appeared to be a couple of days, maybe a week. Also the mutants they chose, were in general kind of terrible, I mean Banshee? Darwin? Riptide, the guy who creates tornadoes whose name is never mentioned in the film. These guys are no namers, the only really entertaining mutant, Emma Frost, gets shoved away in a holding cell for about half the film.

But overall it was a good film, and a good revitalization of the series, much need after the near travesty of Origins: Wolverine and 3. The action scenes were one of the highlights, and Magneto's scene in Argentina at the bar was one of the best curb stomp battles I have seen in a while. So go see it if you haven't, and if you don't like it, well as Wolverine says "fuck off".