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If it's all the same to you, I think I'll have that drink

handful_ofdust especially asked for this post, but then I kind of wrote it to her in e-mail. The rest of you get to benefit? I am on a train to D.C., staring intermittently out the windows at the salt marshes of Connecticut and curling stacks of shell-white cloud; this is a post about The Avengers (2012).

I will admit freely that my primary stake going into this film was its handling of Loki. My favorite of the recent Marvel cycle remains Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), which I have still never written up (I am looking at the notes on my desktop right now), but Thor (2011) turned out to be a surprisingly close second, mostly for Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston who make far more convincing gods than anyone acting in this decade has a right to. Plus the latter is a figure that has fascinated me since childhood, that I care about almost more than any other commonly represented divinity; so I am glad to report that while I do prefer a more double-sided Loki for the same reasons that the trickster of Sleipnir's birth and Sif's hair interests me more than the Lucifer of Baldr's death and Ragnarök, Hiddleston still has a hold on the character in ways that keep me watching. That thin-skinned quality which so struck me in Thor is still present here, after his fall through Ginnungagap and whatever Lovecraftian outer regions the Chitauri in their cold, dark chain of moons inhabit (it looks at first like the icy spires of Jötunheim, but we are far beyond the Nine Worlds), even accelerated—those deep, shuddering breaths as he raises his head with the Tesseract's plasma-blue glow still smoking off him, a high-wire tension even in scenes like the benefit he crashes in Stuttgart, where he grandmasters the reminder of unspeakable things with a striding, stylish flair. Everything is always on the line, riding the collapsing waveform; at any second it could shatter.¹ I loved that I could not tell how much he believes of those grand dystopian speeches about free will and subjugation, how much he is playing (for his audience, for himself) the role of interstellar megalomaniac. He is polymorphous perversity in action: while he's in the role, it's real.

And I am very glad that we are not asked to accept Loki as sympathetic for any more reasons than his own complicated self, which I realize sounds like faint praise or equivocation, but he's going to burn because that is the nature of fire and he's going to unleash forces he can't control because chaos is the state of the world and if he really believes that dominion over Earth will return him some of the pride-of-place that was lost to him with the kingship of Asgard, he must also know that it is not the same to rule over humans (ants quarreling with boots) as it is to see his family kneel and acknowledge him. In his last scene, I couldn't help noticing that even with archaic chains on his wrists and that clever mouth of his gagged silent,² he's going home. (Was that the plan? He can't consent to come back himself; that would be admitting he wanted to. To be taken as a prisoner, though: then he can say he had no choice.) And like any trickster worth the name, he can be subject to the same sudden whims of the universe: the Hulk walloping him around like a ragdoll is both very funny and very fitting, especially the peculiar good humor with which Loki seems to accept his defeat after the initial what the fuck just happened ceiling-stare. There is perhaps no more classically English-wry line for a graceful loser than the title of this post and he delivers it beautifully, as if all the deaths and destruction, the waste of downtown Manhattan were no more than a game, a gamble that didn't pay off. That disarming honesty that is only as deep as he'll let you see. It's his expression as he watches Tony Stark and Captain America take on his brother in the woods of Germany, bashing the hell out of each other back and forth through the Black Forest. Lord, what fools these mortals be! He'd be eating popcorn if he had some. You'd ask him to pass it.

(It is not merely the appreciation an audience feels for a character it's impossible to admire; there is something genuinely attractive about him, even if he knows and uses it. And I love that it's not that Thor is so stupid that his brother can keep pulling one over on him, but that he is stubbornly loving enough to keep offering Loki the benefit of the doubt, knowing as he must each time that his predictably unpredictable sibling probably will shiv him, but he asks him to come home anyway.)

I didn't realize that my primary stake going out of the film would be Bruce Banner. As much as I thought I would miss Edward Norton and his twitchy energy, there is something about Mark Ruffalo's diffidence that works for me on a very basic level. Watch him aboard S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Helicarrier:³ he is a man trying not to be noticed. Everyone else is feeling out their territory, dick-measuringly in the case of Tony, more cautiously and formally when it's Steve, a roomful of circling cats; Banner is literally off in a corner by himself, because the less he interacts with anyone, the less he runs the risk of waking up that other part of himself that he refuses to name, that is really (in a justifiably iconic line) not so different from the rest of him after all. He's not graceful, when he's Banner. I had trouble telling how tall the actor was, because he rounds his shoulders in so unassumingly; he's mumblecore soft-spoken, with a nervous chafe to his hands when he doesn't have anything to do with them, and he wears his glasses like he needs them, not because they make him look like a scientist. (The solid purple shirt is a nice touch.) But I love that while he has a haggard look—rumpled, greying-early—he has sometimes a wry one as well; he exhibits a profound and frankly reasonable skepticism that Dr. Banner has been asked to the party for his skills with a spectrometer, not just because he ports "the other guy" around. He's not accustomed to being wanted for the talent he actually values, which is why moments like Tony's real, if snarkily expressed enthusiasm at finding someone else in this benighted operation who can converse at his tech level ("Finally, someone who speaks English!"—"Is that what just happened?") are so rewarding, because there really aren't that many people Bruce clicks with. And there is shame and self-loathing, as when he wakes up in Harry Dean Stanton's rubble like someone coming off the world's most block-leveling bender—see also how badly he reacts to Tony's suggestion that becoming the Hulk originally saved his life—and there is also a wonderful reckless joy, as when he wades into the fight in New York at last. He is never quite safe, which is as it should be. My mother's favorite moment was his floor-mopping of Loki, but I think he may be best characterized by the moment he punches Thor off the screen without even a warning blink, just because the thunder-god was there. I found myself thinking this was very much the sort of depth I'd wanted to see from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)'s Jekyll/Hyde, where the script wasn't quite up to it.

(I also didn't realize I would leave the theater wanting an entire film about Natasha Romanoff, but there you go. Her introduction is one of the nicest bits of misdirection in the film and I appreciated that having established her as a character whose deceptive fragility is a mirror of Loki's, the correct Chekhov's gun went off in the second act and she played it on him.)

The film overall is more of an action movie than I would have liked, despite the fact that I could write at least a paragraph for every character and in some cases go on for more; it is very well-done action in that I never felt I was seeing the same set-pieces played over and over again, but I wouldn't have minded more conversations and fewer chases, especially since The Avengers is easily my favorite script by Joss Whedon, possibly because his reflex for self-referentially clever dialogue does not here overwrite/undercut any of the emotional currents of the story. Tony Stark is a chronic wiseass, but Steve Rogers isn't. I still think it would have been more fun if Jane Foster had been the ensorcelled astrophysicist instead of Erik Selvig, but maybe Portman had other commitments that summer or her inclusion would have weighted the story too much toward a romance. (I did appreciate that Natasha never falls in love with any of her teammates, even if Bruce and Tony look like the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Sometimes, you know, people don't.) It is a point in Coulson's favor that he knew he was being fridged, but I was more than half expecting to find that Fury had exaggerated reports of his death in the same way he faked the blood on the trading cards. I don't know if it really was worth waiting through the infinite number of fx credits for, but the shawarma scene is cute. (Mostly because it's clear that everyone is just too tired to eat, but dammit, they said they were going to meet up.) I was not expecting the Chitauri invasion force—like bony Devonian fishes, diving with the terrible grace of titans through the canyons of Manhattan—to look almost exactly like scenes I dreamed about five and three years ago, including the one that crashes dying on the apartment roof.

I don't know what the next film is supposed to be, but I suspect I'll go see it.

1. Please send help: I just pictured Tom Hiddleston as chaos theorist Loki in a lab coat. There goes my higher brain function for the afternoon.

2. By which visual reference I realized there were ways in which the entire film functions as a retelling of Loki's bet with the dwarves Brokkr and Eitri: out of which good things come (like a team of superheroes who are a lot less fucked up when working together than they are as individual operators), but the need for the bargain in the first place was still a deeply sketchy act on Loki's part; and he loses, betting his head against theirs. His mouth is sewn shut to remind him.

3. It is not the scriptwriters' fault that I am constitutionally incapable of not thinking of it as a Motherfucking Aircraft Carrier.

And now we are in Philadelphia, because the internet on trains is not always the most compliant. But it's a post. Now I can go back to reading.

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And I love that it's not that Thor is so stupid that his brother can keep pulling one over on him, but that he is stubbornly loving enough to keep offering Loki the benefit of the doubt, knowing as he must each time that his predictably unpredictable sibling probably will shiv him, but he asks him to come home anyway

This, so very very much. I haven't seen Thor yet, but an array of Tumblr gifs conspired to make me love Hiddleston and his Loki and I want to watch the film just for him and Thor.

I haven't seen Thor yet, but an array of Tumblr gifs conspired to make me love Hiddleston and his Loki

He's a beautiful Loki. And the actor was a Cambridge double first in Classics, so I can feel slightly proprietary toward him.

and I want to watch the film just for him and Thor.

I linked my review of it; I liked it so much more than I was expecting to. I don't say that just because it didn't cause me to bleed from the ears.

I liked it so much more than I was expecting to.

This is exactly what happened with me and Captain America! I gritted my teeth throughout most of Iron Man (as I knew I would, which is why I didn't watch it until last November at the coaxing of my Glaswegian who agreed to my stipulation that he listen to me vent my spleen about the inevitable racism), and then Captain America was available on the flight home, and I thought what the hey, I am expecting absolutely nothing from this film and don't want to pay to see it, why not, and I really, really liked it. And teared up when Rogers threw himself on the grenade. I just. I love him so much.

I will read your review of Thor once I've seen it, which I hope will be soon!

He's a beautiful Loki. And the actor was a Cambridge double first in Classics

OK. Now I want him and Tim Blake Nelson to do something together. No idea what, just... something.

It looks even better all laid out, though.;)

It looks even better all laid out, though.

Hah. Thank you. I should really just post my Captain America notes. Or at least stitch them together into something that resembles a review.

I'm getting the distinct feeling that the discussions of this movie are better than the film itself.

I'm getting the distinct feeling that the discussions of this movie are better than the film itself.

I found the film a worthwhile employment of two-and-change hours; I agree there are movies where it is most valuable to have seen them so as to be able to participate in the conversation and any enjoyment derived is secondary, but I don't think The Avengers is one of them. I'd watch it again with someone who hadn't seen it. I'm just not sure I'd file it under films I like well enough to own, whereas if I ever see Captain America in a bin of affordable DVDs, I am grabbing that thing like it's already gone out of style.

This^3.

The more I think about it, the more I hope that Thor 2's plot will hinge on Loki's having *planned* to get caught and dragged home.

The more I think about it, the more I hope that Thor 2's plot will hinge on Loki's having *planned* to get caught and dragged home.

Yes; I would watch that.

Too many things here to say yes to each and every one, so here are a few:

YES YES YES YES,and another separate YES on the topic of Bruce Banner.

Was that the plan? He can't consent to come back himself; that would be admitting he wanted to. To be taken as a prisoner, though: then he can say he had no choice

It would be wonderful if the next Avengers film showed us Loki and co at Asgard, with a plot loosely or not so loosely based on Lokasenna.

with a plot loosely or not so loosely based on Lokasenna.

I'd go for that. All I could think about when Loki calls Black Widow a "mewling quim" was...well, first, that it was a feeble insult and he was kinda dense to think it would really upset someone like Natasha, and second, that his insult skills had really gone downhill since the Flyting of Loki.

All I could think about when Loki calls Black Widow a "mewling quim" was...well, first, that it was a feeble insult

Exactly... my favorite is still the one he delivered to Freyja, "...síz þik at bræðr þínum / stóðu blíð regin, ok myndir þú þá, Freyja, frata" - incest AND farting, oh my! Mewling quims stand no chance...

and second, that his insult skills had really gone downhill since the Flyting of Loki.

Maybe we haven't come to it yet. Time around gods is weird.

Time is weird, re-interpretation is weird, and that was part of the fun of the film for me, not knowing what to expect from the Asgardians. (I feel silly calling them "Asgardians" instead of "Aesir", but when in Rome I do as the Romans do.) Anything can happen. That's the plus side of their being a mash-up, a remix, a rewrite, a fictionalization.

...yeah, I was going to edit that last word, then I thought, no, the hell with it, let it stand.

That's the plus side of their being a mash-up, a remix, a rewrite, a fictionalization.

What? It's a real word.

No, I mean that I'm an atheist who is writing about how someone has fictionalized Loki, Thor, etc. As opposed to, say, nonfiction on the historical figures Loki and Thor. Deep in my heart I do, I do, I do believe in the Norse gods.

YES YES YES YES,and another separate YES on the topic of Bruce Banner.

Hah. Thank you. Though if you would like to discuss some of these topics (like Bruce) in greater detail, I would certainly like to hear it.

(I have been without e-mail for the weekend. I'm catching up.)

It would be wonderful if the next Avengers film showed us Loki and co at Asgard, with a plot loosely or not so loosely based on Lokasenna.

My guess is the next Avengers film will focus on Thanos, since we were given him in the mid-credits scene, but I am hoping for something out of the sequel to Thor.

The rest of you get to benefit?

Thank you! Benefit it is indeed.

Fascinating. I'm going to have to see the film, then read this again so I can say something useful.

I was not expecting the Chitauri invasion force—like bony Devonian fishes, diving with the terrible grace of titans through the canyons of Manhattan—to look almost exactly like scenes I dreamed about five and three years ago, including the one that crashes dying on the apartment roof.

Goodness. I'm trying to think of something more useful to say here, but I can't the now.

And now we are in Philadelphia, because the internet on trains is not always the most compliant.

I hope your journey continues safely, and that you have a wonderful time.

I finally saw the film today, and I agree with your assessment. I really enjoyed Loki and Banner/Hulk. Now I clearly need to see Thor and Captain America...

I really enjoyed Loki and Banner/Hulk.

I am curious to know if they're the characters who are receiving the most fan (as well as critical) attention, but I'm also fairly certain I don't want to look without a guide.

Now I clearly need to see Thor and Captain America...

I do recommend them both!

Hee. I was looking forward to seeing your analysis of this. I've seen Avengers twice, now; with and without excellent sound. (Our film group is good, but the lecture theatre is not shiny-new Dolby, just Older Dolby).

I was at first disappointed by this Loki, then happier once I realised how much of a shell game was being played. I spot at least six separate plots by him. Though I also found Ex Urbe's hilarious analysis useful, I see one extra here: there's also a (rare!) facet of Kind Loki. He brings the world and people that his brother loves up to a position where it will be able to defend itself against any comers, including himself. It's a rare kindness that he can allow himself to offer, perhaps only by not really pausing.

Banner was also my second favourite and great-surprise character; I haven't seen the other Hulks. Although his spectrometer-technobabble is sadly lacking compared to Stark's (in Iron Man II, that scene with the particle accelerator has squees of delight from my physicist friends), his scientist-mannerisms are spot on.

If Foster had been the astrophysicist, it'd have been too close to fridging; I think they made the right call there, as annoying as it was.

Oh, and this side of the world didn't get shawarma; I shall youtube.

I thought you did Captain America? Sure I recall it...

I was at first disappointed by this Loki, then happier once I realised how much of a shell game was being played. I spot at least six separate plots by him.

Please, expound!

there's also a (rare!) facet of Kind Loki. He brings the world and people that his brother loves up to a position where it will be able to defend itself against any comers, including himself.

Yes. I like that. He was trapped by his own invention, but we know how to catch fish now.

Banner was also my second favourite and great-surprise character; I haven't seen the other Hulks.

I haven't seen Ang Lee's Hulk (2003); I saw The Incredible Hulk (2008) in theaters and enjoyed it, although my notes from the time indicate that I thought it could have been a much better film than it ended up being. It doesn't start off like a superhero movie at all. It starts off as a character study of an expatriate American with a classic film noir past, murky and full of loose ends. Edward Norton is a character actor, not a traditional leading man, so he makes a nicely unlikely alter ego for something as huge and dynamic as the Hulk—slightly built, mouse-haired, with the kind of face that can be anything from slantly magnetic to forgettable depending on expression and angle, and he focuses inward. He lives in the brightly colored chaos of a Brazilian favela, works days as a kind of odd-job handyman in a soda factory, spends his nights feverishly e-mailing with a researcher he's never met in the States; his apartment is a scrapyard of homebuilt electronics and biochemical DIY, glass slides and rainforest weeds, a satellite dish wedged in the windowsill. He flirts shyly with a coworker, has trouble backing down from a fight with her jealous wannabe boyfriend. He is teaching himself Brazilian Portuguese with a secondhand dictionary and a three-channel TV. A little counter in the corner of the screen records "days without incident: 158." We know what he's running from, because we have seen it in soundless, incomplete flashes like a recurring bad dream—a wrecked laboratory, a bleeding woman sprawled in the ruins: the first time the Hulk hurt somebody Banner loved—but the details are almost unimportant. He has something locked up inside him that he's not dealing with, only trying to avoid. Anyone who has ever seen a movie with a retired gunslinger or a criminal gone straight knows that never works for long.

[Die in a green fire, LJ-comments limit.]

I know, the point of going to a Hulk movie is to see him smash things, but I would cheerfully have watched this submerged, oblique take on secret identities for the full runtime, rather than the knock-down, drag-out destruction of the Upper West Side the film eventually turns into. (I was amused that I had friends who lived two streets down from the primary battle site.) Even once the plot starts to kick in, there are lingering subtleties. The eventual villain is an aging career soldier who led the first, unsuccessful attempt to bring the Hulk in—pathetically unprepared, no warning that his team was going up against anything more than a skinny fugitive scientist with maybe some military knowledge he shouldn't have taken across international lines—and goes in like a superhero himself when allowed another shot at Banner, singlehandedly taking on a twelve-foot-tall, olive-colored monstrosity and getting smashed to paste against a tree for his pains. He's ferocious, tenacious, and reckless, a cocky, Russian-born, London-bred officer in the UKSF who knows nothing off the battlefield and has never considered that a problem. He can feel himself slowing down and it scares him; he claims he doesn't want to turn into a brass-bound desk jockey, but the truth is that he couldn't hack any other job. He's as eager to try an experimental serum as he would be anything else that gave him back that edge in combat—and meant he didn't have to admit he'd finally found a mission he wasn't hard enough to finish—and while the audience knows that super-science goes almost inevitably wrong, I don't remember any sense from the film that Blonsky deserves what happens to him. The process is poorly understood and volatile. He's never been a patient man. That's not the same as making it a moral judgment, Banner's bad luck vs. Blonsky's classical hubris. (It doesn't hurt that Blonsky is played by Tim Roth, who gives him a real jagged, dangerous edge, the adrenaline junkie who grins best through a mouthful of blood, and still manages to suggest how much at sea this character would be if removed from his high-octane environment, how much he can't even handle the thought.) But nonetheless, in the end the characterizations go by the wayside, the CGI eats the scenery, and the plot doesn't come to a conclusion so much as it stops in a snarl of loose threads that have not, for the most part, even been acknowledged by successive films. I don't know if we'll get a Ruffalo Hulk movie to pick them up again. I am afraid the story wouldn't be as complex as the character deserves.

Although his spectrometer-technobabble is sadly lacking compared to Stark's (in Iron Man II, that scene with the particle accelerator has squees of delight from my physicist friends), his scientist-mannerisms are spot on.

Yay! I thought so, but it is not my field: just one I spend a lot of time around.

(I still haven't seen Iron Man 2. Should I watch it for the scene with the particle accelerator?)

If Foster had been the astrophysicist, it'd have been too close to fridging; I think they made the right call there, as annoying as it was.

Even if, like Selvig, she recovered her free will and was shown to have built—even under Loki's influence—the "back door" portal shutdown that saves the day?

Oh, and this side of the world didn't get shawarma; I shall youtube.

It's not essential, but it's charming in a lo-fi way. Thor looks as though he's missing his mead hall, but New York ethnic fast food might not be as terrible as he thought when he ordered it.

I thought you did Captain America? Sure I recall it...

I can't find any evidence in posts from last summer and I have this half-completed draft on my desk; I never keep old versions once I've put up a final one. I may have blithered about it in comments somewhere.

BTW, forgot to say: I really like your assessment of The Incredible Hulk. It's a movie I expected to hate based on the trailers, but ended up loving, for the most part, though, as you say, it sort of just stops instead of coming to a conclusion.

I would cheerfully have watched this submerged, oblique take on secret identities for the full runtime

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Hulk. I'd so be down for that.

I really like your assessment of The Incredible Hulk.

Thank you! Now if I could just write up Captain America . . .

though, as you say, it sort of just stops instead of coming to a conclusion.

I don't know if they had a sequel in the works and it fell through or what, but there wasn't even a mention of any of the other characters in The Avengers. That was a bit odd.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Hulk.

Yes!

1. Please send help: I just pictured Tom Hiddleston as chaos theorist Loki in a lab coat. There goes my higher brain function for the afternoon.

Sort of like Amy Acker's Fred? (Who eventually turns blue.)

Sort of like Amy Acker's Fred? (Who eventually turns blue.)

I don't think I know the reference . . .

Character from the Buffy spin-off Angel, a human physicist who went a little crazy after being exiled to a demonic dimension for several years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winifred_Burkle (spoilery)

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If it's all the same to you, I think I'll have that drink

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