Episode 1225 Talkback: Avengers Movie Review
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Geeks assemble! We've waited a long time for the Avengers movie and now that we've seen it we can't wait to talk about it. (1:12:54)
Listen here.
Listen here.
Comments
....... awesome that!
The Alien bad guys - The Chitari? - just cannon fodder like Jamie said.
Loki - Tom Hiddleston was great, Brits make the best bad guys.
Thor - I liked how he was trying to reason with Hulk/Banner. Hammer swinging was great.
Cap - Plays the man out of time well, took charge. I really like Evans' portrayal.
Hulk - Smash! and "Puny God"
Stark - Downey just inhabits the role, brilliant ad-libs
Black Widow - clever how they gave her a particular "skill set" that really worked in the movie. Her interrogation of Loki was great, she had me fooled as well. But also the way she reacted to Hulk/Banner was very well acted.
Hawkeye. I think Cap did call him that in the battle sequence. Would go and see a Hawkeye/Black Widow movie
Nick Fury and Maria Hill, the Helicarrier and S.H.I.E.L.D. Convinced me
Agent Coulson. Spoiler text= Gutted, just gutted. I hope we see his LMD in future films
The Council. We had to have the Council to set off the Nuke and be the human bad guys who take that decision away from Fury and Hill. The Brit Shadow Council member was Jenny Agutter (be still my beating heart)
Great stuff. 5 stars. Alien heads roll, limbs roll. One beast, no breasts. Joe Bob says check it out
Now Joss Whedon rules Hollywood and can probably get any project he wants greenlit, will we see a second Serenity film?
Quit whining! Maybe its just the tone of his voice that I find whiny? I dunno....
Just my opinion, don't haze me!
Bryan you're asking for a movie where the Avengers are immediately best buddies and just go out an fight? You do realize that you then lose a sense of pathos with the audience now that there's no character arc for the lead roles? A story has to have a sense of change and you're characters must learn and grow. Without it, you basically have a music video (or a Michael Bay production). As pointed out, the dust up between the fellow heroes is Marvel Comics 101.
If you're going to complain about mindless canon fodder, then you have to take an issue with all the franchises:
Thor: Frost Giants
Cap: Hydra foot soldiers completely covered from head to toe
Iron Man 2: Hammer's Iron suit robots
By removing the humanity from the foot soldiers, they're allowed to show Hawkeye stabbing them in the face and Cap cutting off their arms while maintaining a PG-13 rating and not traumatizing young children.
They can't even legally USE the skrulls! They are owned by Sony with the Fantastic Four package. and while a "Secret Invasion" Avengers movie is interesting, that's not the story they chose to tell and you can't fault a story for not being your vision.
Matt can tell us everything that will happen in TDKR? That'd be quite a feat. I believe Nolan and a handfull of cast and crew know how the movie ends so.
I'm sorry to be testy, but this level of nitpicking is not one I'm accustomed to on CGS. Got about 30 min. left, let's see where this goes....
Those faceless goons are essential, especially when we have half a dozen+ heroes to introduce and give screen time to and relate to.
Scrulls or faceless army?
Why show Thor drop his hammer?
Why was Pepper wearing shorts?
Are you kidding me?
THIS IS WHAT I HAVE BEEN SEEING IN MY HEAD SINCE I READ MY FIRST COMIC AT 5 YEARS OLD. Let the small stuff GO.
And Bryan: Diverse heroes being brought together to save humanity, but frist having to overcome their differences to unite when it really matters is EVERY GOOD MARVEL TEAM COMIC EVER MADE.
About the aliens you can't have named Aliens (Kree, Skrulls) etc when they reveal the big bad is Thanos. Thanos only uses no-name aliens as apart of his army so you can't have Kree.
Which was another curve ball\homage by Whedon... if you remember, the first issue of the Avengers was Loki manipulating the Hulk and that's what brings them all together.
I'm familiar enough with the source material to see what's being used with the scenes we've seen thus far in trailers. The specific ending is still something I can only guess at, but seeing how the promos are that this is the end of the Dark Knight Legend and with there being a cover up at the end of TDK, I can take a fairly decent stab at what all this means.
I'm planning on outlining what I see for the movie before I actually see it. I'll give it to one of the other guys so I cannot tamper with it and let's see how close I can get. I'm betting at this point, I can 80-85% of the major plot points and storyline accurate.
M.
The Chitauri are an alternate reality version of the Skrulls. It is in the Marvel Comics Database:
"The Chitauri claim to be part of "the immune system of the Universe", wiping out disorder and free will wherever they find it."
This explanation fits perfectly with the overriding plot of the movie and Loki's motivation to subjugate the human race.
A tesseract is an actual geometric shape also known as an 8-cell, regular octachoron, or cubic prism. It is the four-dimensional analog of the cube. Wikipedia
I agree with some of the comments above. I think they avoided the Skrulls because of licensing. A bit disappointing, but what can ya do. At least they apparently used an alien race from the comics though.
M.
On the issue of the alien army as cannon fodder: you need that. It happens in the comics, too. While there have been enemies that require several heroes to take down, Loki is not that villain. Not for a 200 million dollar movie, anyway. He needed an army and the heroes all needed to people to fight. I love how one of you complains about cannon fodder, but then complains that the heroes weren't fighting bad guys as a lovey-dovey team for 2 1/2 hours. As someone said above, that is a Michael Bay movie and there are plenty of those.
The Skrulls would have required way too much exposition and would have taken away from the real story, that of this team of heroes coming together, and would have been extremely confusing for most audiences who have no idea who they are. To simply show some of them shape-shifting to establish them as Skrulls is absurd. So Pepper Potts wearing cutoffs and barefoot requires explanation, but the alien army shape-shifting doesn't?? Also the idea to have a teaser at the end where a cab driver's true Skrull identity flashes across his face--like that hasn't been done before?
This episode was hard to listen to, to be honest. Not because of differing opinions but because of the lack of reason behind the opinions. And the astonishing lack of correct information! This is what you guys do!
I love this show, though.
That's what I picked up just listening to the show. You guys have been gushing over it this weekend (like all of us) but you want to have some sort of critical analysis of the movie but there's not much there to criticize. It happens.
Matt - Are you going to see Amazing Spider-man? My seeing it depends on someone else's review of the movie that's more of a hardcore Spidey fan.
I can't believe if we saw Steve ride off wearing a Hugo Boss suit at the end I'd be the only one questioning it.
M
Plus she looked really cute!
M.
It just came down to what each Geek would have done if they made the movie. Remember, the Geeks gave it 5 Frekin' Sweers, even Mike. :)
The Pimp Hand is strong yet again!
Frankly, I'm surprised Bryan took issue with the Chitauri, since I'm sure I've heard him say on other occasions that he prefers his superhero/action movie villains uncomplicated.