47 Great Movie Moments #27 – The Avengers

Continuing with this series of 47 moments in film that I love (Why 47?), today, for #27, we continue with the tone established last time when we talked about our first super-hero film.

The Avengers (2012)

Captain America: Civil War (or really, “Marvel Super-Heroes, Part 13”)

So, if it wasn’t clear already, the Marvel Studios is now officially really confident in their “shared universe” approach to their superhero movies. I mean, we’ve known that’s what they are doing from nearly the beginning, and we’ve been excited about it ever since Robert Downey jr. showed up in the post-credit scene of The Incredible Hulk.  Avengers was built in many ways on the goodwill and anticipation that was built up by the various hero’s prior appearances in their solo films.  And we fans have come to expect the gratuitous cameo appearances, like Chris Evans showing up Thor:  The Dark World or Anthony Mackie’s Falcon getting a big scene in Ant-Man.

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Marvel & DC – Smooshing It All Together

Recently, I found myself pondering a question – a question that I’m sure you have all pondered as well:  if all Marvel and DC comic books were cancelled, and I was in charge of restarting the line as one shared continuity, limiting myself to 25 books or so, what would I choose?

That of course led me to think of what a shared continuity between Marvel and DC would actually look like.  How does one integrate the best or most interesting elements of both company’s properties into one streamlined story.  Can you indeed put both the Justice League and the Avengers into one continuity, and give them both a reason to be there?  What about Batman and Moon Knight?  Hawkeye and Green Arrow?  It’s an exercise sort of like what happened back in Crisis on Infinite Earths, but on an even bigger scale.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

There are a number of things that make Captain America: The Winter Soldier not quite perfect. Natasha’s speech to the governmental enquiry at the end is a bit self-righteous and silly. SHIELD seems to have been infiltrated absurdly easily. Arnim Zola is abruptly re-introduced and then destroyed in one exposition-filled scene. The villain is immediately obvious from his first appearance—and really, ever since the film’s advanced publicity material began to be released (although at least that’s overtly revealed quite early on). And there’s something more than a bit convenient about how the three giant Death Stars in the sky can be overcome by replacing three easy-to-access, unguarded circuits boards.

Yet in spite of this the movie is a huge success, and continue to show that Marvel has learned a thing or two about keeping this franchise strong, as all of their films since The Avengers can attest.

5% Dopey + 15% Routine all rolled up in 80% Awesome = Recipe for The Avengers

By no means am I offering up any kind of comprehensive review, which I actually caught at the drive-in lately, but I did want to offer some quick thoughts on each of the above ingredients.