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| Its a good group. Small, but good. |
I want to start off by saying that
I love The Avengers. It was
everything I had hoped it would be and more. Plenty of action, a relatively good balance of character's screen time, Robert Downey Jr. and just tons of cool stuff. Other than maybe being a little
longer than it needed to be I have relatively few bad things to say about it. I’ll
get more into when I get to an actual review, but for now I’ll focus on the two
negative things that have occurred because of this movie.
I racked my brain for a couple of
days on this one, trying to think of three examples of bad things The Avengers caused. Why? Because I like doing things in threes. Three is a good, solid number of things. Enough to make a point but not so much you start rolling your eyes thinking "We get it, now move on." Unfortunately for my
undiagnosed but still-most-likely-there OCD I could only think of the two. Poor
me, but you’re not here to hear about that.
I’ll start off with the problem for
cinema as a whole, and that is the imitators. Sure, on the one hand, The Avengers did give rival DC Comics
the kick in the pants they needed to finally start working on a Justice League film. Which is good. On the other, this
created much the same problem that Harry Potter
and the Deathly Hallows 1 and 2 did. Which is bad. Now because of HPaDH it seems that we can’t have a
movie based on the final book in a series without it being broken into two
parts. Even though The Hunger Games is a decent series, you can't tell me that it has enough real substance behind it to necessitate splitting it into two parts. That goes triple for Twilight, minus the decent series comment. For The Avengers, other
companies are trying to make their own multi-picture team-up movie. Without the same
substance or character behind them. What could possibly go wrong? In two words, a lot.
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| This was a bad idea. Bram Stoker is rolling in his grave. Again. |
You know Dracula: Untold, that rather weird attempt at making Dracula a hero?
I didn’t realize until recently that Dracula:
Untold was supposed to be the start of an eventual team-up movie centering
around the various movie monsters that Universal Pictures have the rights to. The idea, I believe, is to get all the monsters together to fight that creepy vampire from the trailer that tells Dracula to "Drink," and assumedly gives Dracula his vampiric powers.
Do I even need to explain why this is a bad idea? I probably don’t have to, but
the BIG one is that guys like Dracula, the Creature from the Black Lagoon,
Wolf-man, and Frankenstein’s Monster were all the VILLIANS of their respective
stories. True, Frankenstein’s Monster is seen nowadays as a tragic figure, on
par with Brutus of Julius Caesar or
King Lear of King Lear but aside from
him, would you even want to cheer on these guys? People into Paranormal
Romance, please don’t answer.
It takes more than just having a
vaguely similar background universe to put characters together. You can’t put
Gandalf the White from The Lord of the
Rings series, Harry Potter from The
Harry Potter series and Harry Dresden from The Dresden Files into a movie together just because they all work
with Magic. Each has their own unique take on Magic, and on how the characters
are allowed to use their powers. Gandalf can’t use his magic to interfere with
Mortal affair, Harry P. can’t use his magic in sight of non-magic folks, and
Dresden can use his powers however he likes so long as he doesn’t kill and/or
take the free will another human. Gandalf is also a wise old man that tries to stay out of things as much as possible, at least until IT hits the fan. Harry is a head strong kid, leaping before he looks and all that. Dresden is a hardish boiled but likeable detective/wizard, and somewhere between these two approaches. Different approaches, drastically
different characters.
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| Love you Hugh, but this was a bad idea. |
But that’s just the hypothetical
situation. What about other times that they tried to do a crossover movie?
Anyone remember Van Helsing? The movie
that turned a Dutch doctor/lawyer into a monster hunter, Frankenstein’s monster
into the key to making life for some reason, and Dracula into an idiot that
would use his own personal Kryptonite as a laky. Oh, and Jekyll and Hyde were
in there for a bit too, just to set Van Helsing up as a monster hunter. Oy,
even summarizing it makes it feel like a bad fan fic.It was a bad movie, good effects, but bad bad in terms of story telling and how much disbelief needed to be suspended for the world and Dracula's plan to be plausible.
I focused mostly on the paranormal
monster stuff because that is the only thing I can think of that would fit the
whole team-up movie idea other than Superhero films. Unless someone could think
of a way for Star Wars, Star Trek and Starchaser to all happen at once. I’m thinking a Black Hole would
be involved somehow.
The other issue is internal. You're probably asking yourself how could that be possible? The Avengers knocked it out of the park,
setting a high bar not only for a Justice
League movie but for its own sequel. The problem, for me, is that I think they may be
trying to expand too quickly. Ultron is a major baddie, an uncaring, incredibly
intelligent and sadistic supervillain. He’s a guy that in the Age of Ultron
Comic storyline that was so powerful and so dangerous that the heroes decided
that the only course of action was to go back in time to kill Hank Pym before
he built Ultron. The science guys agree with this plan, and most science guys
would tell you screwing with the past is never worth it. Does that put the danger into perspective for ya? I certainly hope so.
And our movie Avengers are going to
fight him with the six person team from last time, and possibly Scarlet Witch,
Quicksilver, and The Vision. Six to maybe Nine guys. Against Ultron. A guy that always seems
to have forty thousand shocktroops at his back. And doesn't need said shocktroops to destroy metric tons of things. Buildings, vehicles, people, metric tons of all of them.This does not bode well.
Furthermore, according to the rumors, Thanos is going to be the bad guy of Avengers 3. He is an alien God-like being equivalent
to Apocalypse. You know, that guy who I said needed just about every X-man imaginable to take down. But, to a race of immortal godlike beings. Bad, bad things are a brewing when you underestimate him. Now, they will have a few more guys by the time #3 rolls around,
but I highly doubt that the numbers they get to by then will seem appropriate to
battle Thanos. Anything less than an army is probably going to get its butt
kicked repeatedly by him and his infinity gauntlet.I personally would have had the second movie focusing on the Avengers taking on an incarnation of the Masters of Evil, (their Legion of Doom, for those who don't know) or perhaps a time traveling Kang the Conqueror. Threats that are up to par with Loki and his alien invasion, but still not so high as evil robot armies and the Mad Titan. But that's just me.
So there you have it, two problems
with The Avengers. They aren’t huge,
glaring problems, but they are something to think about whenever someone
attempts to make their own team-up movie. Next time, for post number 75 I’ll be
focusing on the guy that is the best their is at what he does. Wolverine. It’s
gonna be S-I-I-CK, (musical notes).
http://www.comicvine.com/forums/gen-discussion-1/what-was-a-better-flim-watchmen-or-the-avengers-686407/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Helsing_%28film%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula_Untold
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