Have You Assembled Yet? A Bolt Movie Review
By: Tony Wong
I think everyone has seen Marvel’s The Avengers: the big movie that debuted this summer in North America with an astonishing $200.1 million opening. Obviously the folks over at Marvel did something right with this ultimate superhero mash up. So what did I think of it? I think it is pretty self-explanatory but let’s get in the deep of it, shall we? Spoilers inside so be warned.
Marvel’s The Avengers is the accumulation of all the recent Marvel movies starting with Iron Man 1 and 2, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger. The Avengers takes place right after the events of Captain America. The organization known as S.H.I.E.L.D. has just started research on the Tesseract, a source of unlimited power among other things, when Loki (Tom Hiddleston) comes in and throws a wrench and steals the artifact along with brainwashing Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner). It is up to Director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) to assemble a group of individuals to help not only get the Tesseract but also to protect the earth from the onslaught of Loki’s alien forces. Comprising the Avengers includes billionaire Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.), Supersoldier Captain America/Steven Rogers (Chris Evans), demi-god of Thunder Thor (Chris Hemsworth), gamma-radiated Bruce Banner/Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), the super spy Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and the sharpshooter who doesn’t miss Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner).
The movie’s script is expertly written and is near perfect. There are some obvious issues with the pacing of the film with respects to the introductions to some of the characters. Thor, for example, literally gets a one-line introduction into the film—I’m sorry, but Thor deserves better. It is clear the movie is primarily written for an action audience with almost half the movie focused on explosions and special effects, but for the better. Not to be outdone by the action, but this script has Joss Whedon’s humor written all over it, from the witty one liners from Robert Downey Jr. to the banter between Thor and Hulk. Of course this all makes sense seeing that Whedon already has an abundance of experience writing comics.
One of my main concerns going into the Avengers movie is that there are so many A-list celebrity stars sharing the same screen, but Whedon found a balance between all of them. The most notable is newcomer Mark Ruffalo who portrayed Bruce Banner. While I miss the Edward Norton Banner, I think Ruffalo did a good job by keeping a calm attitude throughout the movie until the inevitable Hulk scenes.
At the end of the day you not only get a fantastic looking movie with some amazing special effects and explosions, but you also get a well-rounded screenplay which is written and directed from an expert on the subject of Marvel comics. Follow that up with some great performances with pretty much everyone in the past four years of Marvel movies, and you have a fantastic summer blockbuster. Look out for Marvel’s The Avengers hitting BluRay and DVD this September 25, 2012.
