girlofprey (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
girlofprey) wrote2012-05-21 06:41 pm
girlofprey) wrote2012-05-21 06:41 pm
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Hello. I saw both Captain America and The Avengers last week. I've been sort of trying to figure out what to say about them. But anyway, here it is:
Captain America first, because it's the one I saw first. Well. I don't know. It kind of didn't strike me as a film. When I was watching it, it seemed quite a lot like just a lot of clips strung together. I think, looking back, it was very obvious that it was an origin story, that it was just about setting up the character in the modern world. Because it really seemed like they didn't put much work into his relationships as things that would continue, aside from possibly with Red Skull if/when he comes back (and possibly Bucky, according to comic canon, I think?). And even that wasn't particularly deep, which did sort of work I think, in terms of the characters and what they stood for. I was genuinely intrigued by the kink meme, for once because I really couldn't understand who anyone would ship him with.
As for the character himself, that was a little bit weird because the impression I got from fandom was that he was just quite sweet, and idealistic, and then people gave him a super serum so he could go act out his heroism and etc. But they did sort of make a point of giving him other characteristics, like that he was really brave (which I did sort of expect), and quite smart (which I didn't). I was quite annoyed with him at first, when he basically turned his nose up at any way of helping the war that wasn't being on the front lines, even though they made it pretty clear he wasn't fit for it. Like in the film he watched it made a point that collecting scrap metal was REALLY PRETTY USEFUL, and he was all "What am I going to do, collect scrap metal? NOT GOOD ENOUGH". It kind of looks down on every other person who helped the war effort by staying at home. Like say, most women. But it was a different time I guess, maybe they were just trying to reflect how everybody felt back then.
Things I found a bit weird: a ) the fact that Steve got used to his new body and muscles and height, pretty much, within minutes, and b) the fact that the Erskine guy explained to Steve that 'weakness' was exactly what they needed to make a good super-soldier who wouldn't go mad with power...after having already explained that the fact that Germany was weak before the war is what allowed Hitler to come to power. I know it's not the same situation. I just found it a bit weird.
Things I liked: a) the amazing jumping (I saw more of it in The Avengers, don't think I didn't), b) the SUPERGUNS, and the fact that those escaped prisoners just stole them, and c) the bad guy. Naturally. But the bad guy was Hugo Weaving, so I don't know that I'm entirely to blame. I love how much he loved his car. And I found a way I enjoyed slashing him and the hero. HURRAY FOR ME.
Other things that were weird: I spent a LONG TIME being confused about why Loki was in the film, how Loki was in the film, and whether that was going to be confusing in a few films' time. Until I found out that the Howling Commando I was looking at was just being played by an actor I always confuse with Tom Hiddleston, who was in the episode of Miss Marple I made a ship post about a few months ago. Also, there was the fact that the German bad guy made some German planes, and wrote on them IN ENGLISH which cities they were supposed to be blowing up. Presumably so Captain America would realise they were targeting American cities, and not just somewhere unimportant.
So yeah. I found it a bit of a strange film, really.
And now The Avengers. I'm just going to come out and say it: I found it a bit annoying. A lot of it. Not all of it. But quite a bit. It was just...I don't know. It all felt a bit rushed to me, which is a problem I have with a lot of comic book films, just the fact that I often feel like they tried to put too much in. There were just a lot of moments where they'd, say, make a joke or have a one-liner, and then immediately cut away to another scene. And I didn't necessarily love the joke, but they wouldn't even give it the time films/TV normally give lines like that to let them sink in, to let them at least seem a bit natural, instead of a joke that was literally thrown in. It just felt like there wasn't always a lot of breathing space - which is an issue I also had with Captain America when I watched it.
And I found it sort of irritating how long it took them all to team up. Just because we knew they were going to team up in the end, and they just took so much time having them bickering and fighting and arguing - when we KNEW they were going to get over it, and were going to team up by the end. I don't know. I just found it quite aggravating. Also, I didn't care about Agent Coulson's death. I don't care about Agent Coulson at the best of times, I find him a bit weird. What I did like was that they gave him and Pepper a good relationship, because you know, he did SAVE HER LIFE THAT ONE TIME. Tony was mysteriously baffled by this. But whatever, Tony. So I didn't care that much when he died. But oh my god, the death of a person in a story and deliberately, in-universe, using it to push/manipulate people into heroism - is this a new thing? It happened recently in a computer game I was playing, in a slightly worse way, but I still couldn't believe it there. And I couldn't quite believe it here. I don't want it to be a new thing. I hate it.
Probably not suprisingly, the character I liked the most was Loki. I already liked him the best in Thor, he is a bad guy and quite fucked up, and he is played by Tom Hiddleston, who is a Suburban Shootout veteran, who I always have time for, also he seemed to be the only person actually having fun on the screen. But. Right. I was really, really hoping that the whole "Bruce Banner" thing would be a double-bluff, and it would turn out that's just what he WANTED them to think, rather than what he was actually after. I still don't know exactly what his plan was about Bruce, just to hang around and be annoying and hope the effect would trickle down, I guess. But I really expected better from Loki than to come onto the ship STARING DIRECTLY AT AND SMILING AT the 'secret' thing he was trying to get to. And then to get tricked into telling Natasha about it. I mean, it was a twist, and I know Loki's supposed to be crazy and not exactly working at full capacity. But he is supposed to be the 'God' of lies and trickery, and he got tricked by humans. Twice! By Natasha, and then by Coulson. I do not see anyone wielding lightning better than Thor. Christ. I mean, when![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cakesy watched Thor, she said that clearly the only reason Loki was considered a good trickster on Asgard is because the only person he had to outsmart was Thor. I DID NOT EXPECT THAT TO BECOME CANON. And it made it really hard for me to take him seriously as a villain. Or a threat. I know that he wasn't the ultimate villain in the film, the Chitauri/their leader was, but Loki was the face of it, a lot of the time. And he couldn't really do the thing he was best at. It made it hard for me to take him seriously as a villain, and to take the film seriously as a film, without a serious villain. Which was a bit of a shame.
A lot of people are talking about Black Widow, and I thought she was alright. Considering the fact that I wasn't that impressed with her in Iron Man 2, and before the film all we really saw of her were promo shots of her in catsuits and pointing guns, I wasn't really expecting too much, but she was a lot better than I was expecting her to be. She had an actual character, and wasn't just there to be sexy with the guys, even Hawkeye, who I mostly read as a good, close friend. But a lot of the stuff we saw from her just felt like a lot of stuff I had seen before. Like the scene at the beginning - aside from the fact that her telling Nick Fury that she couldn't leave her interrogation now while basically EXPLAINING to those guys that it was all a set-up to get information out of them, thus pretty much rendering the interrogation over, was sort of one of the stupidest things I've ever seen - it really just reminded me of that scene in Buffy, where Angel fakes turning soulless and Buffy fakes getting captured just to get Faith to tell them her plan. And then in the scene where she meets Bruce Banner, she turned up dressed like Inara. Also, it felt like all we ever heard about were things that happened TO her rather than things that she did or wanted - she was made into a spy at the same age as the young girl in the film, she was unmade just like Hawkeye was (another moment that kind of annoyed me, just because it felt a bit BTM-ish, and because people/women don't have to have gone through every trauma in the book in order to be able to empathise with people). Hawkeye made a decision not to kill her and turned her life around. And even then, she acted like she wanted to fight in the big battle 'to clear her ledger', which made it sound as much like a duty as anything she actually wanted to do. I mean, she was a spy, and it all fits in pretty well with the whole mysterious character/dark past type thing she had going on. I just found some of it a bit weird. A bit like they were saying "haha, look, she's a badass and you weren't expecting it", rather than just letting her be a badass. I don't know, I feel like I'm complaining a lot, I didn't actually hate her. I was just sort of left feeling like her defining characteristic was 'pain'. Which is not always something I love when it comes to female characters. But she was a lot better, and got a lot more to do, than I thought she would.
Speaking of female characters, Pepper in hotpants annoyed me hugely for some reason. I don't even know why. I think just because nothing I've seen in either of the Iron Man films ever suggested that she would wear them. And it was in her only personal, slightly sexy scene with Tony. And coupled with the bare feet and red hair, I was getting weird flashbacks to the Mary Jane statues people used to get quite angry about. But I have no idea about her general hotpants/clothing stance, I suppose we only usually see her in business attire anyway.
What else? I don't know, just some of the lines annoyed me. Apparently there's been a lot of upset about the "he's adopted" line in the film. I don't know if I agree with that, because I don't feel like Thor was saying that the fact that Loki was adopted was what made him evil, more that they shouldn't judge Thor or his family by Loki's actions, because they're not actually related. But if it's been causing actual upset to adopted children and their families, obviously that's not good. But I didn't like the line in that sense either, because they'd only just had the conversation where Loki said they weren't brothers, and Thor insisted they were, so for Thor to say that, even as a joke, just felt really off and wrong. Also, the part where Loki called Natasha a 'quim' - basically, a cunt? While deliberately suggesting there was a sexual aspect to her and Clint's relationship and her reasons for wanting Clint back? I didn't really like that. I didn't even think it really fit, the part where he was calling her a snivelling child for wanting Clint back seemed to fit better for what he was trying to say. And I've never noticed Loki randomly hating on women before. Although he did sort of threaten to go after Jane to get at Thor, perhaps I'm wrong. The 'quim' comment, coupled with him threatening to have Clint kill her in all the 'intimate' ways she fears the most, really just sounded...quite threatening. I found all of that quite weird.
Anyway. The things I did like. One of them wasn't Tony Stark, I still have residual hatred from the time he made me feel like I wanted to die during Iron Man 2. Most of the time he was talking I just wanted to punch him in the face. I couldn't believe his stupid machine to take his suit off him. I couldn't believe it. But I did like his relationship with Bruce, and how they got on and bonded over science. A lot of people seem to have come out of the film saying they were suprised by all their Bruce feelings. I had watched and enjoyed the Edward Norton Hulk film, so I already had quite a lot of Bruce feelings. And I like that they made him and his issues and his 'condition' an important and 'growing' part of the film. I liked Thor, I always kind of do, even though I never seem to take that love with me when I leave his films. He was lovely though. And I liked Steve, it turns out I quite like Steve. I like that they have made him brave and smart and everything - quite Captain-ish, and not just a random guy with a super-serum. Having only just watched Captain America, I liked the continuity they kept up with how much he hated the Tesseract, and was wary of it and didn't want anyone to use it. And I liked Clint, even if he was mostly mind-controlled, and I found it a bit weird that they immediately let him go off fighting, even though he was obviously having issues. That is PTSD-courting if I ever saw it. But they wanted the whole team together in the big fight at the end, I guess. Hopefully, he's fine.
And that's it, I think. I didn't hate it. I just didn't really love it, and so many parts of it annoyed me. But those are my thoughts at the very least.
Right. So. The other thing I've been meaning to post is that my mum's been on holiday, and I wasn't really looking forward too much to spending two weeks home alone with my dad. But it turned out to be a lot better than I thought it was going to be, quite nice really. And my mum's back tonight. So that's that, I guess.
Captain America first, because it's the one I saw first. Well. I don't know. It kind of didn't strike me as a film. When I was watching it, it seemed quite a lot like just a lot of clips strung together. I think, looking back, it was very obvious that it was an origin story, that it was just about setting up the character in the modern world. Because it really seemed like they didn't put much work into his relationships as things that would continue, aside from possibly with Red Skull if/when he comes back (and possibly Bucky, according to comic canon, I think?). And even that wasn't particularly deep, which did sort of work I think, in terms of the characters and what they stood for. I was genuinely intrigued by the kink meme, for once because I really couldn't understand who anyone would ship him with.
As for the character himself, that was a little bit weird because the impression I got from fandom was that he was just quite sweet, and idealistic, and then people gave him a super serum so he could go act out his heroism and etc. But they did sort of make a point of giving him other characteristics, like that he was really brave (which I did sort of expect), and quite smart (which I didn't). I was quite annoyed with him at first, when he basically turned his nose up at any way of helping the war that wasn't being on the front lines, even though they made it pretty clear he wasn't fit for it. Like in the film he watched it made a point that collecting scrap metal was REALLY PRETTY USEFUL, and he was all "What am I going to do, collect scrap metal? NOT GOOD ENOUGH". It kind of looks down on every other person who helped the war effort by staying at home. Like say, most women. But it was a different time I guess, maybe they were just trying to reflect how everybody felt back then.
Things I found a bit weird: a ) the fact that Steve got used to his new body and muscles and height, pretty much, within minutes, and b) the fact that the Erskine guy explained to Steve that 'weakness' was exactly what they needed to make a good super-soldier who wouldn't go mad with power...after having already explained that the fact that Germany was weak before the war is what allowed Hitler to come to power. I know it's not the same situation. I just found it a bit weird.
Things I liked: a) the amazing jumping (I saw more of it in The Avengers, don't think I didn't), b) the SUPERGUNS, and the fact that those escaped prisoners just stole them, and c) the bad guy. Naturally. But the bad guy was Hugo Weaving, so I don't know that I'm entirely to blame. I love how much he loved his car. And I found a way I enjoyed slashing him and the hero. HURRAY FOR ME.
Other things that were weird: I spent a LONG TIME being confused about why Loki was in the film, how Loki was in the film, and whether that was going to be confusing in a few films' time. Until I found out that the Howling Commando I was looking at was just being played by an actor I always confuse with Tom Hiddleston, who was in the episode of Miss Marple I made a ship post about a few months ago. Also, there was the fact that the German bad guy made some German planes, and wrote on them IN ENGLISH which cities they were supposed to be blowing up. Presumably so Captain America would realise they were targeting American cities, and not just somewhere unimportant.
So yeah. I found it a bit of a strange film, really.
And now The Avengers. I'm just going to come out and say it: I found it a bit annoying. A lot of it. Not all of it. But quite a bit. It was just...I don't know. It all felt a bit rushed to me, which is a problem I have with a lot of comic book films, just the fact that I often feel like they tried to put too much in. There were just a lot of moments where they'd, say, make a joke or have a one-liner, and then immediately cut away to another scene. And I didn't necessarily love the joke, but they wouldn't even give it the time films/TV normally give lines like that to let them sink in, to let them at least seem a bit natural, instead of a joke that was literally thrown in. It just felt like there wasn't always a lot of breathing space - which is an issue I also had with Captain America when I watched it.
And I found it sort of irritating how long it took them all to team up. Just because we knew they were going to team up in the end, and they just took so much time having them bickering and fighting and arguing - when we KNEW they were going to get over it, and were going to team up by the end. I don't know. I just found it quite aggravating. Also, I didn't care about Agent Coulson's death. I don't care about Agent Coulson at the best of times, I find him a bit weird. What I did like was that they gave him and Pepper a good relationship, because you know, he did SAVE HER LIFE THAT ONE TIME. Tony was mysteriously baffled by this. But whatever, Tony. So I didn't care that much when he died. But oh my god, the death of a person in a story and deliberately, in-universe, using it to push/manipulate people into heroism - is this a new thing? It happened recently in a computer game I was playing, in a slightly worse way, but I still couldn't believe it there. And I couldn't quite believe it here. I don't want it to be a new thing. I hate it.
Probably not suprisingly, the character I liked the most was Loki. I already liked him the best in Thor, he is a bad guy and quite fucked up, and he is played by Tom Hiddleston, who is a Suburban Shootout veteran, who I always have time for, also he seemed to be the only person actually having fun on the screen. But. Right. I was really, really hoping that the whole "Bruce Banner" thing would be a double-bluff, and it would turn out that's just what he WANTED them to think, rather than what he was actually after. I still don't know exactly what his plan was about Bruce, just to hang around and be annoying and hope the effect would trickle down, I guess. But I really expected better from Loki than to come onto the ship STARING DIRECTLY AT AND SMILING AT the 'secret' thing he was trying to get to. And then to get tricked into telling Natasha about it. I mean, it was a twist, and I know Loki's supposed to be crazy and not exactly working at full capacity. But he is supposed to be the 'God' of lies and trickery, and he got tricked by humans. Twice! By Natasha, and then by Coulson. I do not see anyone wielding lightning better than Thor. Christ. I mean, when
cakesy watched Thor, she said that clearly the only reason Loki was considered a good trickster on Asgard is because the only person he had to outsmart was Thor. I DID NOT EXPECT THAT TO BECOME CANON. And it made it really hard for me to take him seriously as a villain. Or a threat. I know that he wasn't the ultimate villain in the film, the Chitauri/their leader was, but Loki was the face of it, a lot of the time. And he couldn't really do the thing he was best at. It made it hard for me to take him seriously as a villain, and to take the film seriously as a film, without a serious villain. Which was a bit of a shame.A lot of people are talking about Black Widow, and I thought she was alright. Considering the fact that I wasn't that impressed with her in Iron Man 2, and before the film all we really saw of her were promo shots of her in catsuits and pointing guns, I wasn't really expecting too much, but she was a lot better than I was expecting her to be. She had an actual character, and wasn't just there to be sexy with the guys, even Hawkeye, who I mostly read as a good, close friend. But a lot of the stuff we saw from her just felt like a lot of stuff I had seen before. Like the scene at the beginning - aside from the fact that her telling Nick Fury that she couldn't leave her interrogation now while basically EXPLAINING to those guys that it was all a set-up to get information out of them, thus pretty much rendering the interrogation over, was sort of one of the stupidest things I've ever seen - it really just reminded me of that scene in Buffy, where Angel fakes turning soulless and Buffy fakes getting captured just to get Faith to tell them her plan. And then in the scene where she meets Bruce Banner, she turned up dressed like Inara. Also, it felt like all we ever heard about were things that happened TO her rather than things that she did or wanted - she was made into a spy at the same age as the young girl in the film, she was unmade just like Hawkeye was (another moment that kind of annoyed me, just because it felt a bit BTM-ish, and because people/women don't have to have gone through every trauma in the book in order to be able to empathise with people). Hawkeye made a decision not to kill her and turned her life around. And even then, she acted like she wanted to fight in the big battle 'to clear her ledger', which made it sound as much like a duty as anything she actually wanted to do. I mean, she was a spy, and it all fits in pretty well with the whole mysterious character/dark past type thing she had going on. I just found some of it a bit weird. A bit like they were saying "haha, look, she's a badass and you weren't expecting it", rather than just letting her be a badass. I don't know, I feel like I'm complaining a lot, I didn't actually hate her. I was just sort of left feeling like her defining characteristic was 'pain'. Which is not always something I love when it comes to female characters. But she was a lot better, and got a lot more to do, than I thought she would.
Speaking of female characters, Pepper in hotpants annoyed me hugely for some reason. I don't even know why. I think just because nothing I've seen in either of the Iron Man films ever suggested that she would wear them. And it was in her only personal, slightly sexy scene with Tony. And coupled with the bare feet and red hair, I was getting weird flashbacks to the Mary Jane statues people used to get quite angry about. But I have no idea about her general hotpants/clothing stance, I suppose we only usually see her in business attire anyway.
What else? I don't know, just some of the lines annoyed me. Apparently there's been a lot of upset about the "he's adopted" line in the film. I don't know if I agree with that, because I don't feel like Thor was saying that the fact that Loki was adopted was what made him evil, more that they shouldn't judge Thor or his family by Loki's actions, because they're not actually related. But if it's been causing actual upset to adopted children and their families, obviously that's not good. But I didn't like the line in that sense either, because they'd only just had the conversation where Loki said they weren't brothers, and Thor insisted they were, so for Thor to say that, even as a joke, just felt really off and wrong. Also, the part where Loki called Natasha a 'quim' - basically, a cunt? While deliberately suggesting there was a sexual aspect to her and Clint's relationship and her reasons for wanting Clint back? I didn't really like that. I didn't even think it really fit, the part where he was calling her a snivelling child for wanting Clint back seemed to fit better for what he was trying to say. And I've never noticed Loki randomly hating on women before. Although he did sort of threaten to go after Jane to get at Thor, perhaps I'm wrong. The 'quim' comment, coupled with him threatening to have Clint kill her in all the 'intimate' ways she fears the most, really just sounded...quite threatening. I found all of that quite weird.
Anyway. The things I did like. One of them wasn't Tony Stark, I still have residual hatred from the time he made me feel like I wanted to die during Iron Man 2. Most of the time he was talking I just wanted to punch him in the face. I couldn't believe his stupid machine to take his suit off him. I couldn't believe it. But I did like his relationship with Bruce, and how they got on and bonded over science. A lot of people seem to have come out of the film saying they were suprised by all their Bruce feelings. I had watched and enjoyed the Edward Norton Hulk film, so I already had quite a lot of Bruce feelings. And I like that they made him and his issues and his 'condition' an important and 'growing' part of the film. I liked Thor, I always kind of do, even though I never seem to take that love with me when I leave his films. He was lovely though. And I liked Steve, it turns out I quite like Steve. I like that they have made him brave and smart and everything - quite Captain-ish, and not just a random guy with a super-serum. Having only just watched Captain America, I liked the continuity they kept up with how much he hated the Tesseract, and was wary of it and didn't want anyone to use it. And I liked Clint, even if he was mostly mind-controlled, and I found it a bit weird that they immediately let him go off fighting, even though he was obviously having issues. That is PTSD-courting if I ever saw it. But they wanted the whole team together in the big fight at the end, I guess. Hopefully, he's fine.
And that's it, I think. I didn't hate it. I just didn't really love it, and so many parts of it annoyed me. But those are my thoughts at the very least.
Right. So. The other thing I've been meaning to post is that my mum's been on holiday, and I wasn't really looking forward too much to spending two weeks home alone with my dad. But it turned out to be a lot better than I thought it was going to be, quite nice really. And my mum's back tonight. So that's that, I guess.
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That's what being written by joss whedon does for you, I guess! I still don't know or really care what the actual plot of the Avengers was about, I mostly just care about Loki and his hair and his sad little face. Villaining isn't really his forte, he just needs his mum and some therapy.
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