Fanfare for the Merry Marvel Marching Society!

Rating: 10/10 (27 June 2012)

Being at one time a young ten year old kid who cut his teeth on 'COWBOY SAM' books and 'JOHN HENRY AND THE DOUBLE-JOINTED STEAM DRILL' as well 'UNCLE ARTHUR'S BEDTIME STORIES', the adventures of the MARVEL UNIVERSE were a welcome introduction into what the older kids were reading and doing. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby somehow as though by divine guidance properly gauged the angst of those teenage years in the Sixties and the zeitgeist of that era. Before the Avengers battled the Space Phantom, I cannot remember when I ever encountered a Superhero like the Hulk. Basically he was a bully in diapers who did not play well with others. After the Avengers at last sent the Space Phantom back into limbo where he belonged, the Hulk related that his feelings were hurt by the remarks others made about him during the heat of battle. He gave the Avengers his walking papers and jumped off into parts unknown.
This never would have happened in the JUSTICE LEAGUE.
During the showing I attended, after the credits were done, there is a scene where the Avengers are sitting together in a restaurant eating. The expressions on their faces indicate that they would all rather be somewhere else. When I first saw it, it appeared a little non-sequitur and just something added-on to pique interest. But then I went to my Volume 1 of the ESSENTIAL AVENGERS which covers the first twenty four issues of their saga. I decided to use it as a reference for my remarks in this review. When I got to page two of Issue Two, there it was right at the bottom! Essentially the same scene that tagged the end of the Avengers movie. Oh, the setting was different as well as a couple of the characters present or absent, but the theme of the scene was identical to the movie. A bunch of misfits decide to get together and meet regularly in order to increase and better facilitate group cohesion and they can barely stand being in each other's presence! It's the American Experience reductio ad absurdum. It is also the Human Experience should you wish to wax philosophical about it.
Reminds me of something I once heard Jesse Jackson declare during a speech and I believe he was quoting Martin Luther King; "We have to learn to live together no matter how painful, or we'll die apart as fools."
Suffice it to say that for the Avengers working together and living together is particularly painful at times.
No, Robert Downey Jr. would not have ordinarily come to mind as Tony Stark AKA IRON MAN, with his yuppie insouciance, but this is a new generation with its own issues and tastes, so there's no use asking "-where have you gone Errol Flynn and Ronald Coleman?". They're probably having lunch with Joe DiMaggio. Downey, in his own way, does more than represent with IRON MAN.
Knowing this genre intimately and well, this time I may be too close to it to effectively evaluate it. There are all kinds of things in this movie that do not fit, but that's the glory of the Marvel Universe. It is a depot for all the things that do not fit that are somehow made to achieve this transcendent irreverent harmony, rhythm and balance. As Edward G. Robinson once said in THE CINCINNATI KID, "-sort of like Life-".
Samuel L. Jackson has no real business being in the AVENGERS doing his usual scenery chewing, channeling bits of 'SHAFT' and 'HAWK' and the Black Man's angst about wanting in on the American Dream. For one thing, the original Nick Fury was a white World War Two hero who headed a squad called Sgt. Fury's Howling Commandos. He would probably be in his nineties by now, but only a time chosen few would know that. Besides, that's the beauty of this fantasy scenario. Nobody really questions what or who these super-powered characters are supposed to be avenging. Actually they're more like the FINAL GUARDIANS than AVENGERS. Anyway, you really would be missing the point pursuing this line of questioning. Here are all these odds and ends of personality and death-defying events and cultural themes somehow welded and soldered together in a kind of collage of imagination and experience and juvenile science fiction and it all works because in the end this ain't your universe. It's the MARVEL UNIVERSE and you're just living and thrilling in it. When you look at it that way, Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury gets down and gets back, and redefines the American Dream as something more than that house with the little white picket fence and perhaps simply the divine right to be whatever you want to be.
Joss Whedon and Zak Penn finally wised up and decided to stand on the shoulders of giants Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, instead of jumping off to do their own thing with the Marvel Universe. They have written a tale to celebrate. Joss Whedon's direction is Marvelouseque rather than a penetrating interpretation that sometimes hits and sometimes misses as in the case with Sam Rami's SPIDERMAN movies.
Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Chris Evans as Captain America, Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk, Tom Huddleston as Loki, Scarlet Johansson as the Black Widow, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye and Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, all have sufficient back stories now either through prior movies or the comics for the audience to be thoroughly prepared for what they might do. They are all so very nearly the characters themselves that all that's left is to be swept up in the action that is truly our satisfaction. And yet, the thing that makes the greatest impact in the end is the characters themselves.
Welcome to the Marvel Age of Comics in Cinema!