The Mark of A New Generation of "Good Films"

Rating: 6/10 (10 December 2013)

The Avengers falls nowhere short of delivering a fiery and action packed roller coaster ride of explosions. The movie spends its time passing on the spotlight to each avenger, showing off his or her unique ways of dominating enemies and overcoming hazardous obstacles. Seeing all of our favorite superheroes unite under one common enemy is an exciting thought and was inevitable from one day working its way into a movie. Having an army of superheroes to save the world from utter destruction isn't always a bad thing, but for a film, sometimes less is more.
While The Avengers offers many good fighting scenes, special effects, and cool futuristic gadgets that make your head spin, the fundamentals of a good film are simply lacking. The main problem with this movie is it's plethoric cast of superheroes. There are way too many to center on at once. As hinted earlier, the movie focuses too much on showing off each character one at a time, constantly switching the audience's support from one to another. Throughout the movie, there is a constant struggle for dominance between each avenger that involves boasting, smack talk, bouts, and interferences. Pretty soon the audience is divided up rooting for their favorite hero, and the whole idea of the main villain is dropped completely!
The story is simple and clear: kill Loki. Scene after scene however, that mission is forgotten by two or more of the avengers trying to display their macho-ness to one another. Unlike many great movies, this plot line is drastically linear and bare to the bones in meaning. In the midst of the film, I thought I was watching an intense WWA match from the future. Six superheroes is just too many for one movie. The filmmakers did a good job focusing on each hero, but that is all they had time for. I can't help but think, if they only had two, maybe three main heroes, they would have had enough time to develop a more interesting and meaningful plot.
Decades ago, we saw for the first time great and innovative movies like Star Wars, Terminator 1 and 2, Platoon, Alien, and (just last decade) The Dark Knight. All of these films were able to focus on several main characters, villains, and a storyline that were all intricately tied together and saturated with meaningful and thought-provoking ideas. In light of The Avengers' wide and warmly welcomed reception, it seems that the standards and expectations for "good films" has switched to a more dry and corny interpretation. All The Avengers truly has to offer is wild action scenes, interpersonal conflict, and imaginative applications of special effects. These assets however are known for never having the capability of elongating a films success and keeping it in the fond memories of its viewers. Movies like Star Wars, which originated in the 70's, lacked horribly in intense action, and animation, but the qualities of a good story and its creativity keeps it so popular to this day. Other examples of movies that only glimmered for their achievements in animation are ones like Avatar, which was quickly forgotten because it lacked a fundamentally solid story to remember.
The Avengers is merely eye-candy that satisfies Marvel fans and audiences seeking captivating fight scenes. It is more appropriate to label this work a collection battle animated scenes rather than an actual movie.