Marvel’s “The Avengers” is one of the most ambitious film projects of all time. In 2008’s “Iron Man,” geeks who stayed after the credits were treated to a scene with Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury telling Tony Stark about The Avengers Initiative. This was such a strange experience to see a character who wasn’t in the actual movie talking about another film, which was most likely years away and hadn’t even been started.
Little did we know, they had planned this all along. “The Avengers” would be released as a collective sequel to “Iron Man 2,” “The Incredible Hulk,” “Captain America” and “Thor.” Four different film franchises taking place in different settings with different characters, sometimes in different time periods or on different worlds. How could they possibly have pulled something like this off?
After the biggest opening weekend of all time with a whopping $200 million dollars, it is clear that somehow they have pulled this off. Writer and director Joss Whedon finally found a project that was perfect for him.
The plot is your basic comic book set-up. A being from another world has come to earth with the intention of stealing an object of unlimited power and using it to rule over all humanity. What makes this villain interesting is that it is Thor’s (Chris Hemsworth) brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) who was banished from his home of Asgard in the “Thor” film. Luckily, Loki has managed to find an army of “Chitauri” who will do his bidding as long as he steals the “Tesseract” from the humans.
The Tesseract is a cube-shaped object which has the potential to do almost anything. It’s the epitome of a “McGuffin,” or a plot device that moves the story along without actually meaning anything. The film actually gets off to a slow start because Nick Fury and the rest of the S.H.I.E.L.D. crew spend a lot of time talking about the technical aspects of the Tesseract like it actually means anything to the audience. It’s essentially a glowing cube that Loki wants, and that’s really all we need to know.
Once the film gets to the actual Avengers, it becomes fantastic. Whedon has managed to keep everything that makes these characters interesting and unique, while also making them fit into this universe with each other. The point is that these characters do not belong together. They’re loners and outcasts who have been forced to band together to save the world they love. Just seeing Captain America, an unfrozen 1940s superhuman soldier with an indestructible shield, standing next to Thor, an inhuman God from space who flies around with a magic hammer, is bizarre. Somehow it works, and the characters’ differences are what makes it so exhilarating to watch them kick ass together.
Finally, Whedon fans can stop complaining. Whedon has had a cult fanbase ever since his show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” gained fame in the 90s. Since Buffy, he has had trouble getting projects off the ground. His series “Firefly” and “Dollhouse” were cancelled well before their prime, which made Whedon fans angry like the Hulk. However, it doesn’t look like Whedon fans will have to worry about that anymore, because their cult hero has just released one of the biggest movies of all time and will no doubt be a major Hollywood player for the rest of his career.
He deserves it. “The Avengers” is an unquestionable success, and retroactively legitimizes all the previous Marvel releases, which seemed like they were all part of a bigger picture. Hopefully Marvel will continue to churn out successful superhero films so we can see these guys team up once more before the actors get too old.