[Cecil Terwilliger]

I just wanted to go into a little more detail on why this movie kicked so much ass.

I'm not a director and I'm not in the entertainment industry but I can honestly say that I could probably have made better superhero movies than about half of what has been released thus far. At the very least I could have told the studios why their movies sucked balls and how to fix it. I truly mean that. So often they change key plot points, or would go too cheesy, too silly. Basically it always felt that the studios and filmmakers thought that comics were silly stories for kids and they would make their movies that way. That includes some of Marvel's best stuff like Xmen and Spiderman.

Since Blade in 1998, which I consider the start of the comic movie trend, filmmakers have struggled to find that happy medium of adaptation. Some movies came out as pure cheese and others couldn't' quite break the barrier and be believable.

I'd say all comic book movies are basically in 2 classes.

1) your standard superhero fare. Xmen, Spidey, GL, FF, V for Vendetta (more on this one later) etc These movies to one degree or another were adapted for the screen. Basically take your standard fluffy action movie and replace Bruce Willis with a comic book character and voila, a movie is born.

The most successful of these types were the ones that managed to fit in much of the superhero lore while still maintaining a somewhat believable movie. Sometimes though the film became far too silly and suspension of disbelief just didn't fly.

One thing all of these movies shared, save maybe V for Vendetta, is that they weren't good movies. And I don't mean good movies compared to other stupid action movies, I mean good movies compared to a solid drama. Most of the time the plot was convoluted, had tons of plot holes, poor acting, cheesiness and try as the film might just didn't quite capture the feel of a comic book properly. Something always felt just a tad off. Even the really good ones like Spiderman just didn't have me totally immersed. For the longest time I always just thought it was because, as a comic lover, they could never take my fave stories and characters and just put them on screen without butchering it. So some filmmakers came up with category 2. Don't bother trying to change stuff, just literally put page to screen.

Which brings me to group 2).

These I would consider movies like Sin City, Watchmen and 300. All three said "#### it, why try and meld comic and mainstream movie, lets skip that and just literally turn the pages into a movie". They didn't look like normal movies, they looked like moving comic books with sound. The filmmakers realized that adapting those comics to the big screen and following the traditional film model wouldn't work so they embraced the cartoonish aspects and fed off of that.

And it worked quite well for all three of those. We've also seen a few spectacular failures like The Spirit that tried to use this overly cartoonish model.

I was tempted to put Watchmen and V for Vendetta in their own category because they both did a pretty good job of staying faithful to the comic and were also solid movies (Vendetta was made waaaayyyy lighter in tone and V the character was way less morally ambiguous).

And although Watchmen was like a superhero movie, it wasn't quite a superhero movie. That was the whole point of Watchmen the comic was to revolutionize the way we look at heroes and likewise the film can't simply be lumped in with other comic book/superhero movies.


The closest we've ever seen to a true cinematic comic experience that was a solid movie and one that didn't resort to just putting page to screen was obviously TDK.

TDK wasn't really either of group 1 or 2. It was too well acted and too powerful to simply be another fluffy comic movie. They tried to make it a genuinely good movie. A movie you didn't just compare to other action movies but a film that you could compare to ANYTHING.

They came very close but failed in that attempt. TDK was too weak in too many story areas to be a genuinely good movie without adding "for a comic book movie". Even though Nolan made it so real, and suspension of disbelief was working fine to mask the often problematic hero stuff, they really dropped the ball on gaping plot holes for me to be totally immersed in that world. Still, until the Avengers, it was the closest thing to the "truth" so to speak, without resorting to doing a Sin City style "its practically a cartoon" type green screen movie.


Then came the Avengers. Whedon has made a masterful film. It isn't as good of a movie as TDK. It just isn't. The acting in TDK was top notch, it has deep, meaningful themes that make you question morality, right and wrong and the hero vs villain, hero/anti-hero etc etc. But that's where TDK had a problem. It was too serious and good for a comic movie and too comic book movie-ish to be put in a category with other amazing drama films.

But Whedon wasn't going for just a genuinely solid movie. He wanted to make the best superhero movie of all time. That means that it is inherently different in tone and feel than TDK. You know from the first minute that this is an action movie and that you aren't going to see a Best Picture nominee. The normal leaps in logic that we see with comic book movies was still there. Since it didn't take itself as seriously as TDK, the minor plot issues or lack of story aren't a concern or nearly as glaring as they were in TDK.

Avengers was so strong though, that for the first time ever a comic book movie blew my mind. It had the perfect amount of action, it was filmed beautifully, it was funny, it didn't have hardly any cheesy moments like virtually all superhero movies have, including Spiderman and Xmen.

I think the Incredible Hulk was a big stepping stone. It showed that a serious actor could play a sympathetic role in a superhero movie that still had action but also had heart. As much as I liked Spiderman 1 & 2 and Xmen 1 & 2 they were both pretty cheesy a lot of times, or had absolutely moronic plot holes that were unavoidable.

Whedon has found the perfect harmony of inside references, accurate but believable characters, action, story, humor. He truly found a way to keep the world true to the comics and not make it seem silly. That's why I was so surprised to see the Helicarrier or Hawkeye or Thanos. There were so many things that even I would have said "no way, that just won't translate without going all Sin City". The other thing Whedon did was embrace the intricacy and history of the comic. Plot points, characters, scenes, vehicles etc that I never, ever thought would translate well to screen weren't just done so believably, they were done masterfully. Whedon didn't shun the stuff that would be hard to translate, he ####ing owned it. He didn't skip it because it wouldn't work or would look cheesy, he went all out and made it work in a way that makes you wonder how anyone could have gotten it wrong. That in itself is a truly amazing feat.

That's pretty long winded and I'm sure some of it is confusing, contradictory to itself or just nonsensical but I had no other way to describe why a movie that story wise wasn't that amazing, had no memorable acting performances like Heath Ledger, had no blood, guts or sex, was pretty lighthearted, didn't have a super deep message like TDK or Watchmen etc etc. I honestly don't know how to properly phrase it. Whedon took so many things I wasn't sure could even be pulled off and he didn't just manage to get it done, he did it better than I could ever imagine. RIght at the beginning of this post I stated I could probably have made better comic book movies than 90% of the stuff out there, including the Spiderman and Xmen which each had major downsides. I couldn't even have dreamed of making this film this good.

I've often felt that studios meddle too much in superhero movies. They change this character, or that part of the origin or pick and choose plot elements from different stories etc. Much like Peter Jackson did with LOTR, I've always thought, why not just make a film faithful to the effin comic? (and preferably without going green screen 300 style) How hard could it be to make a regular movie that had super heroes and was awesome? I assumed Avengers was one of those movies that just couldn't work. Too many characters, too much stuff going on, too far fetched to work. Some of these comic book movies seem destined to fail because they just won't translate well. Green Lantern was one of those. You could tell before the first trailer ever came out that they could never adapt it properly and have it be a good flick. I honestly thought Avengers would fall into that category.

And yet it is IMO far and away superior to TDK. I know it is early and I may think less of the film as I watch it repeatedly as I did TDK but I can say for certain I was more excited for TDK but I'm far more excited to see Avengers for a second time than I was TDK. In fact I didn't even see TDK twice in theatres I don't think.