Movie: The Avengers (2012)

All the spoilers all the time.  You have been warned!

Some Thoughts While Watching:

Alex loves the Stark/Banner relationship because of the encouragement to be himself.  He struggles with the fact that Tony Stark suffers from PTSD and it is not accurately played out in the movie.

Hey! It’s the Matrix lady and Hot Guy.  Ha ha ha… If you want to quickly aggravate my son, any time he says Hawkeye do a giggity chuckle and say “Hot Guy”….

I LOVE LOKI….

Ass Guards or Asgards, you tell me… giggity

Is Loki still an ice dude?  Is Steve Rogers an Assicle?  I am starting to feel a chill….

Hot Guy – he is like the Elvis Presley of the archery world!

The scene in the glass hall between Black Widow and The Hulk might be one of my favorites.  I like how it is shot.  Spot on cinematography there.

Avengers!  Because “A group of remarkable people assemble!” doesn’t sound as cool.

HA HA HA Glow Stick of Destiny!!!

Artwork found on Pintrest. Wasn’t able to find an actual fan-artist who made this. I would buy this as a print!

“If we cannot protect the earth, we damn sure will defend it.”  Eventually you have to Avenge it, post-snap.  Otherwise I would say your group name should be Defenders…

I want a movie with Hawkeye and Black Widow that is a retro of their timeline in Budapest…. Make that and I will give you my money!

Schwarma!  Related side note: It is not easy to find a place in West Virginia that serves Schwarma!

I truly loved this movie. There will be few times in the future that the “coming together” of multiple characters from different movies will be as effective or – even possible.  I stand and do the slow clap which builds into screaming cheers as I thank Marvel for what they were able to achieve!

And this is the last movie in Phase One of the MCU.

And now for my MCU ranking:

• Iron Man 1
• The Avengers
• Captain America: First Avenger
• Thor 1
• Iron Man 2
• Hulk

Some Interviews and Extra Video:

IMDB Synopsis: Earth’s mightiest heroes must come together and learn to fight as a team if they are going to stop the mischievous Loki and his alien army from enslaving humanity.

Starring:

	Robert Downey Jr.	…	Tony Stark / Iron Man
	Chris Evans	…	Steve Rogers / Captain America
	Mark Ruffalo	…	Bruce Banner / The Hulk
	Chris Hemsworth	…	Thor
	Scarlett Johansson	…	Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow
	Jeremy Renner	…	Clint Barton / Hawkeye
	Tom Hiddleston	…	Loki
	Clark Gregg	…	Agent Phil Coulson
	Cobie Smulders	…	Agent Maria Hill
	Stellan Skarsgård	…	Selvig
	Samuel L. Jackson	…	Nick Fury
	Gwyneth Paltrow	…	Pepper Potts
	Paul Bettany	…	Jarvis (voice)

Director: Joss Whedon

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My ranking scores –

0-19 Levels of: Ugh

20-39 Levels of: Meh (aka I cannot reach the remote)

40-59 Levels of: I don’t hate it?

60-85 Levels of: That was solid.

86-100 Levels of: I Loved It!

I rank this movie a 96!

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Trailer:

Additional Movie Info:

It received a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 92% Fresh.  It received a Rotten Tomato audience rating of 91% liking it.  Average Rating: 4.44/5 with a number of User Ratings: 1,134,701.

Movie Reviews:

• Roger Ebert
• NY Times

Specs:  Release date: 4 May 2012 (USA) / Runtime: 1435 minutes / Budget: $220M

IMDB Trivia:

• Robert Downey, Jr. kept food hidden all over the lab set, and apparently nobody could find where it was, so they just let him continue doing it. In the movie, that’s his actual food he’s offering, and when he was eating, it wasn’t scripted, he was just hungry.
• Reportedly, a scene was filmed where, during the final battle, Captain America saves an old man trying to protect his grandchildren. He tells him to “Get them to cover”, but as he walks away, the old man asks him “Cap, is that really you?” He turns and, noting the man’s World War II veteran lapel pin, trades salutes with him. As Captain America sprints away, the children ask their grandfather, “Do you know him?”, and he replies “we all know him.”
• (At around two hours) When the missile is released over Manhattan, the pilot calls detonation in two minutes and thirty seconds. The sequence between then, and the detonation, is two minutes and thirty seconds of film time.
• To prepare for the role of Agent Clint Barton (Hawkeye), Jeremy Renner was trained by Olympic archers.
• Tom Hiddleston revealed in an interview with the Guardian that the code name for the film early in its production was “Group Hug”.
• (At around one hour and eleven minutes) The laboratory scene, where Bruce Banner explains how he once attempted to commit suicide by shooting himself in the mouth is a direct reference to a deleted scene from The Incredible Hulk (2008), where Edward Norton’s Bruce Banner tried to commit suicide in this manner out in the middle of Alaska’s wilderness, only to be stopped by his transformation into the Hulk.
• The first Marvel Cinematic Universe film to earn $1 billion.
• Tony Stark casually refers to three of the other main characters, Loki, Thor, and Hawkeye, as either movie characters, or movie titles. He calls Loki “Reindeer Games”, Thor “Point Break”, and Hawkeye “Legolas”.
• (At around fifty-five minutes) Tony Stark tells Bruce Banner that he admires his work on anti-electron collisions. When electrons and anti-electrons (also known as positrons) collide, they annihilate each other and high-energy photons, or gamma rays (the fictional means, by which Bruce Banner became The Incredible Hulk) are produced in their place.
• (At around two hours) When filming the scene of Loki yelling at the Hulk, Tom Hiddleston had a rope tied to his leg, and since the Hulk is just CGI, when the rope was pulled, it would appear that the Hulk had grabbed him. Tom knew it was going to be pulled during the speech, but he didn’t know when, so that he wouldn’t be anticipating it.
• The crew hired twenty-five members of the Ohio-based 391st Military Police Force Battalion for the attack on New York City, to add realism to the battle.
• Since this movie and Iron Man 3 (2013) were originally part of a six-picture deal with Marvel and Paramount Pictures before the distribution rights were transferred to Walt Disney Pictures, it’s the Paramount logo that appears in advertising and marketing, as well as the beginning of this movie. Although Paramount Pictures had no part in the production of this movie, they still received a share of the box-office grosses, based on their original deal with Marvel. No reference to Disney is made, until the end of the closing credits, where it says “The Avengers” is “Distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.”
• The outdoor scenes, which were supposed to take place in Germany, but were filmed in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, contained numerous Cleveland Historical landmarks including; Tower City, Higbee Building and Casino, the Renaissance Building, and the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument.
• As each character is introduced, the previous scene references that character. It begins when Fury says to call in the rest of the team, leading to the next scene of Black Widow being called. In that scene she is told to bring in “the big guy”, referencing the Hulk. The next scene has her luring Bruce Banner. In the next scene, Fury is having a video conference with the World Security Council and says a war is won with soldiers, leading to the next scene with Captain America. In that scene, he says the tesseract should’ve been left in the ocean, leading to the next scene, in which Iron Man is in the water.
• It took Marvel three tries with the MPAA to grant the film a PG-13, instead of an R rating, because of Agent Coulson’s death scene. Originally, Loki’s staff was seen bursting through his chest. Instead, a gruesome sound effect was added after Loki appears behind him, and then a quick-cut to Thor’s reaction.
• Body Count: one hundred fifty-one (including the Chitauri).
• Just before the end, when Loki regains consciousness in Stark’s tower and sees the The Avengers assembled over him, you can just briefly and barely see a trail of hair vertically across Thor’s face, like a scar, going across his right eye. It could be a coincidence or perhaps a subtle clue of Thor losing his eye in Thor: Ragnarök (2017). It is also vaguely shaped like a lightning bolt, perhaps also alluding to Thor’s acceptance and realization of his true power with the channeling and control of lighting.