Assembly Required (An Avengers review)

Well, it was all leading up to this, wasn't it? If you need a refresher, I've compiled a page leading to all my previous reviews here.

Poster by Matt Ferguson. Check out his deviantArt page here.

This is it. The big one. The one Marvel was building up to all this time, one that's taken five years, five films and about $1bn to pull together. Just the preparation for this has been something new for filmmaking - characters from different films interacting together in the same universe. We got glimpses of it in a few Tarantino-related projects (Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction is the brother of Mr Blonde from Reservoir Dogs), but nothing on this scale, a world where a science fiction franchise, a monster movie, a swords-and-sorcery epic and a WWII-era pulp actioner exist comfortably side-by-side.

For the flagship title of this universe, and Marvel's only dog in the fight for best summer blockbuster, Avengers needed careful guiding. After all, otherwise you've spent five films leading up to a dud, and nobody wants that - not audiences, not executives, not the studios and certainly not the fans. Marvel scored a coup by getting nerd god Joss Whedon to both write and direct, but since Whedon has only one film credit to his name, and no experience with directing big-budget blockbusters, this was still a risk. A script is only as good as its direction, and while nobody was really doubting Avengers would provide high-octane action, the Marvel Studios films had a reputation for providing good plot and characters. That's quite a juggling act, and one that couldn't afford failure.

I've no doubt that Avengers is going to kill at the box office and make enough money that Disney could potentially give all its employees a vacation for a week. But has all that time been worth it? Find out after the jump.

All Night I Want the Young American (A Captain America: The First Avenger review)

With one more day to go until Avengers Assemble reach these shores, I've been covering the Marvel Cinematic Universe film by film. Having taken down both Iron Man films, The Incredible Hulk, and Thor, that leaves just one left. Ironically enough, it's also about the First Avenger.

Poster by Tyler Stout.

If Thor was considered a hard enough sell, imagine the headaches you'd get with making a film about Captain America. For one thing, the Captain has had two failed films made about him already. The first was an amazingly cheap 1979 two-hour TV film starring human airhorn Reb Brown in the title role, which contained a grand total of one fight scene and didn't feature the title character in his Evil Knievel-esque costume for over an hour; and the second was a more ambitious 1990 affair that only saw theatrical release in the USSR (no, I'm not making that up), and had the dubious honour of the son of J. D. Salinger playing the protagonist. Both of these films depicted Captain America as ineffectual weaklings who acted downright cowardly at times - not a good start.

Even if you ignore the track record, look at the character himself. He was designed as a propaganda figure by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in 1941, as you'd imagine any character whose first cover featured him punching out Hitler, with a ridiculous uniform that has never exactly looked good in live action, which is something of a tough sell internationally (if they'd released a Captain America film in 2005 in Britain, when about half the population hated America, it would have been torn apart). Personality-wise, like Superman, it's often difficult to write for Captain America because...what the hell can you do? He believes in freedom, truth, justice, and keeping people safe. He's ridiculously well-mannered. Physically, he's nigh-superhuman, and he's a brilliant tactician. Bit of a dull character on paper, and not one that lends itself to Hollywood's usual three-act films that demand character arcs - what one could you give to the Captain that would stick?

Somehow, director Joe Johnston (the man behind the excellent Rocketeer movie), writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, and actor Chris Evans found a way to make this work. How well? Stand at attention, soldiers, we're reviewing Captain America: The First Avenger after the jump at oh-right-fucking-now hours. Fall in!