Black Widow and Hawkeye were not extraneous. That's like saying Gordon Freeman being a Ph.D. is extraneous to the story of Half-Life.
Ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances accomplish the impossible - making them heroes. It's a staple of heroic stories that has existed since we told stories.
They were boring, and their personal conflict mostly involved a past that didn't really exist in the context of the movie itself. An uneducated viewer would give exactly two shits about Hawkeye, and his whole arc of being "bad" and then "good" again was pointless.
He's also portrayed as being far from ordinary, in the sense that he's shown as being able to hold his own against people with real powers. His personal story was barely touched on and was a deeply false and distracting note.
Better would have been to NOT HAVE either of these characters, use the agent who died as the "ordinary person under extraordinary circumstances" archtype, and to then have spent more screentime on the ideological "nature of the hero" conflict between Iron Man and Captain America instead: that latter one was MUCH more compelling yet was weakly addressed to make room for Hawkeye/Black Widow's mostly pointless bullshit.
The movie already had deeply compelling personal arcs with both internal and external conflict, not the least of which being:
1. Cap's idealism versus Iron Man's cynical realism. 2. Banner's internal struggle versus Fury's external struggle. 3. Thor versus Loki on all levels. 4. The non-superhero agents struggling to stand their ground and be heros.
Adding Black Widow's silly past, her relationship with Hawkeye, and his whole arc, just crowded out much more compelling narrative points to no real end. I literally didn't empathize with or care about Hawkeye at any point in the entire movie, and Black Widow was entirely one-dimensional. Remove them, cut the last fight in half, and explore the four points above more deeply, and you go from an average summer movie into a good summer movie.
This is something I've noticed in most recent "Summer Action Movies". The actual action has no tension
Yeap. The last fight in Avengers had exactly zero tension. Most of the vignettes within the fight itself had no bearing on the final outcome, and at no point did any character seem to be in danger, nor was there any tension or fear of failure.
I love good action movies, and the final fight of Avengers was literally the most boring part of the whole movie.
The score? Really, Rym? Why would you expect anything from the score in a Marvel movie and why would it be your very first complaint?
It was my last complaint, not my first one. I realized when I left the theater that I couldn't recall a single melody from the entire movie. Not one. But, watch some Zimmer-scored action movie (any one will do) and I defy you to not hum one of the themes for at least a few weeks after the movie.
The score was mediocre and, when it had to sound "action-y," was downright childish for its tired crescendos. It added nothing to the action, did nothing to increase the tension of any scene, and served no purpose other than to fill the soundscape with vaguely "I'M A MOVIE SOUNTRACK AND THIS IS A DRAMATIC SCENE" garbage.
It's like they didn't even try and just found someone cheap to stick in a generic movie soundtrack. Fucking Dragonheart had a better soundtrack (despite being cribbed almost entirely from existing movies).
Black Widow and Hawkeye were not extraneous. That's like saying Gordon Freeman being a Ph.D. is extraneous to the story of Half-Life.
Ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances accomplish the impossible - making them heroes. It's a staple of heroic stories that has existed since we told stories.
They were boring, and their personal conflict mostly involved a past that didn't really exist in the context of the movie itself. An uneducated viewer would give exactly two shits about Hawkeye, and his whole arc of being "bad" and then "good" again was pointless.
He's also portrayed as being far from ordinary, in the sense that he's shown as being able to hold his own against people with real powers. His personal story was barely touched on and was a deeply false and distracting note.
Better would have been to NOT HAVE either of these characters, use the agent who died as the "ordinary person under extraordinary circumstances" archtype, and to then have spent more screentime on the ideological "nature of the hero" conflict between Iron Man and Captain America instead: that latter one was MUCH more compelling yet was weakly addressed to make room for Hawkeye/Black Widow's mostly pointless bullshit.
The movie already had deeply compelling personal arcs with both internal and external conflict, not the least of which being:
1. Cap's idealism versus Iron Man's cynical realism. 2. Banner's internal struggle versus Fury's external struggle. 3. Thor versus Loki on all levels. 4. The non-superhero agents struggling to stand their ground and be heros.
Adding Black Widow's silly past, her relationship with Hawkeye, and his whole arc, just crowded out much more compelling narrative points to no real end. I literally didn't empathize with or care about Hawkeye at any point in the entire movie, and Black Widow was entirely one-dimensional. Remove them, cut the last fight in half, and explore the four points above more deeply, and you go from an average summer movie into a good summer movie.
I can agree that Hawkeye was a "meh" character, but he provided Black Widow's motivation, which was entirely essential to her character. It gave her a personal stake in the action, which helped keep things grounded in the face of all the ridiculous action.
Further, you need a character like Black Widow to create the bottom end of the continuum of heroes. If Loki were so powerful that he couldn't be bested by anyone except the Hulk, you'd wind up with what is essentially a Superman story - you are too weak and helpless to stand on your own, so find someone to save you. That's boring, because we feel as if we have no input in the situation.
But Black Widow - who was in all other respects relatively ordinary - outwitted the trickster god. By creating a hero that seems both accessible and realistic, and giving that hero any purchase against any otherwise insurmountable force, you create a foothold so that we can start gaining hope.
Hawkeye doesn't stand up to people with real power until the end, though. Earlier, he is under the influence of a character with actual power, which removes him from his typical realm of normalcy. When that influence is remove, he finds the strength in himself to stand against these seemingly impossible foes. He proves that you don't need to be enhanced by an external force in order to be a hero - just like Black Widow.
And that is why they're necessary.
The relationship between the two keeps them human. Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, and Thor are all above those sorts of feelings for most of the movie - because they're the extraordinary, transhuman heroes.
It could have been more compelling, sure, but that's partly because Scarlett Johanssen isn't really a good actress. From a storytelling perspective, those characters were absolutely needed.
I agree that Black Widow was important because of that one scene where she tricks Loki. It also makes sense to have a non-powered character being the one trying to disable the generator for the wormhole, because the powered characters need to fight off aliens and rescue people. Black Widow was no help against aliens and giant worms, but she was a good candidate to scale the Stark tower and try to turn off the generator. It was also important to have Black Widow be there so that when Hawkeye turned evil, we had someone on our list of main characters who cared about him enough to get him back.
As for Hawkeye, I think they did a good job of fitting him in. Seeing as how he was introduced specifically for this movie, having him turn evil let them not waste a lot of time developing him. He's just an agent, and he creates a lot of conflict since he is on the level of say, Captain America in terms of what he can accomplish. Using him to create problems is good, and his scene with Black Widow involving their past is wrapped up very quickly. He is then just on-board to provide good action and is relatively unimportant from there, as he should've been.
I fail to see how either of their arcs are pointless or weigh the movie down.
They're poorly executed and, if you chart out the plot, largely extraneous. You can wax about what they were intended to do, but they largely fail to accomplish anything of the sort.
Rym: "I don't like things." Everyone Else: "You should like those things, especially because you like shittier things." Rym: "I still don't like things." Scott: "I don't like things either and everyone who does is subhuman and/or mentally deficient." Everyone Else: "You should both like things, you're being too critical/stubborn." Rym: "I still don't like things." Scott: "I still don't like things either, idiots." Everyone Else: "That's nice. We like things, and you're both being rather silly."
Anyway, I think we can all agree that The Raid: Redemption, AKA Two Hours of Indonesians Shoot/Slice/Punching The Shit Out Of Each Other in a Project is way better than The Avengers. On the scale of Action Movie Holy Shits, Avengers got a 9/10, and The Raid got an "11/10 and holy shit I have a boner right now."
Anyway, I think we can all agree that The Raid: Redemption, AKA Two Hours of Indonesians Shoot/Slice/Punching The Shit Out Of Each Other in a Project is way better than The Avengers. On the scale of Action Movie Holy Shits, Avengers got a 9/10, and The Raid got an "11/10 and holy shit I have a boner right now."
Awww yeah the raid. Like I told you back on Page 76, go and watch Merantu right the fuck now, too.
You too, Scrym, and get on Merantu and The Raid, too. It'll cleanse your palette after the Avengers.
I'm just surprised that some of you hold this decidedly average (not bad, but desperately average) movie in such high regard. ;^)
The only thing I am going to say about this whole thing is that Avatar is easily one of the worst movies I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot of bad movies.
I'm just surprised that some of you hold this decidedly average (not bad, but desperately average) movie in such high regard. ;^)
The only thing I am going to say about this whole thing is that Avatar is easily one of the worst movies I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot of bad movies.
The Last Airbender? Yes. The SciFi pulp thriller? You honestly thing that warrants "worst?" Really? Popular pulp scifi with good special effects, a decent soundtrack, and all that? Worse than or on the level of Waterworld, Xanadu, Battlefield Earth, Clifford, Pocahontas, or Ishtar? Really?
It's at least average. If you honestly think it's with the "worst," then I don't think you've seen enough movies. Like the plot or not, it is by almost all accounts decidedly above average. Not that average is a high bar, I agree, but Avatar hardly warrants "worst" for any legitimate reason.
I'm just surprised that some of you hold this decidedly average (not bad, but desperately average) movie in such high regard. ;^)
The only thing I am going to say about this whole thing is that Avatar is easily one of the worst movies I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot of bad movies.
The Last Airbender? Yes. The SciFi pulp thriller? You honestly thing that warrants "worst?" Really? Popular pulp scifi with good special effects, a decent soundtrack, and all that? Worse than or on the level of Waterworld, Xanadu, Battlefield Earth, Clifford, Pocahontas, or Ishtar? Really?
It's at least average. If you honestly think it's with the "worst," then I don't think you've seen enough movies. Like the plot or not, it is by almost all accounts decidedly above average. Not that average is a high bar, I agree, but Avatar hardly warrants "worst" for any legitimate reason.
I hated just about everything about James Cameron's Avatar. The only things I liked were the graphics and the design of the world itself. Everything else about the movie was completely forgettable and I derived absolutely no joy from watching the movie besides seeing the world of Pandora.
Note that I have a different way of defining a bad movie. A bad movie (like Drive Angry, for example) can do just about everything wrong. Aspects like a stupid story or bad acting would normally ruin a movie, but if the movie is so unbelievably over the top and silly that it becomes entertaining, I will end up considering it to be a good movie solely because of the entertainment factor (while still admitting that it is a train wreck of a film in just about every other way).
There is nothing wrong with the premise of Avatar. I mean, hell it's been done before multiple times. It's competently made and has pretty good cinematography, fantastic visuals, and par acting. If you guys are so hell bent on hating Rym for being a contrarian, it's pretty pot meet kettle if you guys are hating on Avatar.
There is nothing wrong with the premise of Avatar. I mean, hell it's been done before multiple times. It's competently made and has pretty good cinematography, fantastic visuals, and par acting. If you guys are so hell bent on hating Rym for being a contrarian, it's pretty pot meet kettle if you guys are hating on Avatar.
At least I never have to worry about being called out on that:-p
There is nothing wrong with the premise of Avatar. I mean, hell it's been done before multiple times. It's competently made and has pretty good cinematography, fantastic visuals, and par acting. If you guys are so hell bent on hating Rym for being a contrarian, it's pretty pot meet kettle if you guys are hating on Avatar.
At least I never have to worry about being called out on that:-p
You have the opposite problem. If you like everything, then your opinion is worthless.
Fact: 99% of everything is crap.
Therefore people like me, who hate on 99% have taste that is most in line with reality.
There is nothing wrong with the premise of Avatar. I mean, hell it's been done before multiple times. It's competently made and has pretty good cinematography, fantastic visuals, and par acting. If you guys are so hell bent on hating Rym for being a contrarian, it's pretty pot meet kettle if you guys are hating on Avatar.
There is nothing wrong with the premise of it, it just didn't need to be almost 3 hours long to tell that particular story. It's a well made movie, it is just too long and the characters are completely stock.
There is nothing wrong with the premise of Avatar. I mean, hell it's been done before multiple times. It's competently made and has pretty good cinematography, fantastic visuals, and par acting. If you guys are so hell bent on hating Rym for being a contrarian, it's pretty pot meet kettle if you guys are hating on Avatar.
At least I never have to worry about being called out on that:-p
You have the opposite problem. If you like everything, then your opinion is worthless.
Fact: 99% of everything is crap.
Therefore people like me, who hate on 99% have taste that is most in line with reality.
That is not a fact. 99% of everything is stuff you don't like. There is an absolute difference, and if you fail to see that, you're more lost than I thought.
There is nothing wrong with the premise of Avatar. I mean, hell it's been done before multiple times. It's competently made and has pretty good cinematography, fantastic visuals, and par acting. If you guys are so hell bent on hating Rym for being a contrarian, it's pretty pot meet kettle if you guys are hating on Avatar.
At least I never have to worry about being called out on that:-p
You have the opposite problem. If you like everything, then your opinion is worthless.
Fact: 99% of everything is crap.
Therefore people like me, who hate on 99% have taste that is most in line with reality.
That is not a fact. 99% of everything is stuff you don't like.K There is an absolute difference, and if you fail to see that, you're more lost than I thought.
But the real Sturgeon's Law is "Nothing is always absolutely so." You could stand to learn that lesson sometimes.
You could learn to keep philosophical truths out of practical discussions. Of course nothing is absolutely so, except that I exist. However, grass is green, the sky is blue, and the overwhelming majority of art that has ever been created is awful.
Comments
He's also portrayed as being far from ordinary, in the sense that he's shown as being able to hold his own against people with real powers. His personal story was barely touched on and was a deeply false and distracting note.
Better would have been to NOT HAVE either of these characters, use the agent who died as the "ordinary person under extraordinary circumstances" archtype, and to then have spent more screentime on the ideological "nature of the hero" conflict between Iron Man and Captain America instead: that latter one was MUCH more compelling yet was weakly addressed to make room for Hawkeye/Black Widow's mostly pointless bullshit.
The movie already had deeply compelling personal arcs with both internal and external conflict, not the least of which being:
1. Cap's idealism versus Iron Man's cynical realism.
2. Banner's internal struggle versus Fury's external struggle.
3. Thor versus Loki on all levels.
4. The non-superhero agents struggling to stand their ground and be heros.
Adding Black Widow's silly past, her relationship with Hawkeye, and his whole arc, just crowded out much more compelling narrative points to no real end. I literally didn't empathize with or care about Hawkeye at any point in the entire movie, and Black Widow was entirely one-dimensional. Remove them, cut the last fight in half, and explore the four points above more deeply, and you go from an average summer movie into a good summer movie.
I love good action movies, and the final fight of Avengers was literally the most boring part of the whole movie.
The score was mediocre and, when it had to sound "action-y," was downright childish for its tired crescendos. It added nothing to the action, did nothing to increase the tension of any scene, and served no purpose other than to fill the soundscape with vaguely "I'M A MOVIE SOUNTRACK AND THIS IS A DRAMATIC SCENE" garbage.
It's like they didn't even try and just found someone cheap to stick in a generic movie soundtrack. Fucking Dragonheart had a better soundtrack (despite being cribbed almost entirely from existing movies).
Compared to this, the difference is clear.
Further, you need a character like Black Widow to create the bottom end of the continuum of heroes. If Loki were so powerful that he couldn't be bested by anyone except the Hulk, you'd wind up with what is essentially a Superman story - you are too weak and helpless to stand on your own, so find someone to save you. That's boring, because we feel as if we have no input in the situation.
But Black Widow - who was in all other respects relatively ordinary - outwitted the trickster god. By creating a hero that seems both accessible and realistic, and giving that hero any purchase against any otherwise insurmountable force, you create a foothold so that we can start gaining hope.
Hawkeye doesn't stand up to people with real power until the end, though. Earlier, he is under the influence of a character with actual power, which removes him from his typical realm of normalcy. When that influence is remove, he finds the strength in himself to stand against these seemingly impossible foes. He proves that you don't need to be enhanced by an external force in order to be a hero - just like Black Widow.
And that is why they're necessary.
The relationship between the two keeps them human. Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, and Thor are all above those sorts of feelings for most of the movie - because they're the extraordinary, transhuman heroes.
It could have been more compelling, sure, but that's partly because Scarlett Johanssen isn't really a good actress. From a storytelling perspective, those characters were absolutely needed.
The score was entirely forgettable.
I agree that Black Widow was important because of that one scene where she tricks Loki. It also makes sense to have a non-powered character being the one trying to disable the generator for the wormhole, because the powered characters need to fight off aliens and rescue people. Black Widow was no help against aliens and giant worms, but she was a good candidate to scale the Stark tower and try to turn off the generator. It was also important to have Black Widow be there so that when Hawkeye turned evil, we had someone on our list of main characters who cared about him enough to get him back.
As for Hawkeye, I think they did a good job of fitting him in. Seeing as how he was introduced specifically for this movie, having him turn evil let them not waste a lot of time developing him. He's just an agent, and he creates a lot of conflict since he is on the level of say, Captain America in terms of what he can accomplish. Using him to create problems is good, and his scene with Black Widow involving their past is wrapped up very quickly. He is then just on-board to provide good action and is relatively unimportant from there, as he should've been.
I fail to see how either of their arcs are pointless or weigh the movie down.
Rym: "I don't like things."
Everyone Else: "You should like those things, especially because you like shittier things."
Rym: "I still don't like things."
Scott: "I don't like things either and everyone who does is subhuman and/or mentally deficient."
Everyone Else: "You should both like things, you're being too critical/stubborn."
Rym: "I still don't like things."
Scott: "I still don't like things either, idiots."
Everyone Else: "That's nice. We like things, and you're both being rather silly."
I think that pretty much covers it.
Scott's efforts, to quote the great schollar and Prophet, El Mariachi, "Ah, Not yet."
Anyway, I think we can all agree that The Raid: Redemption, AKA Two Hours of Indonesians Shoot/Slice/Punching The Shit Out Of Each Other in a Project is way better than The Avengers. On the scale of Action Movie Holy Shits, Avengers got a 9/10, and The Raid got an "11/10 and holy shit I have a boner right now."
You too, Scrym, and get on Merantu and The Raid, too. It'll cleanse your palette after the Avengers.
Rym Today.
It's at least average. If you honestly think it's with the "worst," then I don't think you've seen enough movies. Like the plot or not, it is by almost all accounts decidedly above average. Not that average is a high bar, I agree, but Avatar hardly warrants "worst" for any legitimate reason.
Note that I have a different way of defining a bad movie. A bad movie (like Drive Angry, for example) can do just about everything wrong. Aspects like a stupid story or bad acting would normally ruin a movie, but if the movie is so unbelievably over the top and silly that it becomes entertaining, I will end up considering it to be a good movie solely because of the entertainment factor (while still admitting that it is a train wreck of a film in just about every other way).
Fact: 99% of everything is crap.
Therefore people like me, who hate on 99% have taste that is most in line with reality.
There is an absolute difference, and if you fail to see that, you're more lost than I thought.
It's a law. That means it's even more true that gravity, which is a theory.