Just watched The Avengers last night (refused to call it Avengers Assemble).

I've evidently missed something huge out by not watching Thor (I've seen the others - IM1&2, Incredible Hulk, Captain America), so if you haven't watched all these before, it does get a little confusing. Although it's still a good movie in its own right, you would get a lot more out of it if you'd had watched the others.

The experience was ruined by two things - noisy kids who seemed to have very small bladders (they were rackety only twice but that's twice too many IMO), and the speakers. Evidently, having not seen it as soon as it came out, I was relegated to viewing it on one of the smaller screens and hence didn't feel as immersed. The soundtrack was a little off IMO and this was compounded by my recent ear issues following a cold.

S P O I L E R S



Kicked off to a good start. I loved Samuel L Jackson in this role. I did think the black widow was hot but I also thought she could have been eminently improved by replacing her with Christina Hendricks . Hawkeye wasn't a character I was familiar with but I did understand his role. Captain America was pretty awesome. Loved the banter between Stark and Banner - that was excellent - the technology talk, the need to try and Banner to transform. With Thor, I didn't watch the film and in this film, I'm upset by it based on his performance (I thought Thor would have been crap - how wrong I was!) and the character of Loki. The latter, as with most baddies, still outshone the good guys.

The Hulk/Banner. I loved Bill Bixby, hated Ang Lee's, and loved Edward Norton's Hulk/Banner. Norton had a similar physique/appearance to Bixby so was very reminiscent of him, as well as bringing out his acting background. Consequently, I had mixed feelings towards Ruffalo being Banner. Having said that, he seemed to have this weird behaviour/nature about him - almost like a cheeky arrogant streak which I absolutely loved. The Hulk IMO was poorly animated and nowhere near as good as the Incredible Hulk - he was more like Ang Lee's Hulk. However, I did enjoy the action and certainly Banner's ability to transform at will.

Agent Phil Coulson - I'm very unhappy that he died. He was my favourite character of all of them!

All in all 9/10 and I'm looking forward to the sequel.







/S P O I L E R S

Agent coulson was never explicitly shown as being dead, just Fury saying to everyone he is dead. Since they can bring him back at anytime if they wish with Fury explaining that he needed to use something to bind the Avenger together.

Prometheus - no spoilers.
4/5 and that's about as good as it gets for me. No film is perfect, but this one comes very close.
It confirmed something I had long suspected, but had never actually known, until now.

Mark

Went to see The Raid this evening.
Frenetic film with some wonderful fight scenes.

Mark

I watched "Chocolate" last night on Film 4. It's one of those that's been on my mental to-do list for a while: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1183252/

Characters were very endearing. There was a plot. It was sad. Mostly however, it was row upon row of bad guys forming an orderly queue to get beaten to a pulp by a young kick-boxing girl.

Well worth watching the out-takes after the credits. A lot of stunt men and indeed the main actress got quite badly hurt during the fighting.

7/10

What's your record for number of films watched in one day?

Mine's 5.

That's a good question. I'm on my third for today now … District 9 on TV.
I'm pretty sure I've done 4 films in a day before.
You've set me a challenge now, y'know that, right?

Mark

I think it was about 3am when I finished watching the last one though, so that might be cheating.

The best bit was it wasn't a "marathon" (all the Rocky films) IIRC it was something like Casablanca, Sunset Blvd, Cool Hand Luke, The Hustler and Midnight Cowboy


(I was working through the IMDB Top 250 at the time)

It was a fun (if introverted and geeky) day (helped by whisky)

Just watched Thor. Weakest of the Avengers films IMO. I wish the banishment was more and for longer. Other bits'n'pieces didn't sit right and I'm not sure why. Loki as usual was awesome snd the Avengers film doesn't do him the same justice as in Thor.

I watched The Incredible Hulk the other day - if anything the weakest scenes were the very linear big fight scenes where everything just escalated into "bigger.... stronger" until everyone just decided to give up and walk away again - you'd have thought there's be some discussion about the fact that bullets were doing [LIFTED] all and he only seems to cause destruction when we attack him... let's not attack him...


Quick there's Edward Norton walking around - ATTACK HIM WITH EVERYTHING WE'VE GOT!!!!

*sigh*

But then they tagged on a scene where Stark is trying to get the Avengers together and I thought, hang on, it's Fury who does that (in real life) and it got me excited about Avengers (which is a genuinely good film, perhaps the only Marvel film you can say that about?)

Really? See, I though Captain America was the weakest of the stand-alone films. Well, apart from Iron Man 2, which was really rather rubbish.

Mark

My piephone crapped out when I tried to post a lengthy reply earlier.

The first Avengers film I saw was the Incredible Hulk. I'd already been disappointed with Ang Lee's Hulk so I waited for this to come out on DVD. It was better and I loved Norton's portrayal. Then I saw Iron Man which I loved. I agree with IM2 not being as good. Thor came out and the trailers didn't inspire me. I expected to be disappointed with it so I waited for it to come out on DVD. Although it was better than my expectations, it was nowhere as good as Hulk or IM1.

When Captain America came out, I was fairly naive to the character. I've been into the Hulk since Bill Bixby's series. I knew about Thor from Norse mythology though not the Marvel character. IM1 was the first one where I was completely naive and I was blown away. With CA, I recognised the suit and that's about it. I had no idea o the supersoldier idea. Hence for me, I loved the portrayal of the character from weedy to supersoldier and more than that, the entire WW2 stuff. Even in the Avengers, I thought he was awesome. I was disappointed by Hulk, mainly because of how to Hulk looked and the loss of Norton. In retrospect, Thor was "flatter" in the Avengers than in his own film, though I guess this was down to everyone having to share screentime.

My take on the films around the Avengers:

IM - Best of the bunch. Funny with good action scenes.

IM2 - Worst of the bunch. One drawn out and very dull ad for the Avengers.

Hulk - Just average, as I expect any Hulk film's gonna be tbh, trying to get the pace right when you're somewhat obliged to get the CGI out? Must be difficult.

Captain America - The WW2 angle really worked for me, but the pacing wasn't as good in the home stretch. Still an OK film though.

Thor - So average it hurt. The actors were giving it their all but there wasn't much in the way of structure. Again, bit of a trailer for the Avengers I felt.

I enjoyed them all.

Trivia : All the 'on location' (i.e. not internal set) WWII sequences were filmed about 5 minutes away from my office. Turns out modern day Manchester looks a lot like the 1940's.

Jon