2012 King of the Hill - May Catch-Up Post

The Avengers Stands Alone

Normally, for the King of the Hill Challenge, I would compare two movies together to see how they stand up. The only problem with this is that in May, I only watched The Avengers. The movie wins, no debate here, but just declaring it a win, isn't really much of a blog post. So, I'm going to weigh in on the movie by talking about the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. And there WILL be spoilers of the very ending of the film, sorry.

For those who do not know, the 2012 King of the Hill Movie Challenge is my system for determining the best movie of year that I saw. One movie from each month will be selected and, at the end of the year, I will do a tournament style showdown where they will take each other on until the final movie has been selected. Bracket placement will be determined by the number of movies the monthly movie faced and won.

The Good

There was a lot of Good in this movie. The story was great. The acting was excellent. The dialogue was witty and fun. The fight scenes were spectacular. It is really hard to pick out and focus on the good, because there was a lot of good to go along. It was a movie that I actually went and saw twice, in the theater, something that is rare for me to do. So yeah, it had a lot of good qualities. But, it wasn't a perfect movie either and I'll discuss that next. Just know that I liked this film.

The Bad

There isn't too much that was bad about this film. My first time watching the film, I actually had little complaints. The second time I watched it, I wasn't as entertained. Most of what made this movie good was either the action sequences, or this witty, humorous moments that aren't quite as good the second time around. Also, the selective ignorance was a bit more apparent on the second watching.

The biggest example I have of this is in the initial appearance of Loki. Loki appears through the Tesseract with this epic helmet and spear. Orders are shouted for him to put down the spear. Loki begins attacking. Loki pins Hawkeye against a wall and speaks his first line. Hawkeye reacts, but not in the way I would expect. If an alien appeared in front of me, began attacking anyone and then spoke to me, I'd be surprised that he spoke English. Yet, we find that that the idea that the Hulk could have a consciousness is unfathomable.  The movie picks and chooses what it wishes to gloss over.  There are other examples, but for me, this was the most obvious.

The Ugly

The Avengers is a movie about a team of super heroes. There is one scene, however, that really upsets me. On the flying aircraft carrier, the ship is attacked and Black Widow and Bruce Banner fall to another level. Bruce begins to change into The Hulk and the reaction of Black Widow is one of complete horror. This reaction was unsettling and it didn't get better at any point in time during the second watching of the movie.

The movie at no point in time holds back the threats. There are a lot of deaths. An entire base is destroyed in the opening. There is a threat of the world being invaded by aliens that seem to be willing to kill everything. Yet, despite all of this, one character demonstrates true horror. Black Widow, the only female Avenger. Not Tony Stark when he's piloting the nuclear missile to what he believes will be his death. Not Thor when he is trapped in a cage plunging to what Loki ponders might cause his death. Not Captain America, broken and battered as the aliens overwhelm the streets. Not, Hawkeye when he reaches his last couple of arrows. Only Black Widow experiences that fear. And I find it completely and totally unnecessary. Instead of her fighting for her freedom, as a determined hero, she is caught with panic. And, when she escapes, she goes fetal for a time. And that just really damaged the movie for me in a bad way.

Winner: The Avengers (duh)