The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012)

[matrixschmatrix]

I really like that the Marvel movies have some confidence in their created history- nothing is duller than the endless parade of first stories and reboots that seems to be the alternative, and honestly I saw it with several people who hadn't seen anything but Iron Man but had no difficulty in following the plot. If the blended elements seem incoherent because they're incompatible with the origins of the various parts in the books, that seems like reasonable license in an adaption- and I think Iron Man 3 was easily the most successful Marvel movie yet, despite having been bored stupid by the storyline it adapted.

[knives]

It helps that Black Blacked it all to hell so only the broadest strokes were generically Marvel. It's pretty easily the most politically self aware of these American super adaptations.

[tenia]

I really like that the Marvel movies have some confidence in their created history- nothing is duller than the endless parade of first stories and reboots that seems to be the alternative, and honestly I saw it with several people who hadn't seen anything but Iron Man but had no difficulty in following the plot.

I'm still unsure that, cinematographically, comics can sustain to have long arc-story being developed over the year, instead of thinking a franchise as Star Trek or James Bond would be.
There are other directions that just either going for an endless show of interspersed stories, or reboot / 1st stories.

If the blended elements seem incoherent because they're incompatible with the origins of the various parts in the books, that seems like reasonable license in an adaption- and I think Iron Man 3 was easily the most successful Marvel movie yet, despite having been bored stupid by the storyline it adapted.

In fact, that's precisely my point : what I found particularly bad in IM3 is all they tried to incorporate in the movie, just because they didn't want to do a straightforward adaptation. I disliked the Mandarin twist, the awful way of using Extermis part as a red herring, then as a Deus Ex Machina quite pratical, the whole buddy movie part (which is typical of Black, but has close to nothing to do here).

It's not Iron Man anymore, it's some kind of an awful mixture gone wild.

And I won't speak of the political subplot, which seemed written by a 12 year old.

Spoiler

"Oh look, in fact, the terrorist is just a smoke screen to cover US government actions." ](*,)

I know the whole stuff appealed to some, but I still struggle to understand why oh why they always try to make it complicated, when there are so many perfect story-arcs that can be adapted without doing any changes.

I mean, look at what DCU achieved with The Dark Knight Returns. It's tremendous. And they didn't have anything to do. Just take what's lying there, and put it on screen.