Nerd Culture-The Avengers

Nerd Culture-The Avengers

By Brenna Roberts, Grade 11

                I don’t know how many people missed all the commotion in April/May about the Avengers movie, but it can’t be that many. For those of you who did, well you must have been living under a rock, or in Vladivostok or somesuch because it was everywhere. For those of you who have no idea what the Avengers are,  just think of the Marvel’s equivalent of the Justice League. I cry a little bit inside for the ones who are giving me that look, like I’m growing a second head or something. Let me explain at little more for those unfortunate souls.

There are two major comic book companies, Marvel and DC. Marvel does X-Men, Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Avengers, and much, much more, obviously. DC owns Superman, Batman, the Flash, Green Lantern, the Justice League, etc. DC comics had the brilliant idea of having all of their most well-loved characters be in a team together, in a comic book series called the Justice League of America, where they worked as a team to take down the villains they could not take alone. A couple years later, Marvel, seeing how big a success the JLA was becoming, decided to run with the idea of a superhero team too, and so they banded together of all of their main characters, and thus the Avengers were born. Since then there have been the New Avengers, the Mighty Avengers, the Dark Avengers, and coming up soon will be the Uncanny Avengers, with a roster mixed between X-Men and Avengers. The team has also appeared in 2 cartoon series, 3 animated films, and the live-action film that I’m trying to get around to talking about here.

Now back to the original topic. Marvel decided to take their team and make a live-action movie with them. They did a huge lead up, releasing movies for Thor and Captain America, and a second Iron Man. What with the amazing job they did with all the publicity, The Avengers must have been the most highly anticipated movie of 2012. Originally the idea was met my scepticism, because of the issue of trying to balance having multiple main heroes on screen. However, I was very impressed. They managed it beautifully (because everything Joss Whedon touched is GOLD), balancing the dynamics of 6 completely different heroes, thrown together in a rather undesirable situation. It’s quite possibly the best use of 143 minutes of your time. If you’re going to watch it though, I would advise watching Thor and Captain America, because certain aspects of their plotlines are very significant in the Avengers. The casting was done perfectly, the actors’ portrayals of their characters were amazing, and don’t even get me started on the costume design. It was done perfectly. <<Editor’s note: Hi! Because I’m a huge Marvel fan, I’m going to interject and expand on this. Not only were the acting and costumes incredible, but so was the screenplay, and the directing. A lot of superhero movies fall victim to terrible puns, awkward moments between characters, and fight scenes that drag on and get a tad boring(Just an opinion), but the writers of The Avengers did an impressive job of making sure that never happened. And expanding on Joss Whedon’s superb direction of this movie, I would just like to point out that during a battle sequence, Hawkeye runs out of arrows. Can we all just take a moment to appreciate this? How many battle scenes have we sat through going ‘Oh come on dude, seriously! You should be out of arrows! Or ‘Golly jee you’ve invented never ending bullet magazines! Seriously?!?” The believability that was achieved with this superhero movie was one of the things that made it a great for all ages to enjoy!>>

 I realize this has been me just ranting about how amazing the movie was, but I don’t want to give away any plot spoilers for those who haven’t watched it, so I do apologize. Maybe once you’ve all seen it I’ll expand!

UPDATES!

·         67 days until The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,

·         207 days until Iron Man 3,

·         396 days until Thor: The Dark World,

·         431 day until the Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug,

·         543 days until Captain America: The Winter Soldier (The Starks would love this guy...)

·         648 days until The Hobbit: There and Back Again,

·         935 days until the Avengers 2,

·         And at least 12 years until the next season of Sherlock. Because Moffat likes to put us through pain and agony on a daily basis. But we love him anyway.

Quote of the day! “You really have got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?”

~Tony Stark to Bruce Banner

Nerd Music!: Theme song for Avengers-Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. It is the most badass theme song for a children’s cartoon ever.