To call Joss Whedon’s The Avengers bad would be to call the entire superhero genre bad. Which is a fair complaint; the formula has become so predictable – and numbingly uninspired – that it would take more than a legion of super powers to defeat it. But even with a team of superheroes at its disposal, The Avengers rarely rises above the cliches of its genre.

Perhaps that’s the point. Beyond just a culmination of years of other Marvel films leading up to it (The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 1 & 2, Thor, and Captain America were meant to feed into this film to make it feel more like an “event”), The Avengers seems more a culmination of the DNA of a decade’s worth of Hollywood’s mighty men in Spandex. The result is the most polished, decadent, and laser-focused superhero film ever, the textbook example of a genre taken to its logical extremes. Continue reading →