Are the Avengers really saving the world if the sequels are inevitable?
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Version 0 of 1. Somewhere in the middle of the climactic sequence of Avengers: Age of Ultron, Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) remarks of the events on screen that “none of this makes sense”. It’s striking when a script offers a one-line review of itself. Age of Ultron offers us a situation where simultaneously everything and nothing is at stake. The fate of the world hangs in the balance as malevolent AI baddie Ultron threatens to make humans extinct – oh no! Related: Robert Downey Jr: independent movies are 'exhausting and sometimes suck' At the same time, we know that the contracts are already inked for two more Avengers films and a film each involving Captain America and Thor, all of which take place in the chronology of the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” subsequent to this movie. Not even Ultron’s scheme can endanger the franchise — the fight is fixed. Even if it weren’t, it’s hard to know how we would become invested in the fate of any of these characters. In the rare breaks between extended fight scenes and apocalyptic battles, there’s not much time for anything except exposition and the creation of a pretext for the next battle. Despite their undoubted talents, Mark Ruffalo and Scarlett Johanssen can’t make the laboured Hulk/Black Widow romance work. One of the more painful aspects of this cinematic gigantism is seeing talent so lavishly wasted. Nerd’s nerd Joss Whedon was presumably shoved in front of the Avengers franchise to leaven its enormous scale with his aptitude for crisp and funny dialogue. But even the one-liners feel focus-grouped. (The running joke about Captain America’s priggish distaste for swearing runs out of steam immediately). Whedon did fine work in television and took a good crack at enlivening this type of filmmaking, but ultimately the formula won out: stuff it to the brim with established stars, bolt on hints of a complexity that the film does not possess, and audience-test the unwieldy result to death. The outcome was still shambolic, airless, and dead on arrival. The script, the cast, and the narrative all wind up feeling like a gimcrack scaffolding for the real star of the film, the CGI. Whedon and his cast almost made the first Avengers flick cohere, despite the fact that so much about the film was burdened by the necessity of future tie-ins with the rest of Marvel’s cinematic franchise. That was in 2012. Since then, it seems like the studios have produced nothing but super hero tentpole flicks. In the last five years alone, we have seen two standalone studio movies each on Captain America, Batman, Iron Man, Thor, and Spider-man. Two each on superhero ensembles X-Men and The Avengers. One each for Green Lantern, the Green Hornet, Superman, Wolverine, Ghost Rider, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Judge Dredd. Then there’s Kick-Ass, Kick-Ass 2, Scott Pilgrim, Big Hero 6, and non-superhero films also based on comics, like Snowpiercer. Add to all these films based on long-standing merch/comic tie-ins, like the Transformers series. There are already around 40 scheduled Hollywood superhero releases planned for the next five years, no doubt with more to come. In the nigh-on apologetic round of interviews the Avengers stars have given in recent weeks, they repeated the only argument anyone can make for this avalanche of dross: in an age of diminishing overall production, this stuff makes money, keeps people employed, and keeps cinemas standing. Like the peddlers of every other crap commodity – from corn-dogs to Coors – Hollywood is wont to insist that this is all demand-driven; the ongoing festival of tights is happening because the audience is resistant to subtler fare. This is ahistorical – audiences have embraced risky and challenging studio films in the past. Risk is precisely what the studio system is now geared to eliminate. We get trite and shallow films because producers are unwilling to gamble on our intelligence. Often they are watched because teenagers still need an excuse to leave the house, and because, especially outside major metropolitan areas, or in the suburbs, there’s not much else on. There’s also the unfortunate fact that there is a vibrant and living refutation to all this: television. Few could have predicted 15 years ago that major movie stars would one day make their bank in dumb movies so they could do more demanding work on the small screen. Here we are though, gearing up to watch Vince Vaughn in the second series of True Detective. More tellingly, Hollywood has permanently lost talented filmmakers who, in an earlier era, would have worked in cinema. As a director, Jill Soloway moved from morally complex, spiky, funny, observational independent cinema (Afternoon Delight) into morally complex, spiky, funny, observational television (Transparent), creating a critical and popular success. Auteurs who are no longer able to make a living in indies, and who want to address their audience as adults, are now finding a niche in on-demand services who charge half the price of a multiplex ticket for a month’s viewing. When the superhero bubble inevitably bursts, will Hollywood be able to lure any of them back? This is not just a question for filmmakers, but one for writers and critics. For too long, too many have waved this stuff through, agreeing to meet Hollywood on its own terms. It’s true that Age of Ultron has received some critical notices, but not really in the correct proportion to its monumental, cynical awfulness. Perhaps the reluctance to call all of this out begins with the benign (if mistaken) idea that to be critical about these films would be to patronise their large audiences. Perhaps there’s a desire to not be out of step with one’s colleagues who appear to be endorsing it. Related: Behold: the Marvel Avengers Assemble 3D experience | Charlie Brooker Either way, pointing out that there is something slightly insulting in all this need not be done in the name of The Return Of Serious Filmmaking, or an end to frivolity. It could just be a conversation about how Hollywood cinema appears to be turning into a monoculture. The question is: can this be changed, or do all the contracts that have been signed mean that the future, like that of the Avengers’ hackneyed universe itself, is already decided? |