Above: Chris Pratt in "Guardians of the Galaxy," the latest film from Marvel Studios
Two summers ago, I was at a
birthday party, moaning about my dislike for Marvel Studios’ superhero
extravaganza “The Avengers.” I had
qualms—I thought the film was too heavy on action, too light on character
development, and far too load and “epic” for its own good. But before I could belt any of that out, I
was cut off by a particularly shrewd Marvel fan. “Millions of people,” he informed me, “disagree
with you.”
He’s right. “The
Avengers” (a film about a gang of superheroes defending Earth from an alien
army) ultimately fired up to the tune of $1.5 billion worldwide, earning the
adulation of countless moviegoers in the process. Yet that didn’t change my mind. In fact, with minimal exceptions, I believe
that the movies Marvel makes are stupid, senseless, and, more than anything,
disturbingly empty of meaningful emotion.
It didn’t have to be this way. After watching other studios successfully
adapt their comics (respectively, Sony and Fox produced the brilliantly
humanist “Spider-Man” and “X-Men” series), Marvel started to finance and create
their own movies. And their first effort
was admirable. “Iron Man” (2008) compellingly
told the story of the irresponsible industrialist Tony Stark (Robert Downey
Jr.), who overcame his narcissism just in time to take a stand in the battle
for world peace.
It was
an interesting journey, one that yielded a thought-provoking and richly
entertaining film. Yet quickly, it
became clear that something was wrong.
The 2010 sequel “Iron Man 2” had the same director as its predecessor
(Jon Favreau, lately of “Chef” and the forthcoming “Jungle Book” remake), but
little of the witty soul-searching that made the original so satisfying. Instead, the movie unleashed a barrage of
luridly overdone special effects (including an edifice-destroying cavalcade of
robots) and a general air of smug silliness that felt weirdly off the
mark. “It’s good to be back!” Stark
crowed early in the film—a statement that sounded more like wishful thinking
than anything else.
At
first, “Iron Man 2” seemed an aberration, a weed that could be easily removed
from a potentially wondrous garden of entertainment. But soon, all of Marvel’s projects became
infected by similar sloppiness. It was
Stark’s ethical dilemma (to war or not to war?) that made “Iron Man” memorable,
but the studio ignored that and began sidestepping similarly dramatic conflicts
with disarming regularity.
The
period hero Captain America (Chris Evans) is perhaps the most groaning-inducing
example of this oversight. After serving
in World War II, Cap gets frozen in ice and wakes up in the twenty-first
century, his youth miraculously preserved (don’t ask). And initially, “Avengers” director Joss
Whedon saw this strange turn of events as an opportunity to create something heart-wrenching;
in fact, he shot a present-day scene in which Cap reunites with his former
girlfriend Peggy Carter, who is now a dying old woman.
I don’t need to tell you how moving that moment could
have been. But Mr. Whedon cut the scene,
claiming it was “killing the rhythm of the thing.” But what rhythm? “The Avengers” is an endless, bludgeoning
fantasia of battles that have no human interest whatsoever. Which makes me think that if anything, Mr.
Whedon’s (and the studio’s) decision came from a desire to avoid anything messy
or human (and yes—I’ll acknowledge that a version of the Cap-Peggy reunion was
resurrected for the recent “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.” But it felt too tepid and jokey to have any
real impact).
Of course, Marvel’s films crossed the line long before
that. One of the most compelling
elements of comic book movies is that they have often offered villains with
tangible motivations (in “X-Men,” Magneto wanted to eradicate prejudice; in
“The Dark Knight,” the Joker wanted “to prove that everyone was as ugly” as
him).
Marvel,
however, has made it clear that they are happy to eschew motives in favor of
overblown insanity. Easily, the most
intelligent creative decision they’ve made was to cast the pale, slender
British stage actor Tom Hiddleston as Loki, the mischievous villain of “The
Avengers.” Yet for all Mr. Hiddleston’s
sensitive savagery, it often seems as if Loki set out to destroy humanity
simply to give Iron Man yet another fiasco to clean up. Loki’s villainous glee is always devilishly
irresistible, but too often the movies shift away from him, favoring
brightly-colored explosions, rampaging robots, and other soulless computerized
behemoths.
Of course,
part of that problem stems from the fact that so little is at stake in Marvel’s
most recent. There’s a weird, apathetic
goofiness that pervades these movies—a self-awareness that dilutes their
impact. I’ll admit that when Tony Stark
jokingly refers to himself as a “superhero,” it turns him into an intriguingly post-modern
figure (contrary to Mr. Whedon’s stated dislike for post-modern superhero
films). But he’s not nearly as
compelling in “The Avengers” when, in the wake of the movie’s climax, he sarcastically
shouts, “Yay! We won!”
That
line is meant to be a clever joke (riffing on Stark’s blasé attitude towards
the sci-fi lunacy he lives with). But
instead, it reveals how emotionally bankrupt “The Avengers” and its brethren
truly are. Success no longer means
anything to Stark because he’s not a real person; he’s a character in a
corporate franchise and he knows it.
It
still surprises and chills me that no one seems to care about such flaws. And I expect better from movies, not least from
superhero blockbusters. After all, real
emotion was what made Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” a phenomenon the
same year that the first “Iron Man” premiered.
Even now, watching Heath Ledger’s Joker threaten to burn Gotham City to the
ground in Mr. Nolan’s film, I still feel queasily terrified and giddily alive. Because “The Dark Knight” invites jarring
emotional outbursts worthy of waking life.
I’ve yet to feel that same sensation during “The
Avengers” or “Iron Man.” Perhaps that
won’t always be the case; after all, there was a time when I was equally
critical of “The Dark Knight” (before Mr. Nolan’s “Inception” inspired me to
revisit his previous works). But in the
here and now, I’m tired of Marvel’s deranged, devil-may-care superheroes. When I think back to Tony Stark’s first film
appearance, I remember a man who was jovially sleazy, yet somehow noble and
human. Now, however, his humanity is
gone and he rarely flinches in the face of battle because, like us, he knows
that it’s only a movie.
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