Once upon a time, there was an idea to bring together a group of remarkable movie franchises, to see if they could become something more. In the summer of 2012, writer-director Joss Whedon The Avengers was a gargantuan crossover event, the likes of which had never been made before, and the gamble paid off in spades.
Acclaimed by critics and adored by fans, The Avengers is one of the most riotously entertaining superhero movies ever made. But it’s not without its faults. As with most big-budget blockbusters built on compromise between filmmakers and studio executives, The Avengers is an imperfect endeavor.
Right: Bringing The MCU’s Worlds Together
For all intents and purposes, The Avengers shouldn’t have worked. It pulled together four loosely connected movie franchises in a giant crossover event. Blending the high-tech world of Iron Man, the pulpy adventures of Captain America, the monster-movie antics of the Hulk, and the mythological fantasy of Thor was a huge risk.
It could’ve turned out horribly if the tones weren’t balanced properly. But Joss Whedon made it work. All the characters felt like they belonged together, paving the way for even more outlandish crossovers in subsequent MCU movies.
Wrong: Loki’s Nonsensical Plan
Like a lot of bad guy plans, Loki’s plan in The Avengers doesn’t make any sense. The steps of his plan seem to have been designed more to introduce set pieces and force characters to work together than to efficiently accomplish the trickster god’s goals.
Plus, the whole “getting caught was part of the plan” thing had already been done in The Dark Knight, Sherlock Holmes, X2, and countless other blockbusters.
Right: Balancing The Ensemble
In an early draft of The Avengers, the audience saw the story through Tony Stark’s eyes. However, the final product is more of a fair and balanced ensemble piece. No hero outshines the rest or hogs all the screentime.
This made The Avengers feel more like a team-up movie, with everybody getting plenty of time for their own fleshed-out character arcs.
Wrong: Making Tony Stark A Jerk
One of the skills that Joss Whedon developed as a TV writer and translated to his work on the Avengers franchise is exaggerating the qualities that make each character in the ensemble unique as a means of distinguishing them from one another.
Whereas Jon Favreau allowed Robert Downey, Jr. to improvise lines, making Tony feel like a real person — and a sympathetic one, at that — Whedon doubled down on the character’s arrogance and made him a total jerk.
Right: Interpersonal Conflicts
When Nick Fury assembles the Avengers, they don’t immediately band together to face Loki’s armies as a team, because that would make for a boring story. Instead, Joss Whedon created conflicts between the heroes that they have to overcome.
Tony considers himself more of a lone wolf than a team player; Cap staunchly holds onto outdated traditions; Thor thinks humans are petty and small — there are all kinds of interpersonal conflicts going on between the Avengers.
Wrong: Thor’s Dialogue
For the most part, the dialogue in The Avengers is very strong. The conversation scenes are as compelling as the action-driven scenes; they have the feel of a hangout movie like Rio Bravo.
However, one of the weaknesses in the film’s dialogue is that spoken by Thor. Just as he focused on Tony’s brashness, Whedon focused on Thor’s quasi-Shakespearean persona, developed by Kenneth Branagh, and gave Chris Hemsworth the unenviable task of delivering alienating lines like, “Do I look to be in a gaming mood?” and “Have a care how you speak! Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard, and he is my brother!”
Right: Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk
While the character has gone downhill in more recent movies, Mark Ruffalo’s stint in the role of Bruce Banner got off to a terrific start in The Avengers. Ruffalo’s nuanced acting brought out Banner’s inner turmoil more beautifully than ever before as he grapples with his unwanted superpowers.
Joss Whedon reduced Tony Stark to a brazen jerk and his pseudo-Shakespearean dialogue for Thor kept the character at arm’s length from the audience, but he sure nailed the Hulk’s characterization.
Wrong: Agent Coulson’s Fakeout Death
Midway through The Avengers, Agent Coulson is murdered at the hands of Loki. It was an emotionally charged moment that tugged on the heartstrings of fans who had watched this warm-hearted bureaucrat assemble Earth’s Mightiest Heroes across the MCU’s Phase One.
Coulson’s death is the catalyst that gets the Avengers to finally book up their ideas and agree to work together. But shortly after the movie was released, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. revealed Coulson’s death to be a fakeout, removing all the emotion from the scene.
Right: The Battle Of New York
The final battle sequence in The Avengers, in which Earth’s Mightiest Heroes take on Loki and the Chitauri army in the Big Apple, set the template for all the MCU third-act battles that followed. It has its own internal story structure with gradually increasing stakes and a breathtaking climax.
Whedon even managed to craft the cinematic equivalent of a splash page with a sweeping long take following each hero in the heat of battle.
Wrong: Spoiling The Ending In The Trailer
This isn’t so much a failing of the movie itself as a failing of its marketing campaign. The trailers for The Avengers included a clip of the Hulk catching a falling Iron Man.
So, anyone who saw the trailer before watching the movie knew that Tony would be fine when he took the nuke through the wormhole because they already saw how it ended.
