This week on the podcast, Jenny and the guys were discussing nothing but the Avengers. They had spelling contests, some weird thing that involved guessing obscure Avengers heroes, and for some reason Madame Xanadu, and some running bit about Nick Fury being much more awesome that he’s been depicted to be up to this point.
Yeah, I think I’m with Jenny on that one. Nick isn’t really an Avenger.
Which is really odd, because there are so, so, so many Avengers. That may be my biggest concern about the movie, that there are too many characters to provide a good balance for all the characters to get a bit of the spotlight. Writer/director Joss Whedon almost succeeded with that last time, with the exceptions of Hawkeye being brainwashed for most of the movie, and Nick Fury speaking only in cliches. I was pleasantly surprised to see Thanos at the end of the first film, despite how complicated Thanos is as a basic character in most cases, but half expected the real stinger to be Fury with a stack of files with various Avenger names on them.
See, too many characters have been a problem for blockbuster franchises and I would hate to see the Avengers go that way. Granted, bringing in new characters would allow Marvel to gradually phase out original stars that are getting increasingly too expensive to resign for more films, and don’t think that isn’t coming assuming the cast doesn’t get too old to keep playing superheroes first.
But I was struck by some odd ideas on the podcast. Voting the Vision down lower because we don’t know what he can do for the List O’ Truth is one thing, but wouldn’t the same apply to the Scarlet Witch? She can’t be a mutant, so she probably won’t be doing probability manipulation, which is screwy enough, but they haven’t really established magic for a non-Asgardian in the movies yet, so unless Benedict Cumberbatch is lurking somewhere nearby in a cloak of levitation, I don’t think she’ll be getting any chaos magic either.
I don’t think they’re going to establish magic for anyone until Dr. Strange appears is what I am saying.
This may be the most unfocused podcast reaction I’ve had in quite some time, and it was actually one of the more entertaining episodes they’ve had in the past few weeks, if for no other reason that to hear Jenny, who is merely three ducks in a woman costume, get increasingly frustrated, perhaps even furious, listening to how awesome Nick Fury is.
I’ll probably be seeing the movie Friday evening, and I hope Whedon kept the balance right. Having too many characters isn’t very promising even for the most diehard of superhero film fans.
Gabbing Geek 