The Wannabe

Who Should Win American Idol and Why

It doesn’t fill me with much pride to admit this, but I watch American Idol.  As an avid despiser of all things reality TV, it boggles my mind that after eleven years, I’m still watching Ryan Seacrest’s house payment regularly.  (Full disclosure, I didn’t watch all of Season 1, I skipped Seasons 4 and 5, then found myself crawling back during the finalist portion of Season 6.)  The show has become a bit of priority viewing for me; even if I’m away upon its initial airing, it’s the first thing I watch on my DVR when I return home, preceding any scripted programming I technically prefer.  It sickens me a bit, because it’s really not a good show, but I guess as the judgmental bastard that I am, it’s a good outlet to snicker, scoff and scream at people who I don’t know and can’t hear me.

Then again, I must say that this season has been the best since Season 8, otherwise known as The Year of Adam Lambert.  Since then, it’s been bland, full of uninteresting contestants and equally uninteresting champions, not to mention the departure of Simon Cowell and the introduction of Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez while our favorite dawg remains to addle our brains with his incoherent everything.  But here, in Season 11, we’ve had an amazing crop of finalists and performances.  Once there were only eight left standing, it became extremely difficult to predict a winner.  Everyone was so good and a different person seemed to have a moment every night.  Not to mention, Steven upgraded his criticism vocabulary by a few more words, Jennifer, for the most part, became a bit more constructive, and Randy…well, he stayed the same annoying guy at the end of the table, just taking up space, but two out of three ain’t bad!  It all added up to a dramatic resurgence for the competition, almost as though it had a true purpose again, and this, I think, is a good thing.

But it will all be for naught if Jessica Sanchez loses tomorrow night.

Now, I’m disputing the talent of Phillip Phillips.  He may be a Dave Matthews mimic in some peoples’ eyes, but his ability to completely make a song his own, not to mention his overall performance energy, has been fairly solid throughout the competition.  His tendency to abandon the melody has gotten a bit tiresome as the season has gone on, and he’d be the first to admit he was never the strongest singer in the bunch (true), but I’d probably be more likely to purchase an album by P-squared than Jessica Sanchez, or anyone else in the Top 12, for that matter (although Joshua Ledet is a damn fine throwback to the soul singers of yesteryear, which I most certainly appreciate).

However, if Phillip is crowned the next American Idol during Wednesday night’s finale, it will be a sad state of affairs.  The last four years have seen four white, singer/songwriter-types with guitars strapped to their shoulders walk away with the win, and that’s just stale in terms of diversity.  I’m hard pressed to place all the blame on teenage girls who want nothing more than to see a cute boy showered in confetti, because even all the cynicism in the world can’t keep me from believing those are the only people who vote.  There are definitely teenage girls out there who are looking for a strong role model to inspire and challenge them, and Jessica Sanchez could be that role model.  She’s young and honestly doesn’t always connect with the songs as opposed to, say, Ledet or Skyler Laine, but she’s undeniable proof that even a sixteen year old can have their dreams realized, and that’s a good message to send not just to teenage girls, but to everyone.

But if she ends up with the big “runner up” label stamped to her forehead, everything this season has been building up to will have been a waste of time.  Look, I know calling American Idol a singing competition at this point is like calling Sam Worthington a character actor (burn), and the title itself has been rendered hollow, America’s Next Top Model-style.  But a lot of that depends on us, or at least those who vote (I don’t vote, which may or may not negate my entire argument, so eeep, and moving on…).

The whole idea behind the show is to put the power of finding the next superstar in the public’s hands instead of the hands of greed-powered executives who think they know what we all like and want.  It’s a democracy, but unlike a presidential election, all we’re asking for is some good tunes to listen to.  Over the course of the series, there have been only two real “superstars” to emerge after winning the whole thing, Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood.  Everyone else has had what seems like minor success to barely making a blip on the radar, the male winners especially—is Lee DeWyze even in this plain of existence anymore?  No one has made a mark on the zeitgeist as large as Kelly and Carrie, especially Carrie, who continues to have staying power.

My point is that those who vote put all this time and energy into picking a winner, and then once that winner is chosen, they move onto the next thing and ignore everything that winner does.  It’s like eating a big lunch before going to an extravagant dinner party, so you’re too full to even touch any of the hors d’oeuvres.  It’s speaking your mind once, then shutting the fuck up forever.  This has been no more apparent than with the recent group of winners: David Cook, Kris Allen, DeWyze and Scotty McCreery.  With this season, there’s been a good chance for this pattern to break.  The possibility of relevance returning to American Idol has never been stronger (yeah, I said it!), but only if it ends with proof that someone with more universal appeal can make it.  If a fifth person from the subgenre of “sultry-singing eye candy with a Y-chromosome” comes out on top, then like another certain remake of a British TV show, its welcome will be more than worn, and it will continue to take up space on the airwaves.  I guess as long as people are supernaturally drawn to the show and it makes Fox money, that’s bound to happen anyway.

Would the world (and to a lesser extent, my eyes) be better off with American Idol gone?  Probably.  But the show did serve a purpose once.  It wasn’t purely about a cash prize, about watching “regular” people scheme and manipulate in the name of winning and winning alone.  It was about making dreams come true.  It promoted the arts in a non-monetary sense. It gave hope to people, even the deluded the show often makes fun of each year.  Well, I hope the trend is broken tomorrow.  I hope Jessica Sanchez gets to sing whatever cheesy inspiration ballad they’ve chosen for the winner to perform.  And if Phillip wins, sure, I hope he has a successful career as well.  But in principle, he shouldn’t win.  He can’t.  Not again.  There’s no guarantee that either will have an amazing and lucrative career upon winning, but a win for Jessica represents a new age for the show, and demonstrates that dreams aren’t just possible for white dudes.  No offense to Phillip or the four guys I previous mentioned, but fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, fool me five times, and I’m changing the goddamn channel.

Surprise, surprise.  A big budget adaptation of a board game that added aliens to said board game—which neither included nor hinted at any alien involvement, by the way, unless shouting “B3” was some kind of alien code—underperformed at the box office and will be seen as a disappointment for years to come.  Yeah.  Didn’t see that one coming.

My Take on Dark Shadows

First, let me take this opportunity to lament the courses that Johnny Depp and Tim Burton’s respective careers have taken.  At first, they seemed to be Hollywood rebels, unwilling to join the mainstay of their colleagues and embracing the quirk, weird and unnerving that everyone else seemed to avoid.  But now, it seems that time and success have made them both…I don’t know, jaded?  It’s hard to say.  Their films, either together or separate, have become bland and flawed and easy to dismiss.  Besides one high point in my eyes (Sweeney Todd), neither man has really contributed anything of merit to cinema recently.  It feels like I go to a Depp picture now out of sheer loyalty and longing for the good ol’ days when he was the man and less of a guarantee to executives that their movie will make the big bucks, and even that isn’t the case anymore.

So, walking into Dark Shadows, I was expecting either dumb fun or something just plain dumb.  I got neither.  Instead, my viewing consisted of a large dose of indifference.  Everyone on screen appeared to be having a ball, but none of it resonated to me.  It’s like Ocean’s Twelve: it was a movie made for the benefit of all those involved, but nothing was left for the audience.  Perhaps a fan of the original soap opera could appreciate the film more than I could, but that doesn’t leave the film without its numerous problems.

Going off my opening paragraph, both Burton and Depp are attracted to projects involving outsiders.  Look at their early (good) work, like Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood.  Both involve people who are on the outside looking in, craving nothing but acceptance.  Dark Shadows has the same ideas at its core; after all, who’s more of a pariah than a vampire?  However, there’s no emotion at that core.  There’s not one moment where the audience can truly feel what it’s like to be in Barnabas Collins’ shoes.  It also doesn’t help that he’s such a one-dimensional character, stoic and detached.  And there’s no rhyme or reason to anything he does.  For example, there’s no reason given for why he can’t love Angelique (Eva Green).  I suppose it’s a societal thing that holds him back, now that I think of it, but that doesn’t stop him from getting some strange anyway.  Meanwhile, what sets his beloved Josette (Bella Heathcote) above Angelique besides social status?  She doesn’t appear all that captivating; just another pretty face, as far as Barnabas is concerned.  Where’s the defining moment that allows the audience to affix themselves to their tragic romance?  It certainly doesn’t help that, after Barnabas gains feelings for Victoria, the Collins nanny (also played by Heathcote, and yes, that’s not a coincidence), that he goes ahead and has trysts with two other characters.  This doesn’t even come back to bite him in the ass, so what’s the point except that he’s a shallow asshole without purpose?

The rest of the cast is mostly left out in the cold.  It’s a talented bunch, but they’ve been handed equally one-note characters who neither provide anything nor have any real arc.  Michelle Pfeiffer could have been a greedy matriarch who learns the value of family, but instead, she…hell, I can’t even remember a worthwhile thing she does.  Helena Bonham Carter basically plays a subdued version of Mrs. Lovett from Sweeney Todd, only less complex, unessential and desperate to be the comic relief, but to no avail.  Green seems to definitely be having fun as the villainous and sexy witch, and she does her fair share of scenery chewing, but again: one-dimensional, and actually kind of irritating after a while because of said lack of complexity.  Meanwhile, the talents of Jonny Lee Miller, Chloe Grace Moretz and Jackie Earle Haley are just plain wasted.

There’s also a problem with the film’s structure.  The film opens with a prologue, detailing Barnabas’ early life and subsequent transformation into a vampire.  Afterwards, we smash into 1972 and meet Victoria.  The first fifteen minutes or so seem to suggest the rest of the film will be, for the most part, from her point of view.  But once Barnabas is unleashed from his coffin after nearly 200 years, she’s cast aside and rendered useless.  She gets a flashback, sure, detailing her secretive past, but after so long away from her, it’s hard to care.  The movie then proceeds to hurl a complete lack of stakes (no pun intended) at its viewers, that, when combined with the lack of emotional core, adds up to a whole lot of nothing.  The end (no spoilers) also tries to land a couple of last minute twists, but one isn’t foreshadowed in the slightest, which makes it stupid (not to mention, it’s never resolved), and the other is both easily seen from miles away and not interesting enough to make anyone go “whoa.”

But even after all that negativity, I don’t think the movie is bad.  Although I hesitate to even name one redeeming quality, it just doesn’t seem worth my time to call it shitty.  I just don’t care.  It’s just another Burton/Depp collaboration, which at this point, only adds up to a predictable sensation of “meh.”

Rating: Two stars

New Shows for the 2012/2013 Season

I constantly say I watch too much TV.  And it’s true.  DVR and On Demand have made it even worse.  Then, of course, every year, new shows pop up, and my already brimming slate begins to overflow.  Not that I watch every new show ever, but in recent years, I’ve decided to give most newbies a chance.  Gotta weed out the stinkers, though.  Here are shows I have thoughts about:

—666 Park Avenue (ABC): working for it, it’s got Terry O’Quinn.  Beyond that, I don’t know.  The synopsis is certainly intriguing, with an air of supernatural and mysterious, but that’s how Once Upon a Time was marketed, and that didn’t really hook me straight away (although I’ve heard it got really good as the season went on, so I may return to it eventually).  Having just viewed the trailer, I can say this looks more Eastwick than American Horror Story.  And that’s a bad thing.

—1600 Penn (NBC): this could either be very silly and dumb or the exact kind of irreverence that’s up my funny bone’s alley.  The preview got some big laughs out of me, and Josh Gad is certainly a funny enough dude, but until I see the interactions between him and his President father (Bill Pullman, from whom we’d better get an Independence Day reference somewhere), I’m going to remain firmly on the fence…that sounds uncomfortable…

—Animal Practice (NBC): I like Justin Kirk on Weeds; he’s the best part of a show that’s slowly dwindling into something utterly pointless, and his presence here makes me fear for Andy Botwin.  This is being marketed as a sort of House, only with a veterinarian, and to me that sounds…meh?  I may give the pilot a shot just out of loyalty for Kirk, but something tells me I won’t be tuning in week after week.

—Ben and Kate (FOX): I was surprised how much I laughed and how much I was actually moved by the preview.  I don’t know why, but it’s hard for me to disassociate Nat Faxon from his pretentious character in Orange County; even his Oscar win for The Descendants didn’t really help.  But this show may help.  And it’s a very big deal that I like Nat Faxon, apparently.  It feels like a small show, one that will barely a blip on the ratings radar, so any investment I am already feeling is in danger, but hey, that’s the game of television, isn’t it?

—Do No Harm (NBC): a sort of modern telling of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, only with the guy who played dumb fireman #1 on Rescue Me.  And that’s not a knock against Steven Pasquale; he played probably my favorite character on Rescue Me.  The thing that holds me back is the fact that NBC already tried the duel-personality thriller thing with Christian Slater’s My Own Worst Enemy, and at least that didn’t carry so much of a procedural vibe as this one does.

—The Following (FOX): I hate it when previews for new shows basically hash out the entire pilot in three minutes.  I understand that they need to pull in viewers by giving them a taste of what they’ll get, and most of the time, the only footage they have is from the pilot.  But come on, do they need to give away any and all surprises?  So maybe I’m just skeptical of Kevin Bacon’s first swing at television in principle, having pretty much seen the entire first episode already in a condensed fashion.  That’s not to say it looks bad, but its proposed plot of catching serial killers every week could turn into Criminal Minds very quickly.

—The Goodwin Games (FOX): as I said in my previous post, I love How I Met Your Mother, so I’m bound to check out anything from Carter Bays and Craig Thomas from now until the end of time.  This, however, does not look too good to me.  The premise is a bit “been there, done that” in a sense, and the trailer didn’t make me laugh a whole lot.  But I like Scott Foley and Becki Newton, so we’ll see how it goes.

—Go On (NBC): I also like Matthew Perry a whole lot, but this looks like Mr. Sunshine in a different setting.  How many times can Perry play the same sarcastic know-it-all with a pithy remark for everything?  He showed some range on Studio 60, so what’s holding him back now?  I’ll check it out, my hope being that the potential that Mr. Sunshine had is not as lost here as it was there.

—Guys with Kids (NBC): no.  Next?  (Actually, brief side note, has anyone else noticed that Sarah Rue is in the promo art for both this and ABC’s Malibu Country?  Is she a guest star on one and a lead on the other?  Which is which?!  Why do I care when I’m not going to watch either show?!)

—Hannibal (NBC): until they actually cast Dr. Lecter, there’s no way to know how this is going to turn out.  Although, Bryan Fuller is the showrunner, and Pushing Daisies and Dead Like Me are two of my favorite shows of all time.  Both of those were snatched from the airwaves prematurely, though, so that doesn’t bode well.  There’s a lot riding here, and something tells me it’s going to fail, like The Firm.  But again, a lot of it depends on whether or not they get the right guy to fill Anthony Hopkins’ (and Brian Cox’s) shoes.

—Infamous (NBC): this just looks like NBC’s attempt to get a Revenge-sized audience.  I don’t watch Revenge, so why would I watch this?  Oh, Victor Garber, can’t you find a good show to be on?

—Last Resort (ABC): very high concept, very original with a lot of room for ideas, and hey, it’s got Andre Braugher, who lights up any show he’s on, as far as I’m concerned.  Still, Shawn Ryan hasn’t had much success since The Shield ended (see: The Chicago Code and Terriers, because nobody else did, myself included), so that’s a bit of a bad omen.

—The Mindy Project (FOX): I go back and forth with Mindy Kaling.  She seems like an awesome, talented person, but I question her ability to lead a show, and her writing can sometimes be too on the nose, too desperate to be funny.  But again, as a fan of her as a person, I’ll be there on premiere day to see what she’s got in store.

—The Mob Doctor (FOX): this was a surprise to me.  First off, I didn’t know so many people I like star in this: Jordana Spiro, William Forsythe, Michael Rapaport.  Okay, three people’s not really “so many.”  But still, after watching the trailer, I’m more than down.  It looks to have real stakes and great potential to go places no one can see coming.  Still, the title stinks, and it’s got that “small” sensation I spoke of earlier, so who knows?

—The Neighbors (ABC): this is the logline: “A family moves to an upscale New Jersey ‘burb and discovers the folks next door are actually extraterrestrials.”  Holy shit, no, no, never in a million years.  This will probably be this season’s Work It, a show with a plot so fucking ridiculous and stupid that the only people who will tune in will be people whose remotes run out of batteries after flipping through the channels and accidentally landing on this.  Look at the promo art.  LOOK AT THE PROMO ART!  Go away.

—Next Caller (NBC): this doesn’t look bad strictly because of Dane Cook, who, despite my immense hatred for his comedy, can be a good actor when the time comes.  This looks bad because it just doesn’t look funny.  It looks hackneyed, lazy, and dull.  No thank you.

—Revolution (NBC): lastly, the show I’m probably looking forward to the most.  As I’ve said many times, I’ll give anything JJ Abrams has his name on a chance, and it almost always leads into blind devotion on my end (save for Undercovers and Person of Interest; the guy ain’t perfect).  Here, we’ve got a world lacking energy, Billy Burke kicking ass, and Giancarlo Esposito (Gus from Breaking Bad) playing another bad guy cloaked in mystery.  I’m there.  I’m there with bells on.  Problem is, the last time NBC gave us a high concept, serialized Lost-wannabe, it was The Event.  Please don’t let history repeat itself.

I need to go outside more.

My Take on the How I Met Your Mother finale

Kids, I’m going to tell you the story of how How I Met Your Mother quickly became my favorite show.  In the fall of 2005 (oh, great, this is going to be long, isn’t it?), I saw the ads for the show and it immediately piqued my interest.  However, I was going to college soon, so new shows were not really on my agenda.  Still, I always held it in the back of my mind.  Then, thankfully, thanks to Netflix, I was able to binge the first five seasons in two months five years later, just in time for Season 6 to begin.  During that marathon viewing session, something happened inside of me.  I became obsessed from frame one.  It could be because I’m a sucker for goo, it could be because it was expertly written and hilarious, it could be because Neil Patrick Harris is and always will be the fucking man.  But the investment I felt in the show and in the characters was apparent from the get-go.  This show would follow me forever, trailing me like a shadow.

Still, I can be impartial, I swear; I don’t believe the sun shines out of the show’s ass (do shows have asses?).  I tell this tale only to convey that investment I spoke about three sentences ago.  I want all the characters to end up happy in the end, and I want the show to continue to mix whip-smart writing, wackiness, heart and, yes, goo in a unique way.  Which leads me into my take on the Season 7 finale.  And yes, HERE BE SPOILERS, so tread carefully, or not at all, if you haven’t seen “The Magician’s Code” yet.

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Writing Update: Onto the Next One

Writing, hell, creating something in general after a long drought may quite possibly be the greatest feeling in the world.  Okay, that’s debatable, but it’s pretty damn nice.  There is a sense of accomplishment and pride that can rarely be matched.  Even more so, it’s nice to actually stare at a computer screen with some purpose.

Now, to be fair, my writer’s confusion was never explicitly a drought.  I was in a constant state of development, trying to get the next draft of Consequences off the ground, only to constantly find roadblocks cluttered with plot holes.  As I stated before, I was afraid that were I to move onto another project, I wouldn’t truly be advancing myself.  I would just be adding more to the pile of “things to eventually finish.”  But then I realized that I was missing the point: I need to have fun while I’m writing.  Even if I’m writing the most depressing story imaginable, with deaths, dread and unhappiness oozing out of every scene, I need to enjoy myself while I’m putting it to the page.  And withConsequences, I wasn’t having fun anymore.  I love the story, but I was losing sight of what I was trying to do with it.  So, I needed to separate myself from it for a little while.

Now I’m ontoPlay with Fire, and yes, I will probably have to change the title (curse you, Stieg Larsson!).  It’s based off of a short story I wrote about four years ago, something that was deeply personal despite not having any of the events actually happen in my life.  But it has a lot to do with love, with crushes and how incapacitating they can be.  It’s not cynical, but it’s not necessarily bright and chipper and overall optimistic, either.  Not to say it’s a downer: there’s death, dread and unhappiness, but I’m going to make a point of inserting a lot of levity, just so the hypothetical audience doesn’t feel like drowning their sorrows with whiskey afterwards.  My point: it’s a tragic love story.  (Why didn’t I open with that?)

I had worked on it a little about a year ago, but got stuck and didn’t feel proud about what I had, which lead me back toConsequences.  But then fate decided to twist, and it looks like the reverse has happened.  I’ve spent the last week or so harnessing the theme and mapping out the timelines; the story is really two stories, one in the past and one in the present.  Once I got the right order of scenes, I penned a full outline, and now all I need to do is write open Final Draft, write “FADE IN:” and go from there.

Usually, I feel a little skepticism in beginning a screenplay; I doubt whether or not I’m really ready to start.  This time, I feel no doubts.  I’m ready.  I feel proud about what I have.  Maybe it’s just because it’s the first draft so I can really go for broke without succumbing to the whims of criticism, feedback and proper structure, but whatever!  I haven’t written a first draft in a while; I forgot how kind of exciting they can be.

So, I’m writing again.  Yay.  And as always (can I say that when I’ve done it only twice on this blog?), here’s a glimpse into my inspiration playlist for the story.  It deals with a kind of dark, moody boy obsessed with fire and the girl who falls in love with him, so I’m going for songs that are heavy mixed with longing with a strong dose of “high school.”  I guess it can be argued I’m going for “emo,” and if that’s the case, so be it, nothing wrong with that.  Here’s a few of the songs:

The Used “Empty with You”
Paramore “Careful”
Straylight Run “Existentialism on Prom Night”
Kings of Leon “Pyro”
Oliver the Penguin “Do I Leave My Heart Here”
Mae “The Sun and the Moon”
Linkin Park “Robot Boy”

Yay, again.

My Take on The Avengers

I hate applause in movie theaters.  It’s an elitist attitude to have, but every time the closing credits begin to scrawl and the crowd erupts into even a polite smattering of claps, I can’t help but role my eyes and scoff.  I mean, it’s a movie.  The actors can’t hear you rewarding them with reverence.  That’s what the internet’s for!  And I certainly don’t condone standing ovations for films; that’s just preposterous.  On the other hand, perhaps I’ve just been waiting for the right movie, the right crowd, the right situation where I didn’t give two hoots about clapping until my palms bled or getting on my feet to do the same.

The Avengers is that movie.

Now, full disclosure (and you’ll be able to tell if you take a gander at my full blog…shameless plug), I went to Marvel Madness yesterday, so before the midnight showing of Avengers, I bore witness to both Iron Mans, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America.  I was amongst fans who were psyched beyond reason for 12 AM to roll along, a psyched feeling that only grew exponentially as the day pressed on and our eyes and ears were treated to the superhero-y goodness before us.  Needless to say, it was the perfect crowd imaginable for a comic book movie.  So, naturally, the movie is automatically flawless in my mind.

But was the movie truly flawless?  Well, the way I see it, there are three ways to review The Avengers: from the point of view of a comic book/superhero fan, from the point of view of a Joss Whedon fan, and the point of view of an impartial cinema frequenter who doesn’t let his fandom supersede his criticism.  So, let’s look at it from all three ways, shall we?

COMIC BOOK/SUPERHERO FAN: obviously, this movie is the comic book film to lay waste to all other comic book films.  Sure, the X-Men films contain probably better-known heroes that all range in their abilities, but The Avengers has been in the making for four years.  It’s an ambitious concept, taking seven heroes who span over at least four different film franchises and sticking them into one mega-opus.  So as a fan of the Marvel heroes, I was basically salivating for this film’s release.  And it delivered.  It delivered in spades.  The Avengers is the greatest comic book movie of all time.

Now, those Batman fans in the audience are no doubt going, “How dare he blasphemes!  The Dark Knight shall reign forever!”  (Apparently, Batman fans speak in Shakespearean accents in my head…)  But hear me out: I love Christopher Nolan’s Batman series almost more than life itself, but I don’t consider them comic book movies.  Nolan has transcended that genre and crafted what is sure to be the quintessential crime-thriller trilogy of all time.  It’s dark and moody and just happens to feature characters who originated in the funny books.  The Avengers, on the other hand, is about remarkable humans (or demigods) with remarkable abilities and talents.  It’s realistic for its universe, which is to say it often suspends disbelief, yet keeps it easy to buy everything.  And really, when you’re watching a Christopher Nolan film, your excitement is contained.  That’s not a bad thing, but it’d be rude to stand up and cheer every time Batman growls.  With a movie like The Avengers, that’s appropriate.  (But please, don’t talk during the movie.)

The images are fantastical.  The action sequences and fights are phenomenal.  The bad guys are bad guys and are scary.  The threats are huge and are easy to invest in, thereby making any and all triumph taste sweeter.  I’ll put it this way: my whole body fell asleep during the jam-packed climax because I was so gleeful.  I honestly felt like I was going to explode with happiness, and do not make that a euphemism for anything, please.

JOSS WHEDON FAN: what Whedon does with his stories is nothing short of genius.  He has perfectly melded being a fan and being a storyteller together.  He has a way of creating dialogue and moments that will please the geeky masses, but he doesn’t do them for the sole purpose of being cool.  Everything has meaning.  Everything has stakes.  And everything works.

Whedon plays with expectations.  He inches towards cliché, then snaps us back with a welcome surprise, then, maybe, for the sheer hell of it, gives us the cliché anyway, because now it’s not so cliché anymore.  Does that make sense?  It does when you consider Loki.  Tom Hiddleston gives quite possibly the greatest villain performance since Heath Ledger’s Joker (granted, there haven’t been a whole lot of iconic antagonists since then), and part of that is due to Whedon’s writing.  Hiddleston was great in Thor, but here, he really gets to shine.  The words that come out of his mouth are sublime (more on that in a sec), but his motivation is the key.  Whedon understands that with everything going on, Loki is still a whiny brat seeking attention.  He is jealous and angry and bitter and sad, and it’s all there in the subtext.  He thinks he’s almighty like his brother, but the fates keep shoving how wrong he is in his face—he’ll begin to monologue, only to be interrupted by getting his ass kicked.  It’s hilarious and a great way to play with expectations, like Whedon does best.

Not to mention, the dialogue?  Oh.  My.  God.  Whedon is known as a master at dialogue, but here…I don’t know, what title goes above “master”?  He doesn’t strive for the clever and the quippy for clever and quippy’s sake; each line spoken is true to the character speaking it.  Everyone maintains their own voice.  The result is some of the best, most original, most hilarious lines I’ve ever heard on screen.  I often joke about having a shrine to Joss Whedon in my closet, but now I think I might have to make good on that.

IMPARTIAL CRITIC: it would be easy to say that The Avengers is just a prime example of Hollywood’s greed.  It’s a giant cash cow that will fill those faceless executives’ bank accounts with more and more moola.  And, yeah, that’s pretty factual.  But under the direction of Whedon, with the actors assembled here, with the plot turns and high octane action, all of that is truly and perfectly disguised.  We go to the movies to be entertained, after all.  The Avengers is entertaining, through and through.

But it’s more than just a popcorn flick (though I did eat a lot of popcorn).  It is a feat of filmmaking.  The cinematography and lighting are superb.  It’s not flashy or symmetrical, but unique all the same.  There’s a tracking shot during the final battle that goes from one hero to the next, showing us where everyone is, that, yeah, has a bit of transparent CGI, but is still wonderful to behold.  The CGI, by the way, is pretty damn swell.  Not once did I stop and squint my eyes at the fakeness.  The work they did on the Hulk definitely needs to be recognized—they finally got him right, looking real, not like a cartoon.

The story is also something to treasure.  It’s surprisingly complex, yet easy to follow.  With all these characters, each with their own impetus, a lesser scribe could have gotten mixed up or left someone behind.  Not Whedon, and not Zak Penn, credited with co-authoring the story.  Everyone is essential.  I’ll admit, I was a bit hazy on some details with Black Widow, and with Hawkeye, it can be said he was left out in a lurch for the majority of the film, but that’s done with a purpose true to the story, and really, it completes Black Widow a bit.  (Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner are great, by the way, with Johansson probably giving her best performance to date, I say.)  The second act primarily takes place on a flying aircraft carrier, and is mostly made up of talking and more talking.  In a lesser movie, this would drag, and I’m sure to some people, it did.  But it all had meaning to me, and the talking was so entertaining, I didn’t really care about a lack of things blowing up.

But The Avengers is not about things blowing up.  It’s about, and I’m about to get corny here, people coming together, people uniting.  It’s about clashing personalities and learning to work as a team.  In a sense, it’s about the world, this spinning orb of land and water we all stand upon.  It’s impossible for everyone to get along all the time, but when the time calls for it, we must.  This is an election year, so we’ll be getting more and more of people fighting and yelling, trying to win our votes and get power for themselves because, as humans, isn’t that what we all strive for?  But it shouldn’t be about that.  It needs to be about the planet, about community, about coming together and putting ego aside.  Will it?  Doubtful, because that’s not how the game is played.  Thankfully, there are movies to take us away from such headache inducing times.  Movies that may be idealistic in the way they wish the world to be, but still ring true in their sentiments.  Movies like The Avengers, a movie that deserve to seen many, many times.  Like right now.  Excuse me while I run to the theater.

Rating: Four stars