Dopplegangland

Courtesy of Joss Whedon & Jon Blum, this is one of those wonderful moments where you realize you’re having a ball at the expense of all the “not we” out there…

Joss Whedon on the success of The Avengers:

• RDA: What do you feel is the greatest achievement of “The Avoiders”?

• JW: Getting “mewling quim” out there to the masses. Also, Hulk.

My yearly ritual as follows:

(1) Pull A/C out of closet…

(2) Scream in terror as ironing board, two vacuum cleaners, a swiffer mop, and an overwhelming combination of Christmas wrapping paper & toilet paper rolls fall on my head…as if the solar system’s asteroid belt had decided to collapse upon the Earth…

(3) Scream in frustration as it take 10 minutes, two cuts on my finger, and much sweat to remove the window screen…

(4) Sweat as if Niagara Falls was gushing out of every one of my pores…struggling with the white beast and trying not to drown in my own fluids…

(5) Curse the decrepit Red Green as duct tape & insulation fight for dominance in my living room…

(6) Replace long vertical blinds with short vertical blinds…yelping as the sharp edges of both sets of blinds remind me that I do not have the thick skin of the Incredible Hulk…

(7) Lie down in front of the first cool air of the year, and forget the torture of the previous 30 minutes of hell…

Once again, I have air conditioning…and once again, I want relieve the resulting tension by smashing a small village to rubble. I’ll have to settle for the gym instead…

Written by Salman Rushdie

I’ve had an amazing hit rate with historical novels recently…and I’m wondering what the key is to success within the genre.

In my own opinion, success lies with the passion of the characters. All sorts of historical settings can be recreated…but what holds everything together is the believability of the characters that populate the tableaux of long ago. The fictional ones are hard enough — the best authors trying their utmost to create evocative people from scratch. But the greater success comes from what the author does with actual historical persons…no easy task, to be sure.

The Enchantress of Florence is magical, because it combines the requisite passion with a cross-section of astonishing fictional characters mingling with equally astonishing real people…and the end result is something amazing to behold. In fact, I’d be hard-pressed not to call this spellbinding.

The Mughal Empire itself is something not particularly familiar to western readers…but it comes alive as no place ever has thanks to Rushdie’s skill. This is a place of gold and glitter, side-by-side with muck and squalor. It’s a world of extreme richness colliding with extreme poverty, where nobility & honour fight to the death with duplicity & selfishness. In the middle of all this, the justly-famous Emperor Akbar deals with a fictional relative on one hand, and a literally magical queen on the other hand…all the while trying to maintain a balance to his kingdom.

And that makes up only HALF the book!

The same care & attention is evident in the section set in Medici Florence — the world of the Renaissance reincarnated in all its sizzling, sensual, zealous glory. Where Machiavelli & Savonarola mix with exotic & fictional Mongol princesses and Turkish mercenaries. In both locations, Rushdie unlocks emotional storms that threaten to swallow up two sides of the world…and the resulting literary adventure tends to leave one breathless in its wake. This isn’t simply a book to read…but to embrace…to experience, to luxuriate in the fragrance of imagined perfumes, the sounds of riotous citizens, and the feel of soft, flowing silks.

To read The Enchantress of Florence is to fall under numerous spells…all of which will transport you to a time and place where dreams & reality have a way of mixing in the most intoxicating of manners. This is a jewel of a novel…worthy of a place in the Mughal court it so beautifully documents.

It’s as accurate a description of my current mental & physical state as can be imagined…

My original intent was to write about why the news of the death of Maurice Sendak, author of Where the Wild Things Are, left me rather indifferent…but an evening of headache-hell and a night of insomnia will leave one with very few coherent thoughts, other than “please make it through the day without being hit by traffic”.

I’ll wake up later this week, I promise…in time for a second viewing of The Avengers, I hope.

Screenplay by Joss Whedon

Story by Zak Penn and Joss Whedon

Directed by Joss Whedon

“There is no throne, there is no version of this where you come out on top. Maybe your army will come, maybe it’s too much for us, but it’s all on you. Because if we can’t protect the Earth, you can be damn sure we’ll avenge it.”

Ok, it’s Sunday, and my review is posted earlier than planned…don’t pester me with trivialities.

Let’s get the negatives out of the way first:

• The long-game that Marvel played to set THE AVENGERS up…laying foundations since 2008…is a double-edged sword. Most fans (even casual ones) of the super hero genre know about The Avengers as the ultimate team-acup of Marvel super heroes. But the background set up of the movie canon requires people to actually pay attention. Based on the box office, the anticipation built up by these methodically-laid paving stones lead to quite the reward. But it does leave us with gaps — most notably with the Black Widow & Hawkeye. There isn’t a great deal of investment into their backgrounds (certainly none at all with Hawkeye), and much of the character building has to be done from scratch by the actors themselves. Thankfully, Jeremy Renner & Scarlett Johannson act their socks off to try and build some subtext…but it’s not entirely successful. They’re still virtually blank slates, filling a role no different than Nick Fury’s subordinate agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

• While on the subject of background, Captain America’s return to a vastly different world to his home base of America in World War II is very much glossed over…when its confusing nature was set-up with such gorgeousness & pathos in Cap’s very own film last year. The result is that the conflict of personalities between Steve Rogers & Tony Stark seems more of a macho pissing match than an actual collision of two different centuries, sensibilities & value systems. One-ups-manship as opposed to genuine misunderstanding between men of different eras. It should have been much more than that…but again, we gloss over the matter…

• Still on the subject of glossing over…Loki is literally dropped into this film. In some ways, his brief introduction is a blessing…especially to those familiar with last summer’s Thor & Captain America; vast explanations can be dispensed with. However, even to a casual viewer, Loki’s arrival in the story certainly seems abrupt & arbitrary. His deal with the aliens certainly comes out of the blue…whether or not you’ve prepared yourself by watching Thor. Once again, salutations to an actor working with what he has been given (thank you, Tom Huddleston), but it shouldn’t have been necessary…

In spite of all of the above…The Avengers is best described as delicious. A feast for the eyes, a solace for the soul, and a balm for everyone’s sense of humour. Watching The Avengers is to embrace what it means to have a fantastic time at the movies. Special note for its success goes to director Joss Whedon. He takes all the experience he harnessed withy Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel & Firefly, and magnifies it tenfold. Here’s how he does it:

• The action is carefully measured out through the course of the film. Both Iron Man 2 and Captain America also demonstrated this skill, but Whedon crafts the action so that not only does it come in appropriate waves, but the action itself is tailored to the situation — escape chase, close-in & close-up fighting, accident-and-sabotage, and the final set-piece — each one concentrates on different aspects of explosive eye candy to keep everyone satisfied; it runs the gamut from controlled chaos to epic military confrontations. On top of that, the action is actually EASY to follow…take note, makers of the blurred CGI-smears that call themselves the Transformers films. The final act of urban warfare manages to be exciting, destructive, and celestially epic…yet remains CLEAR and EASY TO FOLLOW at all times. I’m capitalizing this for future Marvel director-wanna-be’s to take note…

• The script is also pure Whedon. The jokes are (1) funny, (2) unexpected, (3) sharp & pointed for each situation, and best of all, (4) brilliantly unexpected. The lines he gives to everyone in the cast gives them plenty to get their teeth into…especially to Robert Downey Jr. (the Shakespeare in the park moment at Thor’s expense is a scream). What’s even better are the visual gags that delightfully and hilariously subvert audience expectations…usually involving the Hulk. The gag about punching Thor out of the way was funny enough, but cutting off Loki’s pontificating becomes a rag doll moment that had myself & the entire cinema howling with glee.

• The characterization in the film that IS developed is utterly gorgeous. Once again, Downey Jr. takes hold of Tony Stark and offers another layer to be stripped off the armour surrounding his psyche…but even more surprising is Mark Ruffalo’s take on Bruce Banner. The script is very generous with his situation regarding the Hulk, and Ruffalo’s walking-on-egg-shells-terror-mixed-with-resignation is the equal to any of his small-scale indie film triumphs. Further to this is the lovely nod to Iron Man 2 and Stark’s relationship with Pepper Parks. Only a Whedon script could fashion a set of cameo appearances for Gwyneth Paltrow that are full of sensuality, sweetness & strength…all delivered in a matter of minutes.

The rest of the film is what you would expect. The good guys band together to save the world, an open-ended conclusion sets up the sequel (again…don’t leave when the credits roll…you’ve been warned), some fantastic, exciting action that is paced so well you will never look at your watch (again, something which Michael Bey needs to take special note of…), and a score that I was humming as I exited the theatre.

There’s the key to success. I was pumped and energetic as I left that theatre, basking in the glory of a solid, enjoyable epic…and walking away carrying the entire movie in my heart with a single tune that I hummed for hours afterward. In short, this is the first Marvel film since X-Men 2 to lift me up to such a satisfied plateau.

To put it more bluntly: the 37-year old me appreciated The Avengers on an artistic level (with the few caveats mentioned above)…and the 11-year old me that still resides in my heart & soul thought it the most fantastic awesomeness I’ve seen in some time. I’m definitely seeing this again…and again.

9