22Apr
So. Four years and five movies and it’s all been leading up to this.
(If you ignore all the planned sequels of course.)
I was thinking before I saw this… I’m not so sure about superhero films any more. I mean, aren’t they all the same, really? There’s a hero/es. There’s a villain/s. Stuff happens. There’s a big battle. The heroes wins. The end. That’s it, right? How good can even a good superhero film be, really?
Anyway. I had that in mind this morning when I was strolling up to the screening of Marvel’s Avengers Assemble, or just The Avengers as it’s known outside of the UK and Ireland. Yes, it’s written and directed by the great Joss Whedon, and they’ve got Zak Penn, from the X-Men films on co-writing duty… but Whedon is completely untested on blockbuster scale so how much could that count for?
A lot apparently.
That Super 8 has the audacity to arrive on a marketing platform billing it as an original film is more a testament to the cesspool of derivative sequels, reboots and unimaginative new franchises that have already made this, the Summer of Sequel, such a perfunctory, unengaging play for box office receipts. In this climate, an earnest (if borderline shameless) tribute to the director least in need of a profile boost is a momentary breath of fresh air at the multiplex, even if, in isolated moments, it feels like no more than the perfumed bathroom of a smoky casino floor.
