I agree that they could be used for comparison and contrast, but I get annoyed when people basically wave over at Marvel films and say that MOS should have been more like that, but then they get all insulted when someone says something negative about TA.
I say pfffft. Sorry. I'm not going to apologize for some well-deserved snark on people who like to wave TA around like it's some cinematic achievement because it used a montage. Seriously, guys. A montage.
Just out of curiosity, did anyone feel weepy, or actually cry during the montage? I mean, the viewers, not the characters.
I personally didn't really care for
The Avengers, but I recognise this as an issue of personal taste. It's the 5th highest-rated comic book movie on IMDB (last I checked), it got 92% on rotten tomatoes, it exceeded box office expectations by bringing in 1.51 billion dollars and is partly responsible for Iron Man 3 doubling the gross of either of the two previous Iron Man movies. Overall, critics like it very much, audiences like it very much, moneybags like it very much, and that's the big picture. It's important to try and understand why people liked it, and why you didn't, in a more substantial way than "those people are dumb" or "those people have an agenda against DC, they're haters".
The montage was in the
Avengers, it does matter and it's certainly better than not having a montage, but it does not a great deal in my opinion. I personally didn't cry. There are other differences, though. New York did not seem as damaged. It's also a different viewing experience, the camera in MoS largely focused on showing the carnage and destruction (explicitly acknowledged by Snyder), whereas in TA it focused on efforts to prevent the carnage and destruction.
The most important difference is that these are completely different movies in spite of their superficially similar plots. The purpose of TA was to show the heroes overcome their differences to work together, so that we could see how powerful they would be if they worked in unision. It's very geeky escapist fantasy, it's not serious or ambitious at all in my opinion, but it succeeded in delivering what it was selling. It was done in a lighthearted and comedic tone which fit the point of the movie. Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, Iron Man, and Captain America each had a productive role.
MoS is only similar to TA if we are so superficial as to reduce the whole movie to "A hero emerges to stop an alien invasion centred on a major city". That's not really what the movies are about, the alien invasions are just plot devices to challenge the hero(es). MoS, in its previews and in its opening act, claimed to be about more things: about alienation and finding a place in the world, about free will, about Jesus Christ, and apparently about the ethics of murder. All lofty ambitions, more interesting and more ambitious to the goal of "these heroes will be stronger as a team than alone". MoS was selling a message I wanted to see. It was selling a message that audiences wanted to see: the movie broke 150 million in its opening weekend in spite of bad reviews. Unfortunately, MoS didn't succeed on any of those counts, it didn't deliver on any of its core messages. It did about as well as
Prometheus did exploring what the ancient astronaut hypothesis would mean if true, or as
Star Trek into Darkness did exploring the consequences of the security state and terrorism. Everything character-related was superficial, and often contradictory. Clark doesn't really find a place in the world in any concrete way, he doesn't make meaningful choices with consequences as he reacts rather than acts, the Jesus allegory is superficial in the extreme, and the ethics of murder are delegated to sequels. MoS was, effectively, a literary cocktease.
t: (Must be a Nicholas Cage fan.)
