The Avengers The Avengers Critics Reviews Thread - Part 2

[I SEE SPIDEY]

I think it's good that you're tempering your expectations, tbh. It's my personal favorite superhero movie ever, but it seems very possible that the critics are gonna end up over-hyping it for a lot of people. I'm dreading the inevitable backlash.

That said, I'm loving these review. t:

Just out of curiosity, I know you're not a Serenity fan, but did you think the critics went too easy on Cabin in the Woods as well?

I don't hate Serenity, it's a cute low budget film (7/10) but nothing to write home about in my opinion. I don't even remember it to be honest.

I honestly didn't read any reviews for Cabin in the Woods but I saw that they were good so yes I suppose I agree with them considering it's my favorite film of the year so far. I gave it a 9 out of 10.

I'm not saying that the Avengers isn't going to be amazing, honestly I prefer lighthearted comic book films to the depressing one's, I'm just saying that I don't trust the critics when it comes to this film. They might be correct in their praising of it but the overrating of his T.V shows and Serenity has just left me with a skeptical eye.

 

[kedrell]

totally agree with this review. avengers is a great movie, but best ever? c'mon...

[YT]7uWqGSi1bAE[/YT]

Well I pretty well disagree with him(and you apparently). This smacks of what Chewy said earlier. The main criticism that would be leveled against this film was that it was just fun and popcorn and no real stakes since you know all the good guys are going to survive and win. Personally I don't see those in any way as negatives. He uses XMFC and TDK as examples of films that didn't have these supposed problems. But I'd classify them just as much in the suspense-less, bubblegum, popcorn arena as he puts TA in. You know Batman's gonna win and not die. You know the same thing with the X-Men. You know that before you ever sit down to watch them. That's just the way these movies go.

I don't know if I like TA better than IM1(what I previously considered to be the best superhero movie ever). I'll have to see TA more times to make that determination. But IMO if it's not the best then it's the second best, easily.

Full disclosure: I only mildly liked XMFC(7/10) and I despise TDK from the depths of hell...so there's that.

 

[Dr. Sid Jawtug]

It will never be over, it is a way of life!

Yeah, a billion dollars later and you think Hollywood thinks its over. This guy is a joke and his review should be viewed as such.

 

[Jordanstine]

Quick! Find something he spelled wrong!

Reading others comments about Cole Smith, he apparently spelled S.H.I.E.L.D. wrong.

 

[PyroChamber]

When I was checking out the wiki page for Avengers yesterday and where it mentions the critical response it said the Avengers was getting universal acclaim, but I checked it again just now and it got changed to "generally favorable".

Not sure why that got changed being that so far it does seem to be getting universal acclaim, unless that's suppose to mean the same thing.

 

[bonzob2000]

Ugh, that Cole Smithey review is honestly 100 times dumber and more poorly written than the Amy Nicholson one. We should have saved some of that vitriol for this moron.

 

[cryptic name]

totally agree with this review. avengers is a great movie, but best ever? c'mon...

[YT]7uWqGSi1bAE[/YT]

"What the hell is Captain America's shield made of?!"

Vibranium...

"It's impenetrable to everything!"

Yup...

 

[kedrell]

It'll go back and forth until pretty much all critics have weighed in. When it gets well above 200 reviews(which seems to be the standard number).

 

[Tony Stark]

I don't hate Serenity, it's a cute low budget film (7/10) but nothing to write home about in my opinion. I don't even remember it to be honest.

I honestly didn't read any reviews for Cabin in the Woods but I saw that they were good so yes I suppose I agree with them considering it's my favorite film of the year so far. I gave it a 9 out of 10.

I'm not saying that the Avengers isn't going to be amazing, honestly I prefer lighthearted comic book films to the depressing one's, I'm just saying that I don't trust the critics when it comes to this film. They might be correct in their praising of it but the overrating of his T.V shows and Serenity has just left me with a skeptical eye.

His stuff isn't overrated. Some people like it some don't, it's as simple as that. I fail to see how firefly could be overrated since it was cancelled by the network before all the episodes aired. Serenity was his gift to the huge fan following of Firefly. He wasn't trying to make Citizen Cain.

 

[flickchick85]

As a writer some of his stuff has been trashed, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Nah, Buffy's always had the respect of all the major TV critics, from TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly to Time Magazine and The New York Times.

 

[Iceman]

We need a well written negative review that we can rally behind to show that we aren't just biased against negative reviews themselves.

 

[flickchick85]

I don't hate Serenity, it's a cute low budget film (7/10) but nothing to write home about in my opinion. I don't even remember it to be honest.

I honestly didn't read any reviews for Cabin in the Woods but I saw that they were good so yes I suppose I agree with them considering it's my favorite film of the year so far. I gave it a 9 out of 10.

I'm not saying that the Avengers isn't going to be amazing, honestly I prefer lighthearted comic book films to the depressing one's, I'm just saying that I don't trust the critics when it comes to this film. They might be correct in their praising of it but the overrating of his T.V shows and Serenity has just left me with a skeptical eye.

Fair enough, makes sense. I look forward to hearing your verdict when you see it.

 

[marcvader]

We need a well written negative review that we can rally behind to show that we aren't just biased against negative reviews themselves.

Lol, but true.

 

[bonzob2000]

A lot of the well-written positve reviews argue the "negatives" way better than the negative reviews have. They just temper that with all the gushing. It's true the first 30 minutes are a little choppy and unengaging, for example, which lots of the positive reviews have mentioned.

But Smithey is just nuts. Smulders (nice model-turned-actress putdown to someone who's been on a successful sitcom for seven seasons, btw) gives one of the worst performances in five years? What? She's fine in the movie. Her scenes should be left on the cutting room floor? Not only is this is massive cliche, but he doesn't even understand how this cliche works. If there's an extraneous subplot dragging down an otherwise good movie, then fine, say it should be left on the cutting room floor (though I'd also point out not only is this a cliche it's an anachronism... hardly anyone edits on film these days so nothing is getting left on a cutting room floor), but when a character is a key source of exposition and is in tons of major scenes with your leads... it would be literally impossible to leave her on the cutting room floor.

It just gets dumber from there -- his shoehorned in, nonsensical references to George Bush and the military industrial complex make me embarrassed as a fellow liberal. He says they should have spent more time finding a Robert Altman to direct this -- a ridiculous statement, made more ridiculous by the fact that Joss basically is the comic book Robert Altman -- a master of group dynamics, character, and dialogue, and by the fact that Altman's one foray into big studio filmmaking was the legendary disaster Popeye.

There's a million other dumb statements like that in there as well, and that's before you get to another gratuitous and nasty shot at fanboy culture at the end.

* Joss even described his vision for River's fight scenes in Serenity, with their use of long, unbroken takes combined with carefully thought out kung fu, as being like "Robert Altman's The Matrix."

 

[yads]

He's not nuts, he's smart enough to know he can get free traffic to his site by writing stuff like that. It wouldn't shock me if he hasn't seen the film. Or if he saw it and really liked it.

 

[marcvader]

He's not nuts, he's smart enough to know he can get free traffic to his site by writing stuff like that. It wouldn't shock me if he hasn't seen the film. Or if he saw it and really liked it.

Yup, so far the three negative reviews scream of attention seeking, "Look at me!", type of reviews.

 

[bonzob2000]

He's not nuts, he's smart enough to know he can get free traffic to his site by writing stuff like that. It wouldn't shock me if he hasn't seen the film. Or if he saw it and really liked it.

Nope, not buying it. We always make these accusations when poorly written reviews come out. It's a huge breach of ethics for critics with established sites to write reviews of movies they haven't seen. They would be discovered for doing so, and the moment they were, their career as a critic would be effectively over. It's just not worth the risk.

I'm slightly more inclined to believe that critics intentionally put baiting language in their reviews to draw traffic to their site, but I doubt Smithey secretly "really liked it." Having read a few of his other reviews, including his equally idiotic pan of Cabin in the Woods, this is pretty in line with his thinking. At worst I'd say he threw in the fanboy culture line to get a few extra page views.

He's the worst kind of critic, someone who derides anything genre or mainstream because he sees himself as a cinephile, and yet doesn't even understand why Cabin in the Woods is not the same beast as, say, Saw. He's a supposed film snob who doesn't get how film works, so instead throws out cliches, political allusions, and references to Robert Altman.

 

[Jordanstine]

Ugh, that Cole Smithey review is honestly 100 times dumber and more poorly written than the Amy Nicholson one. We should have saved some of that vitriol for this moron.

Is it true that Cole Smith was actually a "Rotten Tomatoes Top Critic"???

Reading from the comments over there, they said he was, but just downgraded him after his Avengers review...

 

[Iceman]

He's not nuts, he's smart enough to know he can get free traffic to his site by writing stuff like that. It wouldn't shock me if he hasn't seen the film. Or if he saw it and really liked it.

It's just lack of principles and abuse of position. Only smart as so far as stealing toys of kids and making money by selling them on ebay would be smart.

 

[kedrell]

Honestly, I've never seen anything from Whedon prior to TA that I liked(I don't care for Buffy, Firefly/Serenity, Dollhouse, none of it). I even complained when he was first rumored to get the director's chair. But I have learned to trust in Marvel Studios so that's what I did. And in that trust I was for the 6th time in a row rewarded.

 

[I SEE SPIDEY]

Fair enough, makes sense. I look forward to hearing your verdict when you see it.

I look forward to writing a review. I hope I love it as much as you did.

Did you write a review? because if you did, I'd like a link.

 

[Xeno]

Is it true that Cole Smith was actually a "Rotten Tomatoes Top Critic"???

Reading from the comments over there, they said he was, but just downgraded him after his Avengers review...

I've seen the guy's blurbs on RT before (always negative) but I don't recall if he was a top critic. If he was he shouldn't have been since he's just Some Guy With A Website. There are hundreds of those minor bloggers on RT's list and many of them are plainly trolling for hits. We can expect many more negative reviews from that quarter in the coming days.

 

[Carnage27]

He was never a Top Critic, to my knowledge.

 

[spider-neil]

"What the hell is Captain America's shield made of?!"

Vibranium...

"It's impenetrable to everything!"

Yup...

actually it's a vibranium/adamantium allow. utterly indestructable.

vibranium - absorbs impact/sound

adamantium - indestructable

the combination can pretty much deflect anything thrown at it.
what I didn't like about the captian america movie is the nonchalant stark gives him the sheild, 'oh this? we use it prop open doors'.
stark even offers to up different shields and steve is the one who spots it out of the corner of his eye.

'what's that?'
'the sheild? ohhh you wouldn't be interested in that...'

 

[bonzob2000]

David Poland's review is up. Predictably, it's full of snark and him being his usual jerk-y self. Less predictably, it's actually (slightly) positive. Basically another of those "pretty good, but I don't get why fanboys like it so much... also, have a mentioned I hate fanboys?" type reviews.

It's interesting that Hulk was the biggest question mark going into this, and now seems to be the best thing coming out of it. It seems that many critics who have tons of problems with the film as a whole still LOVE the Hulk stuff.