WARNING: WHY SO SPOILEROUS?

I only saw “The Dark Knight” once in theaters, at a preview screening a few days before its July 2008 opening. Afterwards I wrote an MSN piece about it, “The Smart Knight,” which included the following lines:

There are better superhero movies out there... But “The Dark Knight,” directed by Christopher Nolan, is the smartest superhero movie ever made.

My point: Once Batman stops being a vigilante and becomes a glorified cop he becomes absurd—a cop in a bat suit—and descends into camp. “The Dark Knight” ensured this wouldn’t happen by reinforcing his vigilante status and taking an axe to the bat signal. Even so, fanboys jumped on me for implying that other superhero films might be better than “The Dark Knight.”

Now that I’ve actually seen the movie a second time, four years later on DVD, I’d like to apologize to those fanboys. I was wrong in the above quote. “The Dark Knight” isn’t the smartest superhero movie ever made. In fact, it’s pretty stupid.

Battle for the soul of Gotham
The battle between the Batman (Christian Bale) and the Joker (Heath Ledger) is nothing less than a battle for the soul of Gotham City. Batman wants order, the Joker chaos. “Some men aren't looking for anything logical,” says Alfred (Michael Caine), in one of the movie’s most famous lines. “Some men only want to watch the world burn.”

How does the Joker do this? He commit acts of terrorism. He tries to get the citizens of Gotham to reveal that they’re as ugly inside as he is.

First, he announces he’ll kill one person every day until the Batman takes off his mask and turns himself in. What happens? When Gotham’s district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) holds a press conference saying we don’t give in to terrorist demands, the people lash back:

Reporter: You’d rather protect this outlaw vigilante than the lives of citizens?
Man 1: Things are worse than ever!
Cop: No more dead cops! [Other cops applaud.]
Man 2: He should turn himself in!

The Joker wins.

Then when a Wayne Enterprises employee, Reese (Josh Harto), is about to reveal Batman’s true identity on television, the Joker decides Batman’s too much fun. So he demands the death of Reese in an hour or he’ll blow up a hospital. What happens? All over Gotham, people start taking potshots at Reese. It’s up to the Batman, disguised as Bruce Wayne, to save him.

The Joker wins.

Finally, in the film’s climax, the Joker loads hundreds of barrels of explosives onto two ferry boats—one filled with criminals, one filled with civilians—and gives each boat the other’s detonator. At midnight, he says, he’ll blow up both ferries. If one boat blows up the other first, however, that one will be allowed to continue safely on its way. What happens? The ferry full of citizens votes to blow up the ferry full of criminals but no one can push the button. Meanwhile, one of the criminals (former wrestler Tommy ‘Tiny’ Lister), 6’ 5” and glowering, demands the detonator, and tells the ship’s captain: “I’ll do what you shoulda did 10 minutes ago.” Then he tosses it overboard. Midnight passes, by which time the Joker’s been defeated, and everyone’s safe. Our best side has been revealed.

Batman wins.

In other words, threatened indirectly in examples 1 and 2, everyone caved. Threatened directly, in example 3, and people behaved nobly.

“Give up the Batman or there’s a one-in-10-million chance you’ll die.” Let’s give up the Batman! “Kill Reese or I’ll blow up one of dozens of hospitals in Gotham.” Let’s kill Reese! “Kill those murderers and rapists or YOU will be killed!” Uh... let’s take a vote.

Worse, despite his experiences with examples 1 and 2, not to mention his whole raison d’etre, Batman, in example 3, is convinced that both the citizens and criminals of Gotham will do the right thing. At one point, he and Lt. Gordon (Gary Oldman) have this conversation:

Gordon: Every second we don’t [take down the Joker], those people on the ferry get closer to blowing each other—
Batman (low growl): That won’t happen.

As Batman wrestles with the Joker, we get this exchange:

Joker: I’ll miss the fireworks. [One of the boats blowing up.]
Batman (low growl): There won’t be any fireworks!

How does he know? Because he’s the hero? Because it’s the end of the movie? Because it’s time for him to win? The whole thing feels monumentally false.

Yes, you can drill down and say that in example No. 1 the people were asked to give up nothing of their own, just the Batman, so it was easier to cave. Yes, you can say that in example No. 2, the pool of potential assassins was larger than on the ferry boat, so you’re that much more likely to find one, two, or a dozen, willing to kill for a false sense of security. Yes, on the ferry boat they’re fighting for a real sense of security, a do-or-die situation,  but it’s still a tough thing to press a button and extinguish hundreds of souls. Most of us don’t have it in us. But what about the other boat? Could no criminal, who might’ve already killed dozens, push that button?

Bottom line. Threatened indirectly, the people of Gotham got scared and flailed. Threatened directly, the people of Gotham got scared and sat calmly. Maybe that’s what happens when you and your children are threatened directly. But I doubt it.

The Museum of the Hard-to-Believe
There’s so much I don’t believe about this film.

I don’t believe the Joker is able to redirect or misdirect Harvey Dent’s anger. Dent has a gun to the forehead of the Joker—the man responsible for both the awful last minutes of Rachel Dawes’ life and Dent losing half his face—and he doesn’t pull the trigger? Instead he goes after the cops who betrayed him to the Joker. He goes after the family of Jim Gordon, the uncorrupt boss of those corrupt cops. He flails.

And what’s up with that whole ‘White Knight’ crap? If Dent is revealed as less than pure, the good citizens of Gotham—if there are any—would give up hope? How many even know who Harvey Dent is?

Don’t get me started on all the traps the Joker springs in this thing.

Oops. Too late.

Here are the various traps the Joker springs on the people and authorities of Gotham:

1. He kidnaps and kills one of Gotham’s many Batman copycats, then he hangs the fat corpse outside the Mayor’s high-rise office so it bumps up against the window just as the Mayor is looking out. Nice timing.
2. He sends a video of the killing to the TV networks, who broadcast it, along with his demand that Batman turn himself in.
3. He gets the DNA of three prominent Gothamites (Judge, Commissioner, Harvey Dent) on a Joker card, kills two of them (bomb, poison), and goes after Dent personally at Bruce Wayne’s high-rise.
4. When Dent, pretending to be Batman, is transported across town in a police van, Joker redirects the motorcade into an underpass and attacks it.
5. After Batman stops the Joker by upending his truck, a stunt which should’ve killed him but merely left him a tad groggy, the Joker has his men kidnap both Dent and Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal), and tie them to chairs next to explosives in secure locations equidistant from the Gotham jail. (Thank you, Google maps.)
6. At the same time, or a previous time, he plants a man with a bomb in his stomach in the Gotham jail. Is this Plan B? For when the underpass thing didn’t work? Or was Gordon right and the Joker wanted to be captured? Gotta say, for someone who wanted to be captured, he was making a convincing case otherwise in that underpass.
7. Plan B works perfectly, though. The jail bomb goes off, killing many but leaving the Joker unharmed, Rachel Dawes blows up, and, best of all, and completely unplanned, Dent loses half his face in the blast that nearly takes his life.

Whew. Breather? No, this is Chris Nolan. Onward.

8. The Joker gets on a local news show and tells everyone to kill Reese or he’ll blow up a hospital. For some reason, not many policemen guard the hospital where Dent is recuperating. Apparently everyone’s forgotten that the Joker has tried to kill him three times now.
9. After turning Harvey Dent into a bad guy, the Joker blows up the hospital.
10. Immediately after, he begins his ferry boat threat. When did he load the  explosives onto the ferries? Just how many men does he have? And does no one ever see him doing these things?
11. And while all of that is going on, he holes up in a construction site, where he’s being watched by police who have been alerted to his location by Batman’s extra-legal surveillance. Except his men in clown masks? They’re really hostages! The hostages? They’re really his men! It’s another trap! Because he knew they’d be able to find him? Why would he think that? Batman had to break the law to find him. Just how many steps ahead is the Joker?

For a madman, the Joker has to be the greatest organizational planner ever. Even while messing with you in Plan B, he’s apparently thinking ahead to Plan Z. The intricacy of his plans make D-Day seem like a sailboat ride on a Sunday afternoon.

It’s tough out there for a Batman
This is a tough movie to be Batman. In the first, “Batman Begins,” he’s proactive, stalking crooks in the night. Here, he’s back on his heels. He’s reacting more than acting. He’s taking punches.

Is he slower in this one? He was such a ninja in the first movie that both criminals and moviegoers could barely see him. Maybe fanboys complained. That last fight with Ra’s al Ghul on the train was like a battle of shadows, but, ninja-wise, it made sense. Here, Batman’s not only not a ninja, he’s as stolid as Rocky Balboa in the 11th round.

Thank god he’s got so many good people around him. Alfred, for example. After Batman’s first encounter with the Joker, when Bruce Wayne says, “They crossed a line,” Alfred immediately responds, “You crossed the line first, sir. You squeezed them, you hammered them to the point of desperation.” After Batman saves Harvey Dent but loses Rachel and sits despondent over his role in all of this—in inspiring not good but madness—Alfred tells him, “You spat in the faces of Gotham's worst criminals. Didn’t you think there might be some casualties?” Spat in the faces...? Thanks for the buck-up, bro.

Well, at least Bruce has Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), who, when shown Batman’s Patriot-Act-like surveillance methods, says, “This is too much power for one man to have,” and “Spying on 30 million people isn't part of my job description.” OK, so no Lucius. But at least Rachel loves him. Oh right, the letter.

Poor dude can’t have a conversation with anyone without it turning into some part of the film’s philosophical treatise. I love me some Michael Caine but almost everything Alfred says is in this vein. Harvey Dent, too. “You either die a hero,” he says during a casual dinner, “or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” When I first heard it, before I knew that Harvey would die a hero and Batman would endure as a villain, it felt false to me. It rang loudly and off key. It announced itself.

Movies are only as good as directors allow them to be
I like some of what Nolan does. I like the idea that Batman inspires people in unintended, dangerous ways. I like that someone nefarious rises to reach Batman’s level of madness. I like the idea of blackmailing Batman to give himself up. That’s smart. But it’s lost in the relentlessness of Nolan’s direction and the Joker’s innumerable plans and schemes.

Yes, Heath Ledger is brilliant. And, yes, this is great dialogue:

Don’t talk like one of them. You’re not! Even if you’d like to be. To them, you’re just a freak. Like me! They need you right now, but when they don’t they’ll cast you out like a leper. You see, their morals, their code, it’s a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They’re only as good as the world allows them to be. I’ll show you. When the chips are down, these... these civilized people, they’ll eat each other. See, I’m not a monster. I’m just ahead of the curve.

Ahead of the curve. Great line.

This sets up our ferry-boat ending that depicts how some people don’t drop their moral code at the first sign of trouble. The problem? The Joker’s actually right. Or he’s half right. Moral codes aren’t necessarily dropped at the first sign of trouble, but, generally, we are only as good as the world allows us to be. Batman knows that, too. He should’ve picked up on it. He should’ve said:

Of course people are only as good as the world allows them to be. That’s why I’m here. I’m allowing them that chance.  

He should’ve mocked the Joker:

You think you’re telling us something we don’t know? You think you’re bringing us news?

And:

It’s easy to bring the world low. It’s hard to lift it up. Why did you choose the easy way?

But all of that would’ve required a Batman who wasn’t on his heels. It would’ve required a Batman unafraid to take the spotlight from the Joker. And it would’ve required a different ending than our ferry boat/fairy tale ending.

But it would’ve made for a better movie. “Sometimes truth isn't good enough,” Batman says at the end of the movie. And most of the time it is.

Audience identification
Listen, I know I’m talking in the wind here. I know “The Dark Knight” grossed the money it grossed, and has the fans it has, and no argument will sway them from their point-of-view.

So feel free to say it’s just a movie, and fun, and you’re not supposed to think about it too much. I’ll understand. Because I know most people don’t go to the movies looking for anything logical. Most people go just to watch the world burn.

Posted at 07:43 PM on May 10, 2012 in category Movie Reviews - 2000s
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I posted the above this morning before work, and before I knew Pres. Obama would be speaking today about marriage equality, and before he came out in favor of same-sex marriage. Now it's even more true. Now it's a great day.

I've seen a lot of good messages, good comments, good thoughts out there in the social media landscape, but the one below is my favorite. From someone named Erin on Twitter:

My parents don't approve of the fact that I'm gay. It's sort of nice to know that my president does.

Posted at 06:44 AM on May 09, 2012 in category Politics
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Out above the rooftops
The moon is holding sway
A narrow eye low in the sky
Knowing what I'm knowing

I have left the table now
And this is just to say
Every song I've ever sung
Has been a song for going

--Joe Henry, from the song “Room at Arles,” from the album “Reverie”

Vincent Van Gogh, “Bedroom at Arles,” 1888

Posted at 06:30 PM on May 08, 2012 in category Music
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A few weeks ago my friend Tim, longtime illustrator, and ErikLundegaard.com webmaster (thwip!), started a new comic strip. “Cloud Five” is for all those folks who can't reach Cloud Nine, which is most of us. Probably 99% of us. Check it out.

The latest storyline is, well, timely (yes, that's a pun): Ted and friends checking out “The Avengers” premiere. Here's the first of that series:

Click on the strip, or here, for a bigger version of same.

I laughed out loud when I read that but Benny's malapropism, like the best malapropisms, turned out to be true: “The Avengers” have done nothing but accumulate the dough since being released overseas 11 days ago and in the U.S. four days ago. Somewhere, Disney and Marvel execs are on cloud nine.

Posted at 06:39 AM on May 08, 2012 in category Movies - Box Office
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“We all need genius. It's essential to know that Great Souls are out there, revealing the potential of the species, and we want to believe that true genius creates itself, and forces itself on the world. But we only know those geniuses who have broken through, and when we look at their stories, we often find that a random stroke of luck or a passionate believer made all the difference. If ever there was a movie genius, it was Charlie Chaplin. But anyone who works in movies will tell you that when it comes to pictures, nobody does anything alone.”

--Jon Boorstin, from the article “Who Invented Chaplin's Tramp?” in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Charlie Chaplin in “The Kid” (1921). But who helped him invent the Tramp?

Posted at 06:29 PM on May 07, 2012 in category Quote of the Day
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Here's a list of whichever movie has held the opening-weekend box-office record since 1980:

Release	Movie	Opening	% of Total	Theaters	Total Gross
6/20/1980	The Empire Strikes Back	$10,840,307	5%	823	$209,398,025
6/19/1981	Superman II	$14,100,523	13%	1,397	$108,185,706
6/4/1982	Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan	$14,347,221	18%	1,621	$78,912,963
5/25/1983	Return of the Jedi	$23,019,618	9%	1,002	$252,583,617
5/23/1984	Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom	$25,337,110	14%	1,687	$179,870,271
5/20/1987	Beverly Hills Cop II	$26,348,555	17%	2,326	$153,665,036
5/24/1989	Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade	$29,355,021	15%	2,327	$197,171,806
6/16/1989	Ghostbusters II	$29,472,894	26%	2,410	$112,494,738
6/23/1989	Batman	$40,489,746	16%	2,194	$251,188,924
6/19/1992	Batman Returns	$45,687,711	28%	2,644	$162,831,698
6/11/1993	Jurassic Park	$47,026,828	13%	2,404	$357,067,947
6/16/1995	Batman Forever	$52,784,433	29%	2,842	$184,031,112
5/23/1997	The Lost World: Jurassic Park	$72,132,785	32%	3,281	$229,086,679
11/16/2001	Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone	$90,294,621	28%	3,672	$317,575,550
5/3/2002	Spider-Man	$114,844,116	28%	3,615	$403,706,375
7/7/2006	Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest	$135,634,554	32%	4,133	$423,315,812
5/4/2007	Spider-Man 3	$151,116,516	45%	4,252	$336,530,303
7/18/2008	The Dark Knight	$158,411,483	30%	4,366	$533,345,358
7/15/2011	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2	$169,189,427	44%	4,375	$381,011,219
5/4/2012	The Avengers	$200,300,000	100%	4,349	$200,300,000

source: Box Office Mojo

A lot of lame sequels here: “Superman II,” “Beverly Hills Cop II,” “Ghostbusters II,” “The Lost World: Jurassic Park,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest,” and “Spider-Man 3.” They're sugary and contain no nutritional value. Think of them as the jujubes of movies.

The title for biggest opener flipped nine times in the 1980s, including three times within a month (May/June 1989) before “Batman” finally shredded the competition. Interesting seeing a few comedies in the mix. It's not just the Indiana Joneses and Luke Skywalkers battling it out; Murphy and Murray get in their punches, too.

Only two record-holders in the 1990s: Batman (three versions) and dinosaurs (two versions). The aughts began with Harry, swung over to Spidey, who got stumbled over by Capt. Jack Sparrow, who got thwipped by Spidey again, who got coldcocked by the Dark Knight. Then it was the boy wizard until Earth's Mightiest Heroes stormed onto the scene this past weekend.

That's a helluva jump, by the way: $169 million to $200 million. If it holds, it'll be the biggest jump for any new record-holder over the previous record-holder, besting Spidey's $24 million jump over Harry in 2001. That 18% advantage, though, while remarkable, isn't close to the best percentage leap, since “Jedi” bested “Khan” by 60% back in 1983. No one's going to do that anymore. Not even James Cameron.

Speaking of: the list is most interesting for what's not on it, namely “E.T.,” “Titanic” and “Avatar.” Our most popular movies.

   

OK, so they weren't all winners...

UPDATE: According to weekend actuals, “The Avengers” actually did better than projected: $207,438,708. Meaning it beat the last “Harry,” the previous record holder, by $38 million. Percentage-wise, that's a 22% jump, which is the biggest jump since “Spider-Man” bested “Jurassic Park II” by 27%. Since then, the record has been broken in the following incremental fashion: 18%, 11%, 4%, 6%. “Earth's Mightiest Heroes,” indeed. 

Posted at 06:35 AM on May 07, 2012 in category Movies - Box Office
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“Today the United States economy is producing even more goods and services than it did when the recession officially began in December 2007, but with about five million fewer workers.”

--from “U.S. Added Only 115,000 Jobs in April; Rate Is 8.1%” by Catherine Rampell in The New York Times. Reheadlined “Why You May Be Exhausted” on Andrew Sullivan's site.

Compare to an interview I did two years ago with labor lawyer Thomas Geohegan. Quote:

It defies the laws of economic gravity. Under everything you understand about labor economics—if you take Economics 10 or Labor Economics 101—productivity goes up, wages go up. That’s the gold standard. That’s what raises the standard of living. Hasn’t happened here. Productivity has shot up a lot; the real median hourly wage has gone down.

So we're working more, producing more, getting less.

Posted at 04:33 PM on May 06, 2012 in category Politics
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Posted at 10:53 AM on May 06, 2012 in category Politics
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After seeing “The Avengers” on Friday, after seeing the long lines outside the Cinerama last night in downtown Seattle, I was wondering if “The Avengers” might do it. Not break the opening weekend box office record, set last July (with a $169-million three-day gross) by the last “Harry Potter” film. That seemed foregone. No, I was wondering if “The Avengers” might shoot past $200 million domestically. If it might break that barrier.

It seems it has. Early estimates indicate it has.

Over the weekend, I kept going back-and-forth in my mind on why it might do this:

• PRO: It has Iron Man and Captain America and Hulk and Thor. So it'll get all of these fans together at once.
• CON: All of these fans are the same. Thor fans are just a smaller subset of, say, Iron Man fans.
• PRO: People have been anticipating this movie for four years, since the teaser at the end of the first “Iron Man” movie in May 2008.
• CON: Isn't it the same people?
• PRO: The most recent trailers look amazing.
• CON: Will moviegoers assume the trailer contains all the film's good bits and not go?
• PRO: The reviews are positive: 93% on Rotten Tomatoes!
• CON: As a reviewer, I know: Few people read reviews. (Just in case: My review of “The Avengers” here.)

But the biggest PRO in this back-and-forth was the conversation I had waiting in line at the Pacific Center's IMAX theater on Friday. I talked to a couple standing behind me. They were in their late 50s or 60s. I think they asked a question about “The Avengers” and I guess I look like the kind of guy who might have the answer. (Read: NERD!!!)

Then we had the following conversation:

Me: What brings you out here?
Husband: It just seemed like the type of movie you see in a theater.
Wife: We rarely go to the movies.
Me: Rarely as in ... a couple of times a year?
Husband: Not even that.
Wife [backdating]: The last movie we went to see in a theater was ... the last “Star Wars” movie.
Me: In 2005?
Wife: Whenever it was.
Me: And that killed you from seeing movies in the theater.
Husband and wife: [Polite laughter]
Me: Do you know the story? The Avengers?
Husband: We've seen them on DVD.
Me: But this one...
Wife: It was big enough to bring us out.

It was apparently big enough to bring out a lot of folks.

Lesson to Hollywood: If you can bring out the people who haven't seen a movie in the theater in seven years, you're going to set some records.

$200 million? Or are the early estimates off?

Posted at 09:20 AM on May 06, 2012 in category Movies - Box Office
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WARNING: EARTH’S MIGHTIEST SPOILERS!

This is the one.

Joss Whedon’s “The Avengers” is the superhero movie we’ve been waiting for. It’s imbued with the same spirit that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby brought to comic books in the early 1960s, saving, or at least altering, and certainly growing, the industry. Comics under Stan and Jack grew like Bruce Banner under gamma radiation. They grew not only in sales but stature. They grew up. There was a new seriousness—superheroes had problems, superhero teams fought each other like family members—but there was also that pizzazz, that lack of seriousness, that insouciance. Jack’s drawings brought the gravitas and Stan’s personality the lighter-than-air pizzazz. Stan had his tongue in cheek when he called it “the Marvel Age of Comics,” but soon that’s what it was. Face front, true believers! Make Mine Marvel! All for only 12 cents an issue.

Whedon’s “The Avengers” has that same spirit. It’s fast and fun and contains laugh-out-loud moments. It’s epic and smart and never gets bogged down. I saw it at an IMAX theater, in 3-D, and beforehand we were told by theater employees that the movie was two and a half hours long. I practically groaned. Two and a half hours? Really? Then it started and picked up and kept going, and at one point I looked at my watch and nearly two hours had passed. Foosh.

The Alfonso Cuaron of superhero directors
“The Dark Knight” doesn’t have this spirit. Comics became darker in the 1980s under Frank Miller and Alan Moore. They became almost Nietzschian: Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster. Our heroes were still heroes but they became heavy with monstrosity, and that’s the spirit of “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight” and 2003’s “Daredevil,” and somewhere young men, in their teens and 20s and 30s, who should know better, still get off on this crap. They think it’s cool seeing a silent sentinel staring down at a corrupt city, cape flapping in the breeze. Me, I get bored. I wonder where the fun is. I wonder what Stan is up to.

Standing in line, I wondered if “The Avengers” had shot its wad in the trailers. Were all its best lines, its best scenes, used up? What could be better than Tony Stark saying to Loki “We have a Hulk”? But Whedon and company keep them coming.

• “I thought his first name was Agent.”
• “The last time I was in New York I kinda broke...Harlem.”
• “I am a God, you dull creature, and I will not be bullied by a—”
• “That’s my secret, Captain. I’m always angry.”
• “And Hulk? Smash.”

This is the movie that finally saves the Hulk. It moves us away from the lonely wanderlust of the TV series and from Ang Lee’s humorless Freudian angst and brings the fun. What did Hulk have to smash before? Puny humans? Scene-chewing father figures? One abominable drag of an enemy? Here he gets to fight Thor, and a giant alien army, and Loki, bragging, above, to which Hulk’s reaction is just ... perfect. Lesson #1 from the Marvel Age of Comics: Don’t mess with Hulk.

How about the scene where all the aliens go after him? Twenty on one. How about that long, epic, tracking shot that shows us each Avenger in the midst of battle, like some two-page, single-panel extravaganza from Jack Kirby or John Romita or John Byrne? Christopher Nolan in his Batman movies uses quick cuts like he’s directing an MTV video for our distracted age. Whedon seems to be asking himself: How much epic battle can I contain in one tracking shot? He’s the Alfonso Cuaron of superhero directors.

Loki vs. mere mortals
Are there false notes? The way that, you know, Obadiah Stane is suddenly everywhere at the end of “Iron Man,” and the way the Joker is suddenly everywhere at the end of “The Dark Knight”? And every second of both “Fantastic Four” movies? Because I’m not recalling any such problems in “The Avengers.” Sure, the Hulk as part of a team, that’s always problematic. How do you point the Hulk in the right direction? How do you make sure he doesn’t go off in your face? (See: Thor.) Hulk knows no team, really, which is why he eventually left the comic-book “Avengers.” But at least they bring him on board because of Banner’s brains rather than Hulk’s brawn. S.H.I.E.L.D. needed his expertise in gamma radiation. We needed to see him flop Loki around like a rag doll.

Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is actually a weak villain, isn’t he? There’s great malevolence in him as he stares, captured, in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s cell, but his desires are puny. They’re large, in that he wants to take over the Earth, but they’re puny in that he wants subservience, and that’s the province of weak men. The two who inflict the most damage on Loki aren’t super; they’re mere mortals, and they do it with mere words. Loki escapes his cell, runs his blade through Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg), who, dying, tells him:

Coulson: You’re going to lose.
Loki: Why?
Coulson: It’s in your nature.

That gets to the heart of it. He keeps losing to Thor, his brother, and Odin, his father. He’s powerful but it’s not enough, it’s never enough, because losing is in his nature. He needs so much to make up for all that losing.

Earlier Loki gets some mucky-mucks at a black-tie affair in Stuttgart, Germany to bow down to him. An entire plaza full of people. He tells them, “You were made to be ruled,” which is a good line. He tells them that they don’t really want freedom, which is another good line. We don’t, sometimes. Having so many choices in life? It’s hard, sometimes. But then Loki goes too far, and one man, looking like a concentration-camp survivor (Kenneth Tigar), stands up, and refuses to take a knee. He talks about men like Loki and Loki laughs, knowing himself to be a god:

Loki: There are no men like me.
German man: There are always men like you.

That’s so fucking smart. Loki says his line because he’s not a man and the German says his line because there are always dictators borne of smallness: Pol Pot and Hitler and Napoleon and Ozymandias. “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” they say, but the lone and level sand stretches far away. That’s what our German survivor knows. Loki knows it, too. The loser.

All the best battles take place in New York
Plot. What we used to call the cosmic cube, but is now apparently called “The Tesseract,” is being used by S.H.I.E.L.D. in a lab to create weapons of mass destruction. Then it starts operating independently. Loki arrives, takes out half a dozen agents, and makes several, including a bow-and-arrow assassin called the Hawk (Jeremy Renner), who used to be called Hawkeye, and the scientist Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard), do his bidding, literally glassy-eyed. Time for the Avengers initiative.

But what do they really have in the beginning? Iron Man and Captain America and Black Widow and the Hawk ... with the Hawk on the wrong side for much of the movie. The two strongest members of the Avengers are accidents. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) arrives because of Loki and Hulk arrives because of Bruce Banner’s big brain. Is this a false note? Or is the assembling of the Avengers team like what directors call the movies themselves? A series of happy accidents.

The Black Widow (Scarlet Johansson) gets the best intro. Tied to a chair somewhere in Russia, being interrogated by three leering men, being watched by millions more. Except, of course, she’s doing the interrogating. She’s not giving, she’s extracting. This becomes apparent when she gets a call from Agent Coulson. She almost rolls her eyes, then takes down these guys 1, 2, 3. The twiddling-the-thumbs look Coulson has on the phone as he waits for her to take care of business evoked laughter. Clark Gregg will be missed.

S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t very smart with Captain America (Chris Evans), is it? The man’s frozen for 65 years and they have him working out with heavy bags rather than, you know, learning the last 65 years of history and technology. Puny Steve Rogers wasn’t a dim bulb, after all. He had smarts. But it sets up the most interesting of the potential sequels: Captain America, coming up to speed; trapped in a world he never made.

The intro of Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.) is peppy and witty, and contains a cameo from Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). It’s also relevant. Tony Stark, former weapons manufacturer, working now with clean energy, lights up the new Stark Industries building in midtown Manhattan with an arc reactor. “Like Christmas but with me,” he says of the STARK building. And that’s where Loki and Selvig, needing a strong energy source, will set up their Tesseract-created portal to allow an invading Chitauri army to enter our realm. Which is why the battle takes place in midtown Manhattan, which is where we want it. In the Marvel Age of Comics, all the best battles took place in New York.

Mark Ruffalo is the third man in a decade to play Bruce Banner, and I like what he brings. There’s a halting intelligence that meshes well with Robert Downey’s frenetic intelligence. He also knows he’s the biggest implied threat in the world. Mess with him and you mess with “the other guy,” as he calls the Hulk. He can’t be threatened.

Initially I assumed the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier was simply a cool transportation device but it’s really the setting where much of the action in the movie takes place. There, members of the Avengers bicker, and we get a few actual fistfights (Thor vs. Iron Man), but there’s also bonding (Stark, Banner). Much of the bickering is the result of Loki’s staff, no, which is stored in the lab, and is somehow bringing out the worst in everybody. At the same time, this kind of bickering/making up is not only classically Marvel but the movie’s theme. In times of peace, we bicker. In times of crises, we bond into a functioning team. You could say it’s the vision America has of itself. It may even be true.

Our imaginations onscreen
Let me add this about the battle royale finale: If someone had shown me these scenes in 1974, when I was 11 and collecting comic books, and relying on Saturday-morning fare like “Shazam!” and Electric Company’s “Spidey’s Super Stories,” I probably would’ve wet my pants. I might’ve had a heart attack. At 11. This is stuff that’s never been seen before except in our imaginations. “The Avengers” is our imaginations onscreen.

So I went into “The Avengers” shrugging and left after two and a half hours feeling giddy and high. The question with Joss Whedon’s “The Avengers” isn’t whether it’s good; it’s whether it’s the best superhero movie ever made. Many will argue “Dark Knight” but I say, as I’ve always said, Make Mine Marvel.

Stan 'the Man' Lee, who made mine Marvel, at the premiere of “The Avengers” (2012).

Posted at 11:18 AM on May 05, 2012 in category Movie Reviews - 2012
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Posted at 08:44 AM on May 05, 2012 in category Politics
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Tyler Kepner in The New York Times is right. We're not used to seeing Mariano Rivera near the warning track. We're not used to seeing him in Kansas City. We're used to seeing him on the mound, mowing them down (or maybe Mo-ing them down), en route to another goddamned Yankees victory in another goddamned post-season. Any time you could beat him it was a story. Any time you could beat him in the World Series, it was one of the greatest World Series games ever played.

But yesterday his knee buckled shagging flies in Kansas City. Torn ACL. Out for the year and possibly the career.

Everyone knows I hate the Yankees but I've usually written about Rivera with admiration. I've reminded baseball fans, and even writers at The New York Times, that he is even better than we realize. I was there for his 600th save, too, at Safeco Field, with Ichiro Babe-Ruthing the final out. I posted the video. Don't expect Spielberg.

Rivera has 608 career saves now. I expected about 30 more.

He wound up with 42 career post-season saves. He's the last man to wear #42. He's 42. Someone call Douglas Adams.

Here are my Mariano Rivera posts. We won't see his like again. If we do, may he be wearing a different uniform:

• Dave Anderson of The New York Times suggests Mariano Rivera is honored by holding the all-time saves record. I suggest the all-time saves record is honored because it now belongs to Mariano Rivera. 
• That 600th careeer save, with video.
• If Rivera retires, we'll have new active leaders in the following pitching categories: Games, Saves, WHIP, ERA, Adjusted ERA. In Saves and Adjusted ERA, Rivera is first all-time. WHIP, he's second.
• Is it overkill, possibly downright cruel, to bring in Rivera to face a team with a 16-game losing streak?
• What modern-day pitcher has a career ERA close to Rivera's? None. Who is close to him? Just dead-ball pitchers and Walter Johnson.
• Why Rivera is always his team's World Series MVP.
• Which batter could hit Rivera like no one else? Hint: He's not in the Hall of Fame.
• The NYT offers up video of Mo's cutter. 
• From 2009: “10 earned runs in 125 1/3 innings pitched in the post-season.”
• Is this the last legitimate #42 we see in Major League Baseball history?

The post-season numbers: 141 IP, 110 Ks, 21 BBs, 86 hits, 42 saves, 8-1 record, 0.70 ERA.

Posted at 09:02 AM on May 04, 2012 in category Baseball
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