A Few Thoughts on Joss Whedon’s Avengers

As I’ve watched and rewatched the MCU films over the past handful of years, enjoying them all to assorted degrees, I’ve been reassessing Whedon’s contributions, The Avengers and Age of Ultron.  This partly in response to Civil War, which I think retroactively schooled both Avengers films on balancing the huge ensemble.  While I still love to watch them, I now take more issue with them than I did with either upon first watch (spoilers for The Avengers and Age of Ultron.)

We’re gonna jump around a little but focus mainly on the characters.  For me, Whedon’s biggest win is Tony; it’s clear that he’s a big fan of Tony and writes him really well.  In Whedon’s hands, he’s absolutely the smartest guy in any room with a too-cool-for-school attitude, but he’s also really messed up and does crazily ill-advised crap.  The Avengers sees Tony step up to make a true sacrifice play, and Age of Ultron has him coming to terms with the enormity of his mistakes.  For my money, Whedon also comes through well with the Maximoffs.  I love Pietro’s cockiness and relish for his powers, mixed with his anger, and Wanda hits all the right notes (she’s maybe a tiny bit River, what with being a somewhat-off teenage girl with insane mental powers, but overall, she feels very much like her own character and is totally awesome.)

Cap is a tricky one for me.  Honestly, the vibe I get in The Avengers and Age of Ultron is that Whedon doesn’t entirely get Cap.  While he excels in the action scenes, both in terms of the take-charge leader stuff and being an absolute boss (all the Cap-Thor tag-team moves in Age of Ultron are so cool,) he comes across less like a person and more like an idea in the group interactions.  I feel like Whedon sees Cap mostly as a foil for Tony and so leans heavily on the “boy scout” persona that really isn’t Cap at all.  This is compounded by Whedon’s tendency to hit the V-for-Victory sentiments pretty hard.  Stuff like Cap being excited when he finally understands a pop culture reference (flying monkeys) or everyone else teasing him over the “Language!” thing in Age of Ultron makes him come off more like a fogey/square than he ought to.  I think The Winter Soldier and Civil War do a better job of incorporating Cap’s time displacement, including joking about it, in a way that feels organic to the character.

Natasha, Bruce, and Hawkeye are all toss-ups for me.  After largely shunting Hawkeye off to the side in The Avengers, Whedon makes up for it by giving him a lot more focus in Age of Ultron, although the whole “secret family” thing lays it on a bit thick for my taste.  Meanwhile, Natasha and Bruce are both off-the-charts amazing in The Avengers, but Age of Ultron totally fumbles them.  I’m not saying that angling them toward each other romantically couldn’t have worked, but the angsty will-they-won’t-they execution of it just doesn’t work for me.  It makes Bruce seem kind of pathetic and wastes screentime that could be spent on Natasha being awesome.

By my reckoning, Thor is kind of an afterthought in both movies – even though his own brother is the Big Bad in The Avengers – which bums me out ‘cause I love him.  Like with Cap, he gets good action bits (the aforementioned Cap-Thor tag-teams for the win, and his fight with the Hulk in The Avengers is great,) but as for the actual character himself, I don’t get the impression that Whedon has any interest in writing for him.  He doesn’t have much in the way of plot in either movie, and he straight-up disappears for a huge chunk of Age of Ultron.  Disappointing, because he’s so different from the rest of the Avengers and could I’m sure bring some great stuff to the team dynamics, but I feel like we’ve hardly had a chance to see him in that sense.