It’s been an entertainment packed day in the Cole household. I went and saw the Avengers, and this was the first time I think I have been in a theater in five years. But, as a Buffy/Angel/Firefly addict, anything to support Whedon. It was awesome, btw. It isn’t hype- the Avengers is that much fun. It’s the first time they made the Hulk look cool and have a good show.
I was talking on the phone afterwards with my brother about how awesome the movie was, and he said “But how did they control the Hulk’s anger and target it where they wanted it?”
I just laughed. We’re talking about a movie where a deity from another dimension seeks out a fist sized cube of infinite power, and in doing so opens a portal to another universe so a different race of aliens can attack earth in exchange for the cube, leaving the former deity in charge of earth. In response, a one eyed rogue, whose connection to the military structure is nebulous at best, assembles a team of superheroes on an aircraft carrier that not only floats, but also turns into a million ton invisible hovercrraft. The superheroes include a playboy scientist who flies in an iron suit at the speed of a missile with a built-in AI about a million years ahead of Siri, a super-soldier who was crafted by man a century ago and spent 7 decades frozen miles undersea only to be revived without any apparent mental or physical damage, a sultry Russian killer whose best, um, assets are her lips and hips and a very tiny set of pistols, some clown who shoots missile tipped arrows for miles, and a guy who seems like a mild mannered-scientist but who loses his shit every now and then and becomes a ginormous green menace. And let’s not forget the freakishly handsome character based on a mythical Norse God who flies around with an ill-designed and top-heavy hammer, summoning the elements every time he gets his dander up.
All of that is cool, but where your suspension of disbelief starts to form cracks is over the Hulk controlling his anger for five minutes in the movie? Snicker. You know why he could control his anger? IT WAS IN THE FUCKING SCREENPLAY.
At any rate, the movie is great. It had little Whedonesque gems the whole way through it (Legolas, etc.). It’s a theatre must see.
I also just watched the first three episodes of Chuck season 5, and Yvonne Strahovski becomes more beautiful every time I see her. I just love that damned show.
trex
My wife came with me to see it. She is NOT a superhero movie/sci-fi fan. When we exited the theater she was babbling with excitement about how good it was and recounting her favorite parts, definitely not like her.
Whedon really pulled off a movie for fans and neophytes alike.
joeyess
John Cole If you’re ever in the KC area, I would like to extend to you a most gracious invitation to come see Kink Alfred. We’re a retro 60’s band that does a number of covers in that blues/rock vein of Little Feat, Cream, Hendrix, The Doors, The Beatles anon anon anon….
Here’s our Reverbnation page, we post our upcoming dates all the time. Our next show is in exactly 2 weeks.
You can even get a Android phone app to follow for new songs, pics, videos and up-coming dates.
If you’re in town, or the vicinity, please come by. We have an all-in Audio/Visual show that is much like The Daily Show with patchouli.
Dirty Fucking Hippies with satire, if you will. You’re most welcome.
In either case, look for video that I’ll send to entice you to travel. We have a great time precisely because Mark Zuckerberg allows us to fill our venues with people who know what to expect and are of the same political/ cultural stripe. Heathens one and all. Blogspeak all around. In fact, we’re teaching the KCMO area on the virtues of the Balloon Juice Lexicon.
I think you would enjoy it and the invitation stands as long as I do and as long as you do as well.
karl
Haven’t seen it, not much of a comic book fan. When I first heard that an Avengers movie is coming out my first thought was “I wonder who’s going to play Mrs. Peel?”
My friends liked the movie, though.
Little Boots
i’m glad you had fun.
Joseph Nobles
Watching the S.H.E.I.L.D. carrier go airborne was a virtuouso piece of disbelief suspension. It’s almost like Whedon was like, yeah, folks, this isn’t actually real, but it looks foooking AWESOME, DON’T IT???
Narcissus
On the one hand I’m glad to hear this because I figured it was going to suck.
On the other hand Chuck just got worse and worse the longer it went on, so I’m sure if I should trust your judgment.
On another hand Whedon is really overblown. So.
amk
sounds like rove and his superpacs and the stupid americans who are willing to be raped by them.
Little Boots
@Narcissus:
EVERYONE loves this movie.
hhex65
@trex: too bad Whedon didn’t do “Dark Shadows” too– I have a bad feeling about that one.
Little Boots
what is this CHUCK you speak of?
goblue72
Juicers Assemble!!!
Little Boots
john, what do you think of Obama’s announcement?
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
as much as people are talking about this avengers movie, its going to become like a play by shakespeare.
what i mean is all the best lines, or explosions and stuff, as well as the entirety of the plot, will be repackaged so many times, seeing the original will become extraneous. i’ll wait*ducks*
reef
Reminds me of the time I was watching Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and said “This isn’t very realistic.”
Little Boots
@Marcellus Shale, Public Dick:
so THAT’S what happened to Macbeth.
knew it.
Little Boots
sorry, the Scottish Play.
Little Boots
Can we get back to mocking John now?
Little Boots
oh, great nobody’s here.
john, can we mock you now?
Suffern ACE
@Marcellus Shale, Public Dick: Yep. In 50 years kids will be sitting for their college boards having only watched the Cliff’s Notes version of the Wikipedia article.
Little Boots
fine, we can’t mock John. can we at least do Elton:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBCVEcjScTQ&ob=av2n
Narcissus
Chuck was a mediocre show that was renewed repeatedly because Yvvone Strahovski is bodacious.
Little Boots
@Narcissus:
don’t tell john.
Peter
Well, given that they spent about half the movie worrying about the Hulk flipping out because he’s so uncontrollable, it threw me out a little. But it’s pretty rationalizable: The Hulk just wants to smash. Banner can’t stop that, but he can direct it to more productive ends if there’s something big and smashable handy.
Little Boots
for john, because I love him:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_AQ0Y8vSjU&feature=related
RadioOne
There’s been a huge buzz for The Hunger Games this year, and I’m really tempted to go see it. I don’t go to the movie theater that often, but I really like to see at least one blockbuster-type movie a year at an IMAX theater. Dark Shadows seems funny and weird as well.
Suffern ACE
“He gave you everything you ever wanted. He was a step up from the boyfriend who shot you, wasn’t he?” I’m starting to think the Narcy Novak murder trial is the best think on TV at the moment. I await the movie.
Little Boots
john is sleepy. and that irritates me.
Little Boots
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyWq25O2RbI
freelancer
@goblue72:
New rotating tag, please.
I LOVED the movie. Some of the Marvel movies leading up to it have been lackluster, and my impressions of how the Avengers movie would be when it was announced was that it would be impossible to pull off. Then I heard Joss Whedon was going to be the guy to bring the Avengers to fruition. I thought it was a perfect choice. And I love Whedon and his work since Firefly. I’m such a browncoat, it’s embarrassing.
I’m going to get flamed here, but I think I missed the window on Buffy and Angel. I’ve tried to start watching Buffy on Netflix 3 different times and every effort has failed. I just can’t get behind it or find myself interested. An additional time I skipped the first season and tried to start with Season 2 and I got the same feeling.
So as a Whedonite who has this on the back of my car, I have to ask: Am I missing something? Everyone cool I read or pay attention to who shares my taste in TV and movies loves Buffy. Help me out here. What is it about Buffy and Angel that makes it so awesome that I’m obtusely not seeing?
Little Boots
where’s John? this is so unfair.
Hill Dweller
I notice both David Cay Johnston and Grover Norquist are going to be on Maher’s show tomorrow night. Hopefully they’re both on the panel, giving Johnston the opportunity to rebut Norquist’s bullshit.
cckids
We’re going to see it this weekend, & can’t wait. My daughter started working at a theater, & a perk is that her family gets to see movies free. They just ask that we not go on opening weekend. It is awesome sauce. I’ve seen more movies in the theater the past 3-4 months than in the previous 2 years. If I’m seeing it free, it doesn’t have to be a fab movie to get me there.
We even went to Titanic/3D. The daughter is 17 & had never seen it, even on TV.
Alison
Uh-oh, another late night thread to be taken over by Les Petites Bottes :)
I’m always so far behind everyone on movies because I can’t go to theatres and it seems, with popular movies at least, we’ve gone back to it taking for-fucking-ever for them to be out on DVD. Annoying.
FlipYrWhig
@hhex65: SO sick of Burton/Depp. What are those pitch meetings like? “in this film, see, we have a character who’s kind of a creepy misfit misunderstood monster.” “is the tone arch and his skin extra pale?” “How’d you guess?”
Peter
@freelancer: Eh. I wouldn’t call myself a Whedonite, but I could never get into Buffy.
piratedan
going home tomorrow after finishing the on site portion of the gig. lost of weird off shifts and internal clock looks like a ball of yarn after the cats have had it…. still nice to see the family again. Strange that the folks here in Kansas don’t seem like nutjobs, they just elect them, so in a way its eerily reminiscent of Arizona.
freelancer
@FlipYrWhig:
You pretty much have it down. So does College Humor.
deedly-deedly deedly-deedly, La la La la La la La la, BOM BOM BOM BOM!
asiangrrlMN
@Little Boots: Maybe he crashed?
@freelancer: ::looks both ways carefully::
Spike, Giles, and Tara. The only reasons I watched.
::scurries out of the room::
David Koch
Just got home from the Clooney-Obama fundraiser.
simply.incredible. Clooney’s girlfriend, that is.
So, how was your evening?
Hill Dweller
@FlipYrWhig: Depp has wasted his talent for the better part of the last decade. The Pirates movie should have been a one-off, but he signed on for the sequels, and Disney got their hooks into him.
freelancer
The last good Tim Burton movie was Big Fish. Depp free and also the first American movie with Marion Cottillard.
hhex65
@FlipYrWhig: grumble, grumble,,,I hope it does well since I’m a huge fan of the original but I dunno
Hill Dweller
@freelancer: Sweeney Todd and Corpse Bride were solid. But I agree with your larger point, the first few Burton/Depp collaborations were the high water mark.
Burton’s next project is starring Robert Downey Jr.
Depp is stuck doing shitty Disney movies for the foreseeable future.
kestral
Saw it yesterday afternoon and enjoyed the ever-loving crud out of it. Yes, even the part that made me really realize that Joss wrote it. (No spoilers, but those who’ve seen it know who and what I’m referring to.)
Can’t believe I’m gonna say this, but… this is definitely a movie to go see more than once. It’s fun from the beginning right up until the very end of the credits.
Joseph Nobles
@kestral: “the very end of the credits”? I stayed for the short scene after the title credits, but left during the black-and-white credit roll. Was there something after that, too?
The prophet Nostradumbass
If you want to see a hilariously stupid twitter hash tag, check out #iamandrewbreitbart.
freelancer
@kestral:
He had to have that Whedon moment. It elevates the film and according to him, it wasn’t even his idea. It was Marvel Exec Kevin Feige. But he embraced it, saying
Summer
So many comments and no defense of Buffy? I JUST HAPPEN to be rewatching it for the third time, so… I think the first two seasons haven’t worn well, but at least some background is necessary to season three, which is not to be missed. The point about coming too late to that party may be a valid one, though. I think Buffy was so unusual for its time that it really hooked everyone who saw it and maybe it’s harder to get into now that there is a Veronica Mars, a Firefly, etc. BUT, it’s still so great when it’s great and the way it grows from a series of episodic conceits to an overarching, complex narrative is amazing. And it’s so dark. So few shows that are sweet and funny are also that fundamentally sad. So I’d give it another shot. Read Wikipedia on the first two seasons (if you must) and start with season three.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Joseph Nobles: Yes. They clean up a dangling plot point at the very end of the credits.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Summer: I love Buffy, but I wouldn’t trust my judgment on it. I had just started watching it when I had my complete nervous breakdown in the fall of 2005. I was about halfway through season two when I had to take a break to spend five days on the mental ward and then came back home depressed, out of work, marriage falling apart and just generally at the bottom. I must have watched Buffy about 16 hours a day over the next week. It was the perfect thing to have going.
freelancer
@Summer:
Thank you for replying. I almost put in my post a reference to Veronica Mars, which after the pilot, I was HOOKED. Film Noir serialized TV show about a kickass teenage girl who is as awesome as she is vulnerable? The way others talk about Buffy is the way that I feel about Veronica Mars. I’ll tell you this, I will give Buffy one more try following the advice that you gave. Read through Seasons 1 and 2 and start with Season 3. No promises, but I’ll try.
TheMightyTrowel
@freelancer: I’m in a similar place to you. Maybe I’ll try that as well and we can compare notes.
Arclite
Heh, daughter and I watched the first half of Thor tonight so we can go to the Avengers this coming weekend (Thor being the prequel to this film in most respects. I suppose an argument could be made for Cap America, too, but Thor is required viewing, IMO).
Can’t wait. Joss Whedon is the best director alive with large casts, and was the perfect choice for this film.
Johannes
@freelancer: OK, here’s my take on Buffy: It did three things that had not been previously done, and did them all superlatively well. First, characterization drove the show–Sunnydale is a tragic place, and a lll of the main characters are confronted with tragedy. Buffy’s forced by terrible circumstances to get deeper, so are Cordelia and Xander, but they do so without giving up their humor. They joke in the face of death–but they feel fear. Giles loves and loses–and reacts not at all like a tweedy book guy. Spike isn’t just a Billy Idol-style vampire–he loves. Deeply, helplessly. Willow starts off as the sweet needling, and becomes a tragic monster. The characters became real people, reacting to a surreal world.
Second, it’s mythic. Buffy is as funny, noble and grim as an Icelandic hero; Giles, our Mr. Exposition is a tragic romantic, who flouts then rules to help the girl who’s become a daughter to him, Willow and Xander go on the hero quest. Wesley tries to do this–a coward who grows over time.
Third, it’s great entertainment; funny, yet capable of great horror–watch “Hush” or “Passion.” It makes fun of itself–Spike’s addicted to Passions, bonds with Joyce over cocoa, while being a soulless undead thing.
“Angel”–ya got me there. Never got on with that show. It’s like the BtVS “B” team, and it shows.
MikeJ
@Johannes: To this day I can’t watch The Body.
SpaceSquid
Gods, I hate the “Everything about this film isn’t realistic so why ask questions” stance. “IT WAS IN THE FUCKING SCREENPLAY?” What? So if Tony Stark had won the day by suddenly mutating into a three hundred foot tall horse and saved the day with his mad dressage skillz, you’d be OK with that? Because it’s IN THE FUCKING SCREENPLAY? So was where BSG ended up. So was the explanation of where everyone was at the end of Lost, and neither of those made a lick of sense. You wanna tell people they got no cause to complain since they were watching spacemen fighting robots and whining flashback-addicts fighting smoke monsters, respectively?
Everyone, every single monkey funker in this big ol’ world, can swallow some plot points and not others. Poking fun at the people who question the parts you haven’t is solipsistic foolishness. You say “Whatever, it didn’t bother me” or “I figured it was because of…” and you move on.
freelancer
@SpaceSquid:
Suspension of disbelief is a very. fucking. fickle. thing.
YMMV.
SpaceSquid
@freelancer
Which is exactly why one person mocking someone else for having a slightly different criteria for what can and can’t be suspended is bullshit on toast.
Johannes
@MikeJ: Oh, yeah. Heartbreak all around.
freelancer
@SpaceSquid:
In this case the mocker and the mockee are brothers. I’m sure it resulted in either a chuckle or a strangling. Siblings can be like that.
SpaceSquid
@freelancer
Fair point, but if a blogger chooses to post up the conversations they have with their family, I reserve the right to say “What you said to your family was stoopid”.
Hugh
Haven’t read though the comments due to time limit this morning (daughter needs to get to school) so someone may have said this but John your brother’s question is legit. Fantasies work when the internal logic is respected. If Iron Man all of a sudden could change shape and see into the future it would seem unnatural and fake to us even though his whole character is improbable. He has a particular set of abilities and limitations and the writers need to work with these for us to suspend our disbelief. Same is true with the hulk. I thought that this was a weak point in the movie, though the hulk got the most laughs. Like your brother I never understood how the hulk all of a sudden only went after the bad guys. Well, he did punch Thor. Very funny.
daryljfontaine
@SpaceSquid: Spoilery Hulk explanation, from a long-time nerd who’s used to hand-waving away plot inconsistencies with a “maybe it was this”:
Banner says it himself in the pivotal transformation: “I’m always angry.” It’s not that the Hulk is a seething rage-monster waiting to be set off by the slightest provocation, like nitroglycerin in old Tex Avery cartoons — it’s that the Hulk is his anger unleashed. So the accidental transformations only happen when the situation gets out of hand, such as when a missile takes out a Helicarrier engine and the passengers are tossed around without warning. Then Banner’s self-control is lost; he can’t stop the flood of adrenaline/gamma surge, and the Hulk comes to the surface involuntarily until he can get calm again (which may take peacefully falling a few miles back to Earth to do). When Banner is calm, he’s still an angry man: angry at Fate, at God, at A World He Never Made. The Hulk is just below the surface, simmering, ready to be unleashed — and when he can direct that anger consciously at a target, he is more powerful for it.
TL;DR: Chaos, fear, and pain = The Rampaging Hulk; focused and directed rage = The Incredible Hulk.
D
MBL
@daryljfontaine: Really? I want to answer that question, no one even pretends to deal with it for 62 comments, then you swoop in and save the day on literally the comment before me, twelve minutes before I can start typing?
Butthead.
Spoilers anyway.
Anyway, he’s right, but I’d also point out the effect that Loki was having on everyone at the time through the scepter. Unleashing buried violent emotions is kind of his thing, and as the Black Widow points out his whole point for getting himself arrested was to unleash the Hulk in hopes that the Hulk would destroy the Triskelion and get everybody killed. I mean, Banner’s actually got the scepter in his hand right before the explosions start happening.
But yeah, that’s the basic idea: just because you’re in control of the beast doesn’t mean you can’t lose it. Banner loses it once and Hulks out on purpose toward the end of the film. Very different circumstances.
SpaceSquid
@daryljfontaine
That’s a nice explanation, and pretty much the same principle I was operating under. To be clear, I’m not saying I shared Colesibling’s problem with that particular aspect of the film (well, I did at the time, but it didn’t take long to come to something like what you’ve written), just that I really dislike the argument that because fantasy is inherently unrealistic, it’s silly to object when you see what looks to you like a violation of the films internal logic. It’s another way to dismiss an argument, rather than counter it. Yeah, it’s a very minor example, but since we’re talking about comic book movies in any case, I might as well get my bugbear on.
Hugh
@MBL: I think the scepter explanation works along with Banner turning into the Hulk on purpose. But the film could have done a better job of making that clear. I suspect only those already deep into Hulkthology made those connections. The scepter needed a bit more focus in the movie as being a source of chaos as opposed to just being a general purpose magic thing. Thor’s hammer is clear. The scepter isn’t particularly clear. But a really fun movie. Did you all get the cello line when Phil died? He was gay! Cracked me up.
gogol's wife
I always miss the fun posts overnight. When I was a kid, my brother and I were watching a Disney cartoon where a bunch of animals were playing in a band. Dogs, cows, elephants, and so on were playing “The William Tell Overture.” I said, “You wouldn’t play that piece with a brass band, it would be a symphony orchestra.” My brother looked at me and said, “They’re animals playing tubas. Why are you worried about the orchestration?”
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@MBL: Spoilers anyway.
Anyway, he’s right, but I’d also point out the effect that Loki was having on everyone at the time through the scepter.
In addition, the entire point of the Norton Hulk movie was Banner accepting his alter ego and getting some control. “I can’t control it… But maybe I could guide it, aim it in the right direction.”
catperson
The problem with Sarah in Chuck is that she increasingly becomes just a prop. They swing it back a bit in S5 but for me it’s too little too late and the finale is kind of criminal in that regard.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@catperson: The problem with Sarah in Chuck is that she increasingly becomes just a prop. They swing it back a bit in S5 but for me it’s too little too late and the finale is kind of criminal in that regard.
Hated the finale with the heat of ten thousand suns.
gnomedad
At this point, I say to my wife: “Apart from that, it’s pretty realistic.”
TG Chicago
That’s a shitty answer. You know what else was in the fucking screenplay? The fact that Hulk’s uncontrollable anger was a MAJOR PLOT POINT during the first two acts of the movie. To suddenly throw that overboard for the third act with zero explanation is lame.
I can suspend disbelief with the best of them. Just give me something. Tony Stark injects him with a dose of Xanax? Okay. He stops by his lady’s place to get some action and take the edge off? Fine. The mystical powers of Harry Dean Stanton’s pants? I’ll go with it.
But you have to give me something. After they made such a big deal of it, you can’t just tell me to forget the previous two hours before showing me the last 30 minutes. Suspending disbelief means choosing to believe in the fictional world that they’re creating for me. But if they change the rules of that world with no explanation, how can I believe in it?
(all that said, I still enjoyed the movie quite a bit and give it an enthusiastic thumbs up)
Cole's brother
I’d like to point out that I have not seen the movie and did not know the plot. I simply knew it was a group of superheroes, including the Hulk, and I couldn’t understand what use the Hulk would be in general as he seems to just get mad and smash random shit.
Tripod
@daryljfontaine:
Also: Film Crit Hulk thoughts on the character and the movie.
McJulie
re: Hulk. I thought that the difference between directed anger and undirected anger was crucial and signaled pretty clearly by the “I’m always angry” line. Any more explanation would have just bogged down the movie.
re: Buffy. In my opinion it’s possibly the greatest thing ever in the history of things, but if you tried to get into it and just didn’t, well, that’s art for you. I could never get into The Sopranos.
Xecky Gilchrist
Line missing from the OP:
“BTW, SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
bago
@Xecky Gilchrist: *HULK PUNCH*
asiangrrlMN
@Cole’s brother: Are you really Cole’s brother? Because, if so, this is all kinds of awesome. I hope your mom starts commenting soon!
Zen Koan
Hmmph, I thought sure somebody would have pointed this out by now.
“The Incredible Hulk” (2008, not the 2003 Ang Lee “Hulk”) details the progression of Bruce Banner’s control over the Hulk. At the start of the film, he can only exist by keeping his anger, and hence the Hulk, completely under control. Through great personal effort, meditation, forced calm, living a small and quiet life, he heroically does so. But it’s impossible to remain calm forever. At some point you get angry, and your inner beast emerges. And when it does so involuntarily and violently, it comes into the world confused and very, VERY hostile.
But by the climax of the film, Banner has realized that there is power in anger, if you can properly control and focus it. He embraces the transformation, rather than fighting against it so hard. And the result is a Hulk who, though still cloudy-minded from the shock induced sudden change, remains very focused on just smashing the bad guy, not on helping him, or just raging off on his own.
At the very end of the film, Banner (played by Ed Norton) is shown to be consciously raising his pulse, intentionally pushing it up over the safety threshold of transformation. And when the change begins, Banner smiles knowingly. He HAS it. He’s got control of the change. He can take at least some of his intellect and intention along with him as he becomes the Hulk.
And THAT is why they could control the Hulk’s anger and target it where they wanted it.