SPOILER DISCUSSION

1.Black Widow’s ability to play different personas is something the narrative constantly employs to great effect. In her first interrogation she reveals that she’s not actually incapacitated and is very much in charge of the situation. In her attempt to persuade Bruce to join the team she pretends that she’s come to the location alone and is fully on his side before then revealing that an entire S.H.I.E.L.D taskforce is waiting outside.

However, in spite of this, her interrogation scene with Loki plays so naturally that one can’t help but think that she’s trying to help her friend. It’s the perfect set-up and it’s not until she’s done with the ruse that it becomes clear how much she was goading him the whole time. Johansson does great work at living out these personas and comfortably shifting to her “base” identity upon completion of task.

2.The group starts to disintegrate at the 70-minute mark and Whedon employs a one-shot around the room to showcase the growing discord. The characters are framed at canted angles, demonstrating their growing unease with one another and the situation they find themselves in. An argument starts with Fury, Steve, and Tony and travels through Thor, Natalie, and Bruce before revealing its progenitor: Loki’s scepter. The camera flips around the scepter which frames the Avengers upside-down; the group has been placed at complete odds with one another through Loki’s influence and they’re none the wiser. He’s not even in the scene but the final framing demonstrates that he’s very much in charge. As Bruce puts it, this group in this state is nothing more than a “time bomb”.

There is another one-shot at the 116-minute mark that serves as a counter-point; this time instead the group comes together as a genuine team. The sequence starts with Iron Man flying past Black Widow and helping her with some flying soldiers. He flies on by towards Captain America and the duo use a combo attack before Iron Man flies up towards Hawkeye. Hawkeye fires an arrow which the camera follows to its target. This target is then subsequently engulfed by one of the larger Chituari whales which both Hulk and Thor are fighting upon. The duo do a combo attack using Thor’s thunder and the sequence ends.

Now the group is fully in synch with one another. They compensate for each other’s weaknesses and amplify one another’s strengths. This is the Avengers.

3.It’s a bit absurd looking back, but Tony’s arc reactor stopping Loki’s scepter is great thematically. In my Iron Man review, I talk about how the reactor comes to represent Tony’s connection with people – it’s installed and kept in place by persons seeking to help Tony open up. Within The Avengers, Tony mentions that the reactor is something he’s affirmed as part of him. It’s the “monster” he’s tamed and accepted, so this symbol protecting him from losing his freedom is fitting even if Loki could have just moved the scepter a bit up the second time around.

4.At times, the third act of the film feels like a super-hero take on Cloverfield. There’s constant intercutting from the Avengers to footage of civilians running away from falling debris and murderous aliens. Whedon even employs handheld shots of vehicles flipping and destruction happening to capture the same feelings of “realistic” destruction.

I like that he utilizes one explicit woman among all the residents to create a more explicit storyline within the larger narrative of destruction. We see her witnessing the attack, being protected by Captain America, and then recounting the incident later – all this within a few seconds of combined screen time.

5.Love the continuity in the third act. It’s easy to lose track of all the tiny pieces, but the film makes the effort to show Loki getting disarmed by Thor because the scepter is required to close the gate later on. Loki is forced away from the area by Thor and is kept engaged by the Avengers for the rest of the film; he has no chance to get back and retrieve the scepter. Consequently, when Selvig and Natasha need to get the scepter later on, the moment doesn’t feel messy or overly convenient.

6.There’s a great shot of Black Widow reflected against a mirror against a backdrop of paintings and munitions when she’s initially being interrogated near the 13-minute mark. There’s another similar shot of Captain America being reflected against a smaller mirror next to a fallen Chituari soldier he’s just beaten. I wish these mirror shots were more prevalent, perhaps one for each Avenger, and served a greater role in visual storytelling. As of now, they’re nicely framed shots that don’t do much else – a shame.

But the film does nail the ensemble superhero pose shot. The moments only start to come up as the group finally begins to feel as a team. The camera arcs around them when they finally assemble as a full group and the final shot of them staring down Loki demonstrates the group’s solidification. While the blocking isn’t profound in either shot, there’s good effort made to neatly show each hero.

7.The ending is a fantastic culmination of the minor and major struggles in the film coming together. The Stark tower starts off as a beacon of new energy and represents Tony’s newfound efforts at giving to the world. Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow) and him argue over true ownership of the building and the latter agrees to let the former help and take genuine ownership over the next building they build together.

Later on, Loki takes over the tower and uses it to summon Chituari forces. The counter-point to Tony’s energy solution, the Tesseract, brings destruction to the planet instead of relief. Even in S.H.I.E.L.D’s hands, the Tesseract is only meant to create powerful weapons – that’s the whole point of “Phase Two”.

After the Chituari are destroyed, the tower is rebuilt, this time by both Pepper and Tony. They’re coming together to build something new. The tower, which previously represented Stark’s individual contributions to the world, now represents the Avenger’s contributions to the world; instead of serving as a symbol of energy, it’s a symbol of protection. Tony’s solo efforts have become group efforts, not only at a personal level, but at a larger social level as well.