Tom Breihan’s Age Of Heroes retrospective. Sophie Butcher at Empire.
My favourite detail is that every member of the team gets to smack Loki down in their own way.
Hill interrupts his escape, Steve joins the man ruining his BS speech, Thor shows his motivations are warped, Fury throws his threats back at him, Natasha tricks the god of lies, Coulson dismisses his chances while dying, Tony casually explains his plan is doomed over a drink, Clint blows him up mid gloat about catching his arrow, Selvig builds a failsafe despite mind control and Bruce...
... well, you know.
It’s one of the film’s many delights on its own merits, as well as a key part of the all-conquering Marvel Cinematic Universe. (This week is also the anniversary of Age Of Ultron, Infinity War and Endgame.)
I remember when we weren’t sure this would work.
By then Marvel and Jon Favreau had made Iron Man a surprise hit and a lot of fun, and made Captain America work by having The Rocketeer director Joe Johnston making another circa-WWII pulp superhero adventure, and Kenneth Branagh’s Thor was a fun fantasy romance and gave us a great villain into the mix, so the big three were set up, but there were still doubts, especially as Iron Man 2 and The Incredible Hulk hadn’t been as well received.
And we had an unknown to me new actor as the Hulk. Mark Ruffalo turned out to be great, him being pretty big normally is an interesting change too. And there’s a great chilling moment where, in a reverse of the TV series classic bit where Banner’s eyes go constricted and bright green as he starts to change, we see his eyes are still human as the change takes over. And then we get Hulk versus Black Widow and Natasha makes it pretty even.
Okay, I had a reasonable amount of confidence in Joss Whedon back then as a Buffy fan so I got to be a hipster about it, which was nice.
I love it. I just watched it again and I know a big chunk of it by heart. Give me an anniversary screening and I’ll be there.
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