With A Vengeance

I have a Pinterest category for this movie and its predecessors. It's called "Slightly Obsessed", for obvious reasons.

I'm a little bit obsessed now. I saw The Avengers last weekend and loved it, and then on Tuesday, my day off, I went and saw it again, and loved it again.

It feels a little bit like betrayal. I mean, I've never been a hardcore comic book geek. I've collected a few titles, but most of them haven't been superhero books (and the one superhero book I collected was Promethea, which is hardly mainstream). But most of the titles I collected were either independent or they were in the DC universe -- Books of Magic and Sandman and assorted spinoffs, largely. My favorite heroes have always been in the DC universe. Batman and Superman. Green Arrow. John Constantine, for petesake, who more or less single-handedly hooked me on Books of Magic.

You can't walk into a comic book shop regularly and not be aware of the major Marvel characters, but aside from, Spider-Man and a few blips amongst the X-Men, I haven't really ever been all that interested in them. None of the Avengers ever really did anything for me; as a rule, either their premises or their writing struck me as sadly cheesy. I couldn't have told you any of their real names (except for Bruce Banner, but that's because I watched the Hulk TV show when I was a kid, right along with the Batman and Wonder Woman shows).

So when Iron Man came out, I was pretty "meh" about it. Whatever. I certainly didn't make any attempt to see it in the theater. I think I watched it with Matt one afternoon shortly before Iron Man 2's release, just because there wasn't anything else happening, and hey, fun 'splody movie -- why not?

Except it kind of hooked me. And Iron Man 2 drew me further in.

I didn't go see Captain America, but I'd not been opposed to the notion. I wasn't interested in Thor (the stilted language turned me off right in previews) or Hulk (I love the concept of the character, but it's too easy to cross the cheese line), and so even though I was intrigued by the idea of all these movies working toward a common goal, I was pretty lukewarm on the notion of the ensemble film.

But still: Downey's Tony Stark. And also? Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. How could that not be cool? All right.

Sold.

Then I saw my first trailer. "Take [the Iron Man suit] away, and what are you?" "...Genius, billionaire, playboy philanthropist?"

Sold x2.

And then someone told me (I don't follow movie news) that Joss Whedon was writing and directing it.

Sold. Sold. Sold x1,000,000.

As I said, it feels a little bit like betrayal, abandoning the Justice League to fall at the Avengers' feet like this. But this movie is so effing good. Part of me wants to sit down with it on my laptop and do a scene-by-scene analysis and discussion, because every scene had something wonderful to bring to the table. (Even if it was just the eye candy.) Matt's put Captain America in his Netflix queue, retroactively, and I'm looking forward to it. I can't wait for Iron Man 3 and the inevitable Avengers 2. I kind of want to hit the store and buy all the toys, too. (I must have the Legos, if nothing else.)

It's not like I'll be skipping the Batman movie, after all. I can be polyamorous in my superhero love, right? Even across universes.