Hi Kim
kim wrote:As I said before, I tried to enjoy the movie as a movie and not as an Avengers' themed one. But I simply couldn't. Does that make it a bad movie? No. It simply makes it a movie that I personaly did not enjoy.
What a refreshingly mature opinion. If there was more of this kind of thinking, there'd be hope for the world yet ...
So here's the question...For those of you who enjoyed it, what was it about the movie that you liked? The graphics? The story line? The acting? This is not a jab at the fans of the movie. I really want to know if maybe I should take another look at it sometime in the future.
Okay ... I think the fundamental thing is that I liked the reimagining of the format. The essentials from the excesses of the early colour episodes were there: bloke with brolly and bowler, woman kicking the sh*t out of people in catsuit, nutty villain with crazy plot, strange and deserted over-English English background ...
I'm quite a fan of reimagining things, even if they don't work. It's interesting to see other people's different takes on things. "Batman" is an obvious one; do you want your pulpy gangster ridden 1930s and 1940s comics, your campy moralistic 1960s TV series, your hard-edge bits of new wave comic like "The Killing Joke" or the more recent films which range in colour from black to brilliance.
Of course, "The Avengers" itself was reimagined a lot over the years. Compare "Hot Snow" to "Build a Better Mousetrap" to "What The Butler Saw" to "Who's Who???" to "Take-Over", and it's almost like watching different series ... and that's even before we get to "Cat Amongst the Pigeons" or "Emily". Then there were the comic strips, where I could lap up the bizarre offerings in "Diana" although John Canning's stint on "TV Comic" is imaginative but also a bit indigestible for me. I remember admiring the Cold War thriller of "To Catch a Rat" in book form, but not liking it, and finding "The Cybernauts" a better prose entry .... and also enjoying elements of the Anthony Hussey/John Garforth tomes, even although overall they didn't hit the spot. And I immediately got to enjoy the very plummy Steed who accompanied Emma on all those rather post-modern capers on the South African airwaves ... so the chance to see the format adapted yet again with new people wasn't a hurdle for me. It was something I was looking forward to.
So ... what do I like?
The set pieces: hell, they don't add up to a coherent story, but seeing Big Ben errupt, double decker buses buried in snow, Steed and Emms crossing the lake in their plastic bubbles, the mind-bending architecture of Hallucinogen Hall, the Ministry test zone, the flotilla of robot wasps ... they're great moments.
The villain: August de Wynter's great. Sometimes he doesn't quite fit into the plot, but he's terrific value for money in my book.
The music: A very enjoyable score, and the moments when we segue into Laurie Johnson's theme are delightful.
The killer Teddy Bears: No, I don't know what this has to do with anything either, but the sheer sillyness of it is something which amused me.
The graphics: Yes, I liked the opening titles with all the cool imagery.
The setting: The notion of a modern-day England where the 1960s never stopped was lovely. Reminded me a bit of "Brazil".
The dialogue: There's some gems in there ... the double-entendres from Sir August to Emma in the hothouse are good fun.
The cars: Ohhhhh ... wonderful! How cool are they?
Jim Broadbent: Fantastic or what? Oh, if only he'd been around in the original series!
I can't really defend the story at all. Nor the casting of Ms Thurman. Mr Fiennes more or less pulls it off in my book (even if his suit isn't quite the right cut). But, a bit like the original movie of "Casino Royale", all these elements that don't work somehow combine into something quite to my tastes which eclipses the sum of its meagre parts.
All the best
Andrew