Well, this weekend, the Avengers came out and kicked a lot of ass at the box office. (And it deserved to. It was pretty damn good.) But I have a few thoughts on the whole movie, which I will refrain from spoilers as much as possible. But before anyone says anything... I DID love the movie very much and I'm even planning to see it again. I think it's one of the best comic book movies made, and it'll be deserving of it's accolades.

A lot of people were praising the Hulk, but I got to say Ruffalo Wild Wings there just didn't convince me as a good Bruce Banner. Yeah, when he hulked out and kicked ass, it was amazing to watch. But as Bruce Banner, I just couldn't wrap my head around the idea that this is supposed to be the same guy from the Incredible Hulk. I know about the fallout between Ed Norton and Marvel Studios, but I still can't help but to wish they had pulled it back together for it. (I dunno, too manly and pretty for "Puny Banner".)

Loki while great, he just lacked the charm the Loki from Thor had. (Which is odd since it was the same actor.) I mean, in his first movie, you kinda felt for the guy. Like he and his brother was genuinely sad that it was all coming to this and it wasn't just all a giant scheme, that there WERE some actual emotions involved. Here, he just kinda came across as a little too "Mwha-ha-ha-ha!" evil.

The Chitauri are freakin' lame. I would have been much happier if they were Skrulls, Kree, Shi'Ar, or even Badoon to tie into the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy movie. I know WHY they went with them, but it just felt a little too typical. I mean, they might as well be the alien invaders from Skyline, Battle: Los Angeles or even Dark of the Moon. They had no personalities or charm. They were just Generic Alien Invaders #185. (Especially for all the secrecy the everyone made about who the aliens.)

Now the big comment a lot of people have made is that Time Warner is kicking themselves for the whole Joss Whedon/Wonder Woman movie bit. Well, I need to point out that the movie would have sucked. Could he had done a good job in it? Yeah, he sure would have tried, but it wouldn't have happened. You got to remember... a movie is a team production. It's NOT just the director. (Though he gets the fame and credit for it all.) But it's also the producers and the studios pushing the project. The Marvel Studio movies sat down and said "we're going to make these groups of films, by different creators, but they are going to tie into each other, because we're going to have them lead up to the Avengers." That was their plan since Iron Man hit the screen in '08. Look at the DC comic book movies and tell me how many of them have been any good? I know, right away most of you are going to say "Batman Begins and the Dark Knight!" Well, those two aside? Catwoman? Horrible piece of crap. Superman Returns? Let's make him a deadbeat father! Green Lantern? What the hell was that? I mean, there is no reason to assume that the people behind DC's movies aren't the same idiots that gave us Steel or Bat-Nipples. In fact, they ARE the same people. They can't even get Superman's costume right, for God's sake! Why were they able to pull off the Nolan Batman movies? Well, they're good movies, but they're not really Batman movies, you know? I mean, no one outside of Batman wears costumes (No Riddlers, Mister Freezes or even Man-Bats), there's no Batfamily (Dick, Jason, Barbara, ect.)... It's so realistic, there's no comic flair. It's just not the Batman from the comics. Now that's not a bad thing, because Batman is just that awesomely versatile. The reason those two movies did so well, is that they "reinterpreted" Batman. In one take, he can be depressingly gritty and realistic, and in another take he can be lighthearted and superheroic. But the rest of the DC Universe isn't that versatile. They're trying too hard to "reinterpret" their other characters and it fails for it.

The reason the Marvel movies are so far good 6 for 6, is because everyone who sat down to work on these movies didn't try to reinterpret. They just tried to make what the character work. You look at any of the Marvel movie characters, at a glance, you're able to say "Hey, it's that character!" They look directly lifted from the comic page. (Okay, Cap's costume in the Avengers was a bit silly, but that's besides the point.) You take Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow... And you place them right next to comic panels of them, and they LOOK like the characters. You can't do that to the DC ones. You place Snyder Superman next to a panel of Superman from the comic book, the first thing you notice is that the costume is wrong. Even Green Lantern was so busy trying to make the costume all glowy and shit, that you sat there thinking "wouldn't a simple costume work? Why did it have to be a special effect?" (I mean, hell, even the Power Rangers got that right.)

Basically, I'm a die hard DC fan, and I hate saying what I'm about to say... But I just don't think DC and Time Warner knows what the hell they're doing with their characters. (This applies for comics too.) Because in the end, all we ever wanted was a World's Finest movie with Superman and Batman meeting up. And Marvel pulled off in four years what WB has been struggling to do for three decades now. And I see no evidence that they've learned anything. In fact, I'm certain that in the next few weeks, we'll see the big "Justice League" movie announcement happen again. (Like it does every time Marvel has a slew of good movies.) And it'll still come across as "We have comics also. Pay attention to us too! Please?"

If you sat through all this rambling nonsense, I applaud you. I would have stopped reading a few paragraphs back too.