THE AVENGERS

So yeah, I'm like a month late seeing THE AVENGERS and no one really cares about reviews of it anymore because practically everyone in the world has seen it already (if ticket sales are any indication).

But so what.

Here is my two cents on the whole thing and also a little complaint I have about the movie going experience of late.

My favourite superhero movie of all time, the watermark for perfection remains THE DARK KNIGHT. That was such an incredible piece of cinematic amazingness that I doubt anything will dethrone it, other than THE DARK KNIGHT RISES which will soon be upon us.

Just slightly below TDK I would place the Ironman movies, THE GREEN LANTERN, THOR, the Hulk flicks (yeah, I liked both of them!). I would have put Raimi's Spiderman trilogy among this group but after watching them again recently they seemed to miss the mark, and that may be because I've been reading a bunch of Spiderman comics lately.

Anyway, below that group I would place the X-Men stuff, with X-MEN: FIRST CLASS being the bottom of the barrel, the dreck of dreck.

This is long winded way of saying THE AVENGERS, to me, ranks just below TDK. I enjoyed the heck out of it and I don't see any way they could have made it any more bombasticly fun than they did without Batman brooding somewhere in the background.

I think all of the actors play there roles incredibly well, even if it still irks me a bit that Chris Evans is Captain America AND Johnny Storm within the Marvel movie universe. Robert Downey Jr. rocks and so does Mark Ruffalo, who I thought played a terrific Bruce Banner. One thing I liked was how his Hulk was very reminiscent of the way the original Hulk looked in the comics. Whether this was done intentionally or it's just the way Ruffalo's face Hulk morphs I don't know, but I dug it.

So yeah, once again Joss Whedon proves he is a pop culture genius and the ultimate geek. If you haven't seen THE AVENGERS yet, and you're into this kind of thing, definitely check it out. It's a lot of fun.

Now, my complaint.

There have been a few wonderful improvements to the movie going experience lately. More comfortable seats, better, louder, sound systems. The option to pre-order the exact seat you want to sit in before you even leave your house. Most recently at the theatre close to me they have introduced what is called D-BOX that, from what I gather, adds a whole new level to your movie going experience. The seat shakes and all that. Whatever.

But the one thing that irks me, is this new interactive cell phone game they make you sit through before starting the movie. Here, folks that have the cells phones permanently implanted to their hands can now play a little interactive game with the movie screen before the movie starts.

I find the five minutes waiting for this stupid game to end very, very, annoying. Here we are in an environment where the last thing you want is folks taking out their phones to start playing with them. And here the theatre is encouraging them to do it right before the movie is going to start!

Now instead of ten minutes of ads and ten minutes of trailers, we have to sit and wait while a bunch of cell phone obsessed dweebs play on their phones.

Give me a break!