There was always a presumption that someone important was going to bite the dust during this sixth Marvel Studios production, if only because 'something important' had to happen in order to make The Avengers more than just a glorified 'time-out' in between the other stand-alone Marvel franchises. I had theorized that Bruce Banner would be the casualty, mainly due to the fact that Universal and Marvel had twice tried to make a Hulk franchise without success, and that the Hulk was himself a very expensive special effect. Now that I've seen the film, I'm certainly glad that Mark Ruffalo will live to play Banner in whatever else the Marvel universe has in store for him. As many of you know, at the climax of the second act, Loki stabs Agent Phil Coulson through the back with a large spear and poor Coulson quickly bleeds out.
It's a seemingly devastating moment, although it's less emotional than it should have been because of how its handled, who witnesses it, and how much everyone babbles about what should be subtext (that Coulson's death will propel our heroes to put aside their differences and save the day). Dearly-departed Clark Gregg gets two death speeches before succumbing to his injuries, and the weirdly self-aware nature of his demise undercuts what should be a tragic and bitterly unfair moment. More importantly, his death witnessed by Thor, who has barely a fleeting relationship with the SHIELD agent, as opposed to Tony Stark who has an ongoing friendship that goes back at least a couple years. And, while this may end up on the deleted scenes reel, I desperately wanted a moment when Pepper Potts learns of this news and reacts accordingly, as the film remembers their chumminess in the opening reel. It is the lack of that kind of humanity that mars the film as it becomes basically a special effects and action-stunts demo reel (albeit a very good one) in its final 45 minutes.
I figured out who the unlucky victim was going to be about a week before I saw the film, but didn't know for sure until Coulson walked into Loki's cell without any kind of backup. First of all, and this was something that I hinted at the other day, in the deluge of press junkets and interviews that Marvel studio execs have given over the last month, they've confirmed the ongoing plans of pretty much every major character in The Avengers *except* for Coulson, so it was mere deduction by process of elimination. If Kevin Feige and company hadn't blabbed so much about how Loki would be in Thor 2, about whether or not Black Widow would be in Iron Man 3, if Bruce Banner would get another shot at a stand-alone movie, whether or not Nick Fury would be showing up in later sequels and so-forth, then maybe I wouldn't have been able to deduce which major character was not being included in those conversations.
But in retrospect, we all should have figured it out two years ago, or the exact moment when Joss Whedon was hired to direct the film. It's no secret that Joss Whedon likes to bump off major characters over the course of his episodic television shows, something he was doing long before The Sopranos made it an 'in' thing to do (The X-Files was arguably the first in this regard). But the secret to Whedon's cruelty is that he made a point over his career to not only kill major characters but to kill the specific characters that everyone loved the most. Did anyone in the Scooby gang have anything but respect/fondness for Jenny Calendar before Angel snapped her neck at the 2/3 mark of the season two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Sure the fans loved her, if only because she brought out new character beats for Giles, but the important thing is that all of the main characters liked her and thus her demise impacted them all. We wept (figuratively or literally) because they wept. Same thing with Tara, hit by a stray-bullet towards the end of season six. Willow's girlfriend was the ultimate innocent among the gang, someone generally untouched by the evil and cruelty that often surrounded the Buffy universe. There are examples of this in Angel (Fred!!) and Firefly (the shocking and arbitrary death of Wash right at a moment of near-victory towards the end of Serenity), but the pattern is the same.
Joss doesn't just kill off major characters. He kills off the characters that every other character loves and thus we all love unequivocally. Like Jenny Calendar and Tara before him, Agent Coulson was the innocent sacrifice to spur the rest of the group to action.Following what amounted to a glorified cameo in Iron Man from a somewhat recognizable character actor, Phil Coulson quickly became both a connective tissue throughout the Marvel universe and the audience surrogate. He was respected, if not quite adored, by all of the other would-be Avengers and had no dark secrets to hide and no character blemishes to taint his pure morality. His death hurt the most because he was the closest thing to you or I on the screen. He was a representative of the sort of person that loves these films the most and like Randy in the Scream series, that made him the prime target for extinction. If you want the stakes to matter, you have to be willing to kill the ones they love. 15 years later, fans still haven't forgiven Wes Craven for butchering Jamie Kennedy halfway through Scream 2. Judging by the response online, the outcry of 'grief' shows that Whedon made the right call.
That he was the most appropriate candidate to be written-out of the Marvel universe doesn't make it any less unfortunate. Clark Gregg won't go hungry. Even if he wasn't an accomplished character actor and screenwriter (he wrote Choke and What Lies Beneath), I imagine he'll be at conventions until the day he dies. As I wrote two years ago, his level of stardom is far higher now than it would be had he not lucked into a reoccurring role of this nature (we also share the same birthday, natch). But the manner in which it occurs makes more sense in the context of The Avengers being a stand-alone film (Thor has a potent moment earlier in the film where he apologizes to Coulson for the carnage that his brother has brought to Earth) than a climax to a six-part saga (since Stark was the Avenger who knew him best). Tony Stark does grief in his own passive-aggressive fashion (including a brief callback to his first scene in the film and an honest acknowledgement of how unheroic his demise really was), but it hurts the film that he's not among those watching Coulson die. It's the difference between Spock's death in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Kirk's death in Star Trek: Generations. And the need to explicitly state what his death represented in a narrative sense (yes, Nick Fury does quite a bit of 'monologuing' this time around) neuters at least some of the impact even while the movie does stop to mourn for a moment.
But it is an appropriate plot turn in a film that arguably needed one or two more of its nature in its climax to really have an emotional oomph in the end. Have another Avenger fall in battle, have our heroes make a tactical blunder than costs civilian lives, give the heroes an impossible choice between saving civilians and saving emergency personal, leave Thor with no choice but to brutally murder his brother as he cries out in anguish. The film needed 'a push' to truly matter in its finale. But for one brief moment, as an old friend quite-literally takes one for the team, The Avengers is more than just an orgy of wisecracks, hero-smackdowns, and city-leveling action explosions. Agent Coulson gives his life so that our conflicting heroes can rally together and save the Earth. But Clark Gregg gave up his gravy-train so that The Avengers could be more than just a blip on the radar screen of the Marvel movie universe.
Scott Mendelson
22 comments:
Tiny correction: Tara wasn't killed in the season six finale of Buffy - she was killed in a mid-season episode, 19 I think. Made the scene all the more shocking and heartbreaking. Also, since you're talking about killing Buffy characters, the season 5 episode The Body, where Buffy's mom dies, is the most emotionally draining TV episode I've seen.
I was being lazy and you caught me. It's been amended. :-)
Tony Stark may have more of a connection (Pepper Potts as well) but I'll side with the film by saying its probably hurts Tony more finding out about it than actually seeing it. Knowing that there was nothing he could do and that he wasn't there to save him energises Stark and, I feel, contributes to what he does in the third act.
I don't think this film necessarily needs that kind emotional gut-punch that you speak of and that's down to the serialised nature of the comics/this series. Wouldn't hurt it but I don't think it needs it.
I agree that Loki had to die to give the Avengers Movie the proper weight. I felt they were setting it up Loki literally trying to kill Thor twice as Thor is trying to appeal to their brotherhood.
I don't think the Thor franchise needs Loki at all, we are talking what 2 more Thor movies tops before a reboot? I like the character of Loki and I think he's been compelling but frankly I don't want to see anymore of him. We get it.
It would of been good if the Hulk killed him. Although I wouldn't want any parts of a Thor - Hulk "You killed my brother" melodrama,maybe they could have had Thor delivering the final blow. It would establish weight to the Marvel Universe if they showed Hulk had the power to kill a being like Loki.
Great article, Scott. Saw the film a second time with my 4 year old since today was his birthday...and we had an Avengers theme party.
And yes, the film is missing the punch you speak of. What's even funnier is that this film really is Iron Man 3 when you look at how we left Tony at the end of part 2 and what he goes through in this film. He's actually mature and there is real growth. It's rather nice to see Downey go to a different place with Stark.
Had the film gave the appropriate arc to Rogers and had Thor take down his brother for good, it would've easily been Marvel Studios best film.
Hmm. While this is definitely a really interesting, great article, I'm not sure I actually agree with you here on the "Coulson's death lacking a dramatic punch" part. Personally, I thought the way that Whedon chose to play it out - having him die with Thor and Loki, then the scene with Nick Fury, then the trading cards scene, and finally Tony's grief during his discussion with Cap - was, in my opionion, actually the best way to do it. To explain - first off, I quite liked that he died while with Thor and Loki, because it really hammered home again the point about the Asgardian conflict's spilling over and affecting Earth. In the fight between these two gods and brothers - which Thor still doesn't really seem to want to think of as being dangerous to others - innocent bystanders are getting hurt. I thought it was, in fact, pretty poignant and pointed towards Thor's character development. Then, the parts with Fury (the death scene and the trading cards). In fact, I found it a subtle and brilliant decision to have Fury so obviously manipulating the Avengers' emotions - to have him and Coulson discuss Coulson's death as a motivator for the team, and then to have him bring the fake-bloody playing cards for Cap - because I thought it really subverted the expected norm. We all knew Coulson's death would bring the team together; not acknowledging that fact would, in my opinion, have been a cheap move, almost insulting to the audience - as if we wouldn't have seen how obvious the sacrifice's forcing the team to become a cohesive unit was. By acknowledging it, Whedon was lampshading the trope and thus treating his audience as an intelligent body - not "babbl[ing] about what should be subtext", but rather allowing the cast to be genre savvy. As well, Joss was cleverly able to show how deep Fury's manipulation meant - and thus to qualify the ending "Nick Fury is awesome" moments with the realization that yes, he is a very manipulative man. Having Coulson acknowledge it as well was just icing on the cake for me; that Coulson realized that his sacrifice would serve to make the team stronger - that even in his las moments, he was still thinking about his job and the team - made the scene even more poignant. Finally, having Tony offscreen for the death also really increased its emotional impact for me. I thought that it helped increase the power with which it impacted Tony's character development - culminating his heroic sacrifice attempt at the end (which I think was inarguably a result of Coulson's death and Cap's haranguing him about his own selfishness during the movie) - because it allowed him time to react and simmer with grief. I personally found the scene with Cap and Tony, in which Cap actually showed some compassion to Tony's plight (realizing that for Tony, the situation was particularly rough because he was unused to/hated having soldiers or (in his opinion) better men die for him (see Yinsen, as a brilliant parallel to that)) and Tony unsucessfuly tried to dismiss his own emotions about the death, very moving. Just my two cents, but there you have it. =)
Well said, thank you for that. I still wish a few details had been different, but you make a strong case for the scenes in question as they are in the film. This is the kind of feedback I most appreciate, so let me encourage you to make a habit of it.
Well said... I still have a few qualms about the moments in question and wished it had played out a little differently, but you make a strong case for the scenes as they appeared in the finished film. It was a minor quibble on my part which is why I didn't mention it in my review (aside from obviously not wanting to hint at spoilers). Anyway, this is just the sort of feedback that I most appreciate, so I hope you'll make a habit of it.
I wish my 4.5 year old had the attention span for a 140-minute movie. She knows the characters and wanted to see the film, but the only reason I said 'no' is because I knew she'd check out around the 90 or 100-minute mark. She can wait for Blu-Ray.
Funny you should mention attention span because my boy fell asleep (after having an exhausting birthday party) the moment the Marvel logo shows up. The trailers wore him out and I knew if the film didn't start soon, he was done for. But when I told him Nick Fury was on the screen, he woke up and watched the whole film. There were a couple "I want to go home....can we pause the movie" comments but he made it through.
Ha! You should have let him sleep for the first 12 minutes. You'd have the triple benefit of A) letting him be more relaxed for the rest, B) getting 80% of the onscreen killing out of the way if that's an issue and C) not forcing him to endure that truly awful prologue...
Depending on the day I could go either way on this point. If Stark had been there to see Coulson go down, it would have felt too much like it was about him - his need for revenge - rather than the team's need to get down to business. On the other hand, I do really feel that there should have been a memorial scene for Coulson with Pepper there...I hate it when they gloss over stuff like that. Same thing in the Dark Knight - one shot of Dent's eulogy and not even a mention of Rachel who got blown up for Gotham. Really? These characters were in multiple movies. We can't get a two minutes scene to say goodbye?
Yeah. Now that you mentioned it, he could've definitely skipped those minutes until Iron Man showed up...which, of course, is his favorite.
In Knight's defense, you had basically four scenes back to back that heavily played on Bruce, Batman, and Dent mourning Rachel in a devastating manner.
Damn good response. Makes me rethink the entire events. Still, I think Scott's ultimately correct in his review about the theme of the picture not really working because of the manipulation of SHIELD.
Again, they get along okay until they discover SHIELD's meddling.
Your point about the Asgardian conflict spilling over onto Earth brings to light Scott's notion of Thor killing his brother in the climax to give it the emotional heft that it needed.
Your right. Coulson's death witnessed by Thor does hammer your point home. But, if Thor ultimately feels responsible for it, he needed to end his brother in the end. And this drives home a tweet Scott had about Marvel killing the drama out of the film by annoucing the sequels before it's even released.
I felt that Coulson's death was inserted just so they could have a 'win one for the Gipper' moment. Adding emotional investment to a movie consisting of 2 dimensional adolescent fantasy figures feels heavily contrived.
While I enjoyed the film, I was constantly aware of the better films each scene was 'borrowing' from. Only the sense of humour, Whedon's strongest skill in my opinion, saved this from being a fan-boy only effort.
To me, it would be like having Alfred die and not having a memorial scene for him. As far as Nolan's movies are concerned, Bruce Wayne only loves two people: Alfred and Rachel. If one of them goes, there needs to be a funeral. Same thing with Coulson. That scene in Central Park could have just as easily been them leaving his funeral. Thor takes Loki, everyone rides off into the sunset. Joss must have figured it would be too much of a downer at the end of the movie.
What annoyed me about Rachel's death in The Dark Knight was how she was discussed afterward. She wasn't Bruce's friend, Gordon's ally, or an upstanding ADA. She was post-death merely referred to as Dent's girlfriend.
Scott, as you blogged about before, the director's cut will be much better. You should probably hold off judgement about the emotional heft of the movie until we get 30+ minutes of deleted scenes.
In all likelihood there won't be an extended cut on DVD/Blu-Ray, merely a supplemental package of deleted scenes. Moreover, the film which is in theaters is the film as it currently exists and how successful the theatrical cut is in regards to its goals is the only thing that matters. Letting a film off the hook because there theoretically may be a longer version in the future is basically cheating.
Yeah, it's cheating.
As Coulsen said, though, it was Loki who lacked conviction so he should have killed Thor if anything; then Odin could have brought him back for the second movie.
Plus, the nerd rage would have been epic if they killed off the Hulk.
Love the blog, BTW, you do good work.
Post a Comment