Ok folks, yes I did see THE AVENGERS while doing my London run, but I don't think I'll do the whole "Context for the day" bit.
"Why? Gee Harry, your interesting adventures in London are what I live my days for, please oh please tell me all the micro-details of your life... I live for this you fat slob, don't you dare hold out on me now!!!!"
Well, it's like this... What I did on this day pertains to the entirity of the London trip, which will include a vast amount of news on THE MUMMY and STAR WARS EPISODE ONE, and these adventures pertain more to that.
But what I will say is this...
If there was ever a chance of me "LOVING" this movie it was here and now.
Being in England and seeing the AVENGERS was just about as perfect a duo as I could imagine. Going around noticing all the odd (to me) differences in my culture and that of England. The red phone booths, the red post office boxes. The signs saying "WAY OUT" instead of "EXIT", the driving on the left side of the road, the words on the street as you step off the sidewalk telling you which way to look, the "lift" instead of the "elevator", the "tube" instead of "subway"... the subtle little differences like that, that only an outsider notices.
I was prepared for the accents, the humor (after hanging with Brits all day long). I was totally into the sets, having seen Big Ben, Parliament and the Tower Bridge. I was in a hotel with employees in top hats and tails... I had been in a cool british car earlier, I was totally entrenched in what it was to be in London.
And I was seeing the film in a theater filled edge to edge with... THE BRITISH! This was their baby, their icons. In fact in the row right in front of me, I saw JOHN STEED. This fella wasn't just dressed exactly like JOHN STEED, but he physically looked exactly like John Steed... hell as far as I know perhaps THE AVENGERS was actually based on this fella's adventures.
One last thing I want to talk about before I discuss the screening, let me address the issue of why I'm so damn hard on WARNER BROTHERS. My favourite (brit spelling due to influence) studio is WARNER BROTHERS. When I see that damn shield before a film I expect one of the best movies made. Why? Because so many of the best movies made were made by Warners. Casablanca, White Heat, Treasure of Sierra Madre, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Adventures of Robin Hood, Rebel Without A Cause, etc etc etc... So when Warners screws up, when they drop the ball... well dammit they're soiling the shield, they're defiling the collective of what the Warner Brothers name means to me. It's like watching a grandparent die from a stroke that kills half the functions of their brains. It's seeing someone you love and have nothing, but fond memories slowly slip away. It makes me want to get the best doctors, specialists or Dr Kevorkian in there to fix or pull the plug.
Now onto the screening.
It was at the WARNER THEATRE in London off of Leichester (possible misspelling)) Square. The theatre was quite nice, little things like the soundtrack machine where you put 15 pounds into it and punch the button for the soundtrack. Or the escalator ride down to the screening, or seeing British Quads framed on the wall with "COMING SOON" above them. All slightly different, like putting sugar on the popcorn... weird...
While standing in line to be allowed in, several people came up to talk to me, seems I have a decent sized following here due to the press coverage I've had in England. The most telling thing I saw while waiting though was this one girl... she was standing on the escalator, facing her boyfriend, who said something to her about the Avengers, and she made this squinched up yucky face that was like, "Ohmigod, Wasn't that terrible!!"
As we went in we had to find our ASSIGNED seats... something beyond weird for me. I like to walk into a theater and just look for my fave vantage point, this assigned thing seemed like an unholy act of satan, but hey I'm just not used to it. Then as I sat down with Chief Jawa, Rash, Vivien Leigh and Marion Ravenwood, we were all harboring that... "Maybe we'll be the only ones to like it!" Like it was with FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS... It was not to be.
Then the room got a bit dark... and...
Wacky British Commercials came on...
Ok, you have to understand, being an American film goer, there is a tradition of.. Theater 30 second logo thingee.. Coming Attractions (at least 3) and then a 30 Second Feature presentation thing, the THX and DIGITAL sound things, then the FEATURE PRESENTATION.
But in England it's a bit different...
First off is this strange psychedelic 20 second piece with the names Something and Paul... or Pauly and Someone or something like that. It had no significance for me whatsoever, but everyone in the theater like cheered. I was... shocked.
Then came the commercials... There was everything from Seagrams Vodka, to bizarre beers, to THE AVENGERS tv show on some channel. About 20 minutes. I was utterly entranced and entertained. Each commericial was visually stunning and utterly confusing to my American brain lobes. Chief Jawa and Rash were bothing pointing at me and laughing. They noticed that my eyes never blinked, that I never inhaled or exhaled a breath. My retinas never moved. I was stunned. I was one with the british weirdness. I just didn't not know what was happening. How dare they do this to me!!!! How can I go back to the U.S. and see another film and not just loathe not having cool commercials. Pop Culture surrealism at it oddest.
Then came THE AVENGERS...
This review may have some spoilers in it because some of the problems I have with this have to do with what they cut out of the script, and how that effects the current film.
First off, I liked the script... It was odd, the whole evil Peel bit was a bit on the loathesome side, but at least it was well explained in the script... so much so that Emma doubted her own sanity. In Chief Jawa's review he talks about the lack of set pieces, well originally there was a great set piece where Emma and Steed fought an army of evil Butlers. Then there was how Sean Connery killed his henchmen... Instead of throwing two darts, he allowed them to go home, then he called them, and with his masterful control of lightning he would strike the transformer outside their window thus electricuting them. Or he'd raise the temperature of their home so high that they would incinerate. In otherwords he controled weather to a very cool level. His fascination with Peel was explained by a 15-25 minute segment cut out of the opening of the film.
The look of the film was exactly what I thought it would be. John Steed by Ralph Fiennes and Emma Peel by Uma Thurmann are exactly as I imagined they would play them, and as such... sure... ok... fine... But Sean Connery... When those people in Arizona told me that they felt embarrassed for Sean... I shuttered.. I couldn't believe it, Connery couldn't be pitied in a film. Oh Gawd I hate it, but maaaaaaaaaaaaaaan... I've never had to look away from a screen while Connery was on it... I have now.
I dug the music from Joel McNeely though, BUT there didn't seem to be any energy in the film, no sense of excitement, no sense of utter jaw-dropping coolness. This film is the ultimate in NOT following up a great trailer. The AVENGERS trailer just screamed COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL. But that energy, that pizzazz, that coolness was devoid of the film.
The Thin Man 'dialogue' had one problem... You could tell they knew each other's lines. Not only that, but one could almost know their lines as well.
But where exactly did this movie go wrong? Well it could have been overly listening to the Pheonix test screening audience. They obviously cut sooooo much out, that much of what is left is underdeveloped, under-nourished, and all around lame. With the backbone of what existed before... well basically everything that made me say, "The Avengers had a cool script" was gone. All the unique levels of absurdity were gone, all the character development, most of the charm.
Someday perhaps we'll see the "Pheonix" cut, and we can see whether the Pheonix audience was insane, or if Warners merely saved an extra 30 minutes of our lives from being wasted.
The most alarming aspect to me was the sigh of disappointment I heard from the BRITISH audience afterwards... it was a faint exasperated sense of... it's over...at last.
This film was a disappointment, it's not as bad as BATMAN & ROBIN, it's merely not a great movie for me. I'm sure some will enjoy it, that some will even think it's better than the old series (as hard as that is to believe). This was a missed swing at a hit. This wasn't a curve ball that couldn't be hit, this project, those characters, could have been done dead on, it could've been something... something wonderful. Sigh... but it was Warnified...
