Editor's note: This is a nostalgic theater.
Before you know it, the first "Avengers" has been released for ten years.
Maybe it's because people are getting older and less sensitive to changes in time. Maybe it's because superheroes are still being produced continuously in the past ten years. We hardly realize that this film was released in 2012, which is ten years. Before. Many viewers have changed from young teenagers back then to adults who need to make a living today. And these superheroes on the screen have also experienced several sequels, constantly fighting, sacrificing, and inheriting, until the first generation of "Avengers" members have mostly retired, but the second generation has not yet formed a team Finish.
Perhaps none of us who watched the movie ten years ago had expected, it turns out that both us and superheroes will experience so many life changes.

The Avengers poster

The story of the film describes the establishment of the first generation of "Avengers", including Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, Thor, Black Widow and Hawkeye. They want to stop Thor's younger brother Loki from using the cosmic cube to rule the earth.
And all these superhero stories don't just start with this movie. To be more precise, the real rise of Marvel took place in 2008. When the first Iron Man (released in 2008) was No. 2 at the North American box office and Robert Downey Jr., an excellent actor who once disappeared due to drug addiction, turned around with the role of Salted Fish, the epic adventures of these superheroes, It's just been opened.

Iron Man, an excellent mainstream entertainment movie. Its importance lies in establishing the benchmark art style for a series of films from Marvel over the next decade or so.

In fact, as early as 2000, Hollywood has already produced the "X-Men" trilogy, the first-generation "Spider-Man" trilogy, "Batman: Mystery of the Shadow" directed by Nolan, and the second "Spider-Man" trilogy. Batman: The Dark Knight took the top spot at the global box office in 2008, and the fans' reputation was overwhelming, and the limelight far surpassed that of "Iron Man". For Marvel, at this time the X-Men and Spider-Man have already rented and sold others. Although the market is lively, the interests are not their own. The coveted Batman and Superman are the top cards of the next-door competitor DC. Although Marvel has a large number of comic IP (intellectual property) images, its development prospects are not clear. In the movie market at this time, there are many series of stories such as "Pirates of the Caribbean", "Harry Potter", 007, "Mission Impossible", etc., which are diverting the audience's attention. It is not easy to stand out in the market with only comic heroes.

"Batman: The Dark Knight" is still the top work on IMDB and Douban. We never expected that the success of the two comics since 2008 predicted that the next 20 years would be a world of comics.

Perhaps for Marvel, they are not so optimistic about the future. It is impossible to imagine that after only ten years, more than half of the mainstream market has become the world of comic adaptation. At that time, with the good reputation of the first "Iron Man", the stable business model was further continued, which is a seemingly stable and safe investment portfolio. Several companies have filmed the hero trilogy one after another, which was also based on sound business logic. Marvel, on the other hand, is simply more bold, and quickly finalized the series of "Thor" and "Captain America" to be released within four or five years. Together with the "Hulk" that had been scattered before, they made up the first "Avengers". Alliance" plan. Their bottom line is that even if "Thor" and "Captain America" are not as profitable as "Iron Man", at least "The Avengers" will be able to make a lot of money by playing a "superhero rally" publicity battle, right? This is not a genius, but a business practice that naturally arises from companies with a large number of IP resources, exchanging the number of IPs for stable income.
In fact, the market feedback from comic fans and movie fans has also given Marvel confidence. The first part of "Iron Man" finally has an easter egg where Nick Fury, the director of SHIELD, wants to recruit Iron Man. This was just a common promotional selling point for such films at the time, and it could also be said to be the sense of humor of the professional otaku in Marvel's creative team. However, this little idea has aroused the excited expectations of comic fans, making this glimpse of the easter egg truly become the golden egg of the film industry in the future.

The director in the "Iron Man" easter egg (above) and the director in "The Avengers" (below) seem to have no major changes in shape. But the details are more sinister and ruthless.

Shooting a superhero series and finally putting the story of League of Legends on the screen is just an idea, and the company executives can decide after a few meetings. The greater difficulty lies in the implementation of the entire plan.
The difficulty of story creation may be easier to deal with. The specific story is left to the director responsible for each play. As for the link between the stories, Marvel invented the term "Marvel Cinematic Universe", stating that "our movie story is the story of the heroes in another parallel universe, if there is any overlap or inconsistency with the hero stories in the comics. , everyone, don't be entangled", such a two-dimensional concept. For the 21st century where "quantum mechanics" and "parallel universes" are flying all over the sky, movie fans and comic fans can easily accept that most of the superheroes originate from comics, and the specific direction of the story is in line with the origins and transitions of the laws of film creation.

From last year's Marvel spin-off animation "What If...? ", to "Doctor Strange 2: Out of Control Multiverse", which was just released in North America in May, the different story trends in the "Multiverse" have become a widely accepted stalk for a new generation of young people.

The real difficulty is the details of how the film was made. The core issue is how to shorten the production cycle, reasonably plan the production cost, and obtain box office returns while ensuring the quality of each film as much as possible. Although each new film of each superhero may form a new overall style, it must try to continue the first "Iron Man" that has been proven successful in the market, those who are fashionable and relaxed, and sometimes stand out. A stalwart pop art style. Including gag humor, the film's Easter eggs, etc., have gradually become the artistic characteristics of Marvel.
After all, movies are industrial art products. The production process cannot keep up, the product effect is not good, and so many good business plans cannot receive money. Filmmaking is a concrete and difficult process. Just look at DC and Warner Bros. next door. Even with the successful experience of Marvel, the production of "Justice League" was started later. After remakes, it still became a Waterloo of the fans' reputation. The failure of the final product reflects the weaknesses and mistakes of countless links in the production process. In fact, even Marvel, in order to catch up with the early release of the first "Avengers", produced "Thor" (released in 2011) and "Captain America" (released in 2011), which have become the most popular in all Marvel movies. Two of the weaker ones. The problems behind it are that the production cycle is tight, the budget is insufficient, and the ability and experience of the creators are insufficient. Fortunately, the word of mouth of these two films did not collapse too much, and they still did a good warm-up for the release of "Avengers".

The tortuous process of DC and Warner Bros. production of "Justice League" next door, experienced a quarrel with director Zach Snyder (2016), and invited "Reunion" director Whedon for a second repair, but after the release, it was still word of mouth. The collapse, which finally ended with Yi Zha's four-hour director's cut, was released on streaming media last year, and finally came to an end.

Finally, in 2012, the series was planned to reach its first climax.
The first Avengers film grossed $1.5 billion worldwide. At the time of its release, it was enough to rank 4th in film history. After that, its sequel continued to refresh the box office records in film history. Commercially, this is a victory at the aircraft carrier level. At the same time, it is not a "life-or-death" one-shot deal like "Titanic", but a stable success at the level of a battle fleet that escorts and progresses together.
The success of this business model has resulted in a large number of superhero derivative movies, TV series and animations flying all over the screen. From aircraft carriers, to battleships, and even small sailboats, they have all made money together. To this day, more than half of mainstream commercial production in the United States has been inseparable from the superhero manga. Perhaps the audience has felt a little tired, but it seems that it is still early to be completely tired. So the top stars such as Spider-Man and Batman, the predecessors have not yet begun to cool down, and they can ask young actors to replace them for the second time. The difference is nothing more than ten years. And Marvel’s IP library is even more abundant. In addition to the legends of heroes such as “Wanda Witch”, many heroes such as “Moonlight Knight” that have not been seen can also be dug out to create new selling points. Many similar themes are still in continuous production.
"Fortune and misfortune depend on", commercial success and mass copying also implies artistic duplication and lack of innovation. It is impossible for film and television dramas to film superhero stories for a hundred years, and this trend will always recede after ten or twenty years. But it may still be in vogue right now.

The "Moonlight Knight" has just been sent away, and the series "Surprise Girl" has been ushered in these two days. The future trend of Marvel is to film all kinds of minority groups under the aura of political correctness to realize Disney's fairy tale dream of "global integration".

The success of "The Avengers" is first and foremost commercial, not artistic. If you forget about the continued popularity of all these "superhero movies", this movie alone is probably an "exciting multiplayer fantasy action movie full of constant fighting, bickering, and a lot of humor." The film has many spectacles, excellent action effects, and sufficient dramatic entertainment elements, but from the perspective of artistic creation, it is difficult to say that it makes people feel endless aftertaste.
Old-school filmmakers like Martin Scorsese would bluntly say "superhero movies aren't movies." This seemingly arbitrary statement will arouse dissatisfaction among many young audiences who love "Avengers". But this is like Wang Xiaobo's famous saying that "there are two kinds of people in this world, one is us and the other is them", there is a sense of humor that only one can understand, which is actually an expression of a strong art claim.
A few years later, when scholars write the history of film, this era full of superhero films may be described as: "In the early 21st century, with the deepening of computer technology, films made more full use of CG, 3D and other technical means, From the large number of green-cloth filming of the film to the final combination of live action and animation, they are trying a different kind of film from the 20th century, so as to more fully show the audience various scenes that cannot be achieved in reality. and action. And a large number of adventure stories about superheroes are the best vehicles for these technical experiments, which broaden the visual and imaginative boundaries of the audience.”

The scene where these exciting heroes gather is actually just a few poses of real people and animations. In terms of filmmaking, this is not a great creation, it can only be said that it is a success of green cloth and CG technology.

In the late 1990s, films that tried to use CG production began to rise, such as "Jurassic Park" and "Titanic", but due to the immature technology, a large number of live-action models were still used to shoot, and the director also had to master "hidden". The artistic method of showing the part as a whole allows the audience to imagine the real environment of the whole film with the help of some details of the artistic effect. At that time, cinema was still an art of imagination. And when it comes to "The Avengers", all the language of the film does not need to be designed so meticulously, and what you want can be drawn later. Cinema thus becomes a more intuitive and popular art.
Perhaps an even more important ability for a director like Joss Whedon is to organize and coordinate filming times for big-name actors, matching the performances of live and virtual actors more realistically, while maintaining the humor of the popular talk show It's more helpful for the audience to feel the entertainment of the film. In fact, movie fans don't have much admiration for Marvel directors like Whedon or the Russo brothers, because what they do is more copying of previous successful experience than innovation.
The story of The Avengers is tense and twisty, and each hero has a different personality. It's interesting to watch their daily bickering, and the city of fights and destruction is even more dazzling and bloody. But after watching it, I can't seem to remember what it was.
That's probably what The Avengers, and all these superhero movies, are all about.

In the easter eggs of "Reunion", the figure of the purple potato head "thans" has already appeared. This hint leaves comic fans with more impressions and reverie. "Easter eggs" are also an important part of Marvel's style.

But, that's not a criticism, it's just the nature of entertainment movies.
Just like the purpose of cross talk should be to make the audience laugh, not to educate the audience. Mainstream commercials are made for entertainment. The entertainment is that when you watch it, it is very exciting, and you feel something, and these feelings are all vague. After watching it, you may remember the explosions and the flying all over the sky, but in the two hours of watching the movie just now, I forgot the troubles of some trivial things in life, and I was quite relaxed.
This is entertainment for the money of a movie ticket.
Regarding the artistic feeling of the film, if you insist on describing it, there is still something to say.
"The Avengers" depicts a real world where superhumans and ordinary people live together. These superpowers have their own emotional and character problems just like ordinary people, and at the same time have to deal with misunderstandings by others, government oppression, social constraints, and even various pressures in the reality of survival. Although they have been known to have greater capabilities, they also have to shoulder many heavier responsibilities. However, even if they have as many problems as we do, when a huge disaster comes, they tend to forget all the difficulties in an instant, full of courage, regardless of their own safety, and use their own abilities to save ordinary people and the world. In the process, they showed extraordinary human brilliance, like all heroes since ancient times, inspiring us to overcome ourselves and pursue a more stalwart state.
In the logic of entertainment films, they all succeeded in the end. Maybe in the early days of the film, the heroes will fail, and some people will even sacrifice at a certain point. But they succeeded in the end. Failure and sacrifice are inevitable in the storytelling process, but they give more meaning and value to the final success.
Perhaps there are far more failures in reality than in the film, and even adults understand that victory is not achieved by fighting hard to the end. Then look at the Avengers again and find some support, which might also be good. No matter how many deficiencies you have, always maintain optimism and humor, and believe that you can find friends, fight together, and ultimately protect this beautiful earth and homeland.

This is an ending egg that was said to have been deleted when it was released in China in 2012. Superheroes refuel at the snack bar after exhausting battles. Although there is no line, there is a human sense of humor. At times, these short paragraphs are closer to "movie" than entertainment.

This is a heroic epic about modern society, just a children's illustration and comic version. Maybe we would have believed it ten years ago, maybe today we all understand that this is just a fairy tale and a myth. But that makes no difference.
As Romain Rolland said: "There is only one kind of heroism, and that is to still love life after recognizing the truth of life." At any time and place, people can choose whether to live like a hero or be an ordinary person .