Who is That Masked Man?
The last assignment of my semester asked students to explore what made an artist (of their own choosing) special. In other words, they had to figure out for themselves what makes Scorsese Scorsese? Sondheim Sondheim? Vonnegut Vonnegut? If we were starting on Joss Whedon, for example, I would say study the trailer below for Marvel’s The Avengers (2012): how does Whedon connect his pieces of evidence (the six Avengers) together? how does he transition between them? how does his craft (camerawork, art production, screenwriting etc) reinforce these moves? how do the pieces assemble into a larger narrative or idea? These questions are sometimes best approached through a comparison: for example, why is this film by Joss Whedon and not Quentin Tarantino? or Michael Bay?
The Avengers resists that question,though, and leaves Whedon relatively masked. He shares Tarantino’s obsession with pop culture but he does not plaster his name all over the screen or disrupt the narrative sequence or editing of his film. He sets up blockbuster explosions and extended fight scenes but makes relatively modest use of CGI and special effects. In a featurette about a central fight scene between Thor and Iron Man he focuses on the head butts. Thor and Iron Man. Those words in the same sentence, and those characters in the same scene, say something about Whedon’s style and preoccupations. He seems to be interested in putting disparate pieces together, assembling a film from an assortment of traditions and sources. It’s a style that works well for our self-referential popular culture, especially the world of comics. But unlike Tarantino, Whedon is less interested in drawing attention to his sources than in making them fit together seamlessly.
The pieces in this case are a motley crew of superheros–Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Thor, and the Hulk– whose only common denominator is outside the film: their maker is Marvel. Whedon makes this necessity into a virtue, contriving a plot about individual heroes having to become a team in the face of danger. It’s hackneyed, but it serves his purpose and he does a good job of emphasizing that lesson without headbutting his viewers. Whereas the evil Loki proposes a world of “every man for himself,” by the end of the film (and trailer) the individual superplayers have learned how to spell “team.” The clip above ends with the camera circling the six avengers standing together against an assault. Whedon lingers on classic shots like three avengers marching toward the camera in arrow formation, with Captain America in the lead. The film must do justice to the complicated sources of comic books, from the mythic to the patriotic to the robotic, and Whedon gives each of his leads a chance to solo while insisting by the end that they “play well with others,” as Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man says self-deprecatingly. (Watch how carefully even the trailer gives each star/character screen time. Whedon creates seamlessness by insistently rotating through his pieces.) Some reviews have touted Iron Man as the franchise leader–he is given the final world-saving moment–but it is actually Chris Evans’s Captain America who issues the orders despite the fact that he is not the most powerful. In his comically outdated red, white, and blue costume, he represents the good ole American norm, genetically modified for specialness. This is made obvious in one of the most viewed clips from the film: Captain America taunts Iron Man by saying “big man in a suit of armor, take that away and what are you?” and Tony Stark answers “genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist?” Cut to Thor laughing.
It is Whedon’s trick to make these Avengers, whom Loki calls “lost creatures” and Samuel L. Jackson’s ringmaster calls “remarkable people,” both bad ass and vulnerable. As Loki says to Thor in the middle of the film, ‘humans think us immortal. I guess we’ll find out.” Surprisingly, that is the tone of the film throughout: not quite mocking (though it makes great use of Robert Downey Jr’s smirky oneliners) or earnest (though Captain America does his best), but questioning. It’s as if we watch Whedon wondering “what if,” as he says in the featurette mentioned above. How would Captain America, defrosted from the 1940s, adjust to today’s society? How would Black Widow fight if tied to a chair? If Iron Man’s life were at stake who would save him? These questions and their answers are interesting, even if the film’s worldview is not, and they let us see Whedon thinking on the screen….which may be what makes Whedon Whedon.
