Is three years too long to wait for a sequel? When that sequels tells what happens when Marvel's "The Avengers" get back together again, perhaps. Three years is a long time and in the interim there will be new sequels telling us what happens to "Thor" and "Captain America" and, unless Robert Downey Jr. hurt himself much worse than is being talked about, even Tony Snark will get another movie.
Why? I don't know. He's on third and I don't give a damn!
Joss Whedon's collecting of Marvel's mightiest was an enormous hit despite being shockingly empty of content. The entire film seemed to be a comedy routine without a punch line in which one of the superheroes infinitely more interesting in their incarnation in other movies would say something, thus giving Tony Stark a chance to reply sarcastically. In between this deadening repetition that became so predictable I quickly reached the point where I just stuck my fingers in my ears every time Downey opened his mouth was the great Tom Hiddleston doing everything possible to save the dignity of Loki's standing as Marvel's answer to Heath Ledger's Joker while being transformed into a Wagnerian outer space Nazi.
Three years too long to wait for a sequel to "The Avengers"? Actually, three years sound just about right. Over the course of those three years, the film will be rerun continuously on television and thus provide even the hardiest of its fans the slap upside the head they need. Once the buzz and excitement has worn away, the failure of the "The Avengers" on nearly every level, but especially in comparison to "Thor" should become inescapably apparent.
Perhaps the three year wait between "The Avengers" finally clearing out of the last cinema to show it and the release date of the sequel will be enough time for Joss Whedon to shake the fog from his head and realize what a wholesale mess of a movie he made. One can even dare to hope that Robert Downey will be called upon to do more in the way of character development than figuring out how to make his every snarky line of dialogue not contain the same exact inflection.
For more from Timothy Sexton, check out:
Four Ways to Improve the Sequel to "The Avengers"
Will Fellow "Thor" Stars Join Renner in Criticizing Whedon's Flattening of Their Characters?
