Shoot to thrill

Long time no see! With TCW S5 starting today, I better get my Avengers-review out of the way. Slight spoilers for The Avengers, spoilers for both Iron Mans. (And I'm going to assume the readers know who's who in and out of suit, so I'm not gonna repeat the names and such like I did in the original.)

(This is a translated (and slightly edited/expanded) post from my Finnish blog, Väärällä kädellä. Finns, you're welcome to read this over there, as well, if my English is confusing and/or you want to hear my opinion without Iron Man movies.)

(Note: DVD was released on the fifth of September here in Finland, which is how I'd seen the movie two times before the US release: I got the DVD on the 26th, and before that I had rented it on the 16th.)

So guess who saw the movie two weeks ago and watched it twice in 24 hours? And before you continue, open this in a new tab and close other music sources. You won't be disappointed.

1. I love the movie
2. I love the fandom
3. I can't find gen!fics or 50% of my favorite subject (this has been fixed by now, more in the footnotes)

I don't generally like superhero movies: I only watched The Dark Knight because my friend is a fan of Heath Ledger, and she later recommended Batman & Robin to me. (Well, that one had George Clooney as Batman, so it was a win-win.) So I don't have any idea what made me want to go see this film on the big screen last spring. Maybe it was that I had other movies on my 'to-see' list and they all were released in a row: The Hunger Games, Iron Sky and The Avengers. Unfortunately, eventually I only went to see The Hunger Games. (I happen to own all three on DVD now. Thank my brother for Iron Sky: he broke his leg before he could go see the film, and used crutches for the whole summer = no movies.)
So, even though I didn't go watch the movie, Internet(especially Tumblr) taught me a lot during the summer, and of course everything 'cool' or 'dramatic' was .gif'd and posted online. Despite this, I had no idea of the overall plot when I got hold of the DVD. (Honestly: the only things spoiled by the .gifs were Mk. VII's deployment and some lines of dialogue, like Tony and Loki's discussion. "We have a Hulk." And even then I didn't remember them when watching the movie.)
So I rented this blind, with no idea of the plot or events. I hadn't even seen any of the previous MCU films. (Still haven't seen all, but Iron Mans are now watched.)

There have been a few Finnish reviewers who said that this movie is for Marvel fans and those who've seen the earlier MCU 'phase one' films, since The Avengers doesn't stop to elaborate anyone's backgrounds or what SHIELD or Tesseract are. Personally I didn't find any trouble understanding the events or who the characters were, and IMO saying that Asgard is an obscure term is stupid, since it's Norse mythology: you can read about it from million sources. (Sure, it's not MCU Asgard, but basic relations are still the same.)

And I knew everyone's stories enough to not be 'who? what?' all the time(okay, didn't know why Thor knew Selvig, but I assumed that they knew each other via Foster, who got moved to Tromsø, and I knew she was Thor's love interest, so that wasn't a big hole, especially as she didn't make an actual appearance in the film). Of course, I've done some digging after that, but e.g. I know Tesseract's history to this degree: it surfaced on Earth during WWII, HYDRA made weapons with it, Captain took it to the seabed, SHIELD got their hands on it once Cap was unfrozen and then Loki stole it. There was something about Asgard and Bifrost, too... And no, I haven't seen Captain America nor Thor. CA is next on the 'to-watch' list.

Mhh, back  to the point. I don't think the movie needs much knowledge of earlier ones, though it's gonna help, sure. Tony mentions to Bruce why he has the ARC reactor attached to his chest(and I missed that on the first watching!), Bruce says he leveled half Harlem, Steve has brief flashbacks while he's working out, and Thor... is Thor. He's a god, what else do you need to know about him? (And he outright says Loki is his family, so that's not just some thing you should be aware of.) And even though I have to admit I don't remember Natasha's exact words, didn't she say something to the lines of Stark not trusting her after the last time? That was from IMII, but since it wasn't elaborated more and it's not crucial to the plot, the viewer doesn't have to know the whole thing!

More than by the movie, I was spoiled by the fanfics I read shortly after. I caught Tony's line on the second viewing, and after that I didn't even mind 'brief' spoilers from IM movies, so I knew of Rhodes, Yinsen, Natasha quite literally back-stabbing Tony(okay, neck-stabbing), most of the things that happened in Afghanisthan(how the hell do spell that?) and other stuff. Of course, it wasn't visuals, but then just before getting to watch the IMs, I read the TVTropes page for them... not a wise move, even if I couldn't read the spoilers thanks to my phone's odd highlighting system. But yeah, I knew Stane and Hammer were villains from the start.
And of course, I'm used to the canon material being so vast and deep you can't have all of it, so you're left reading Wiki entries and/or spoiling yourself like this. Marvel being Marvel, I wasn't even bummed by Ant-Man, The Wasp and Black Panther making an appearance in a fic. (It's the one where Pepper saves a cat, Tony can't stand it, but lets it live in the tower. And then the cat gets hold of Pym particles in The Wasp's bag.) (This tradition started with Star Wars, predictably. Come on, I watched the movies in 2007 and the newest book was The Crystal Star, going by chronological order. Chronologally earlier books(prequels and TCW) have been translated, but I liked Jaina back then and would've like to read more about her.)

The only possible reaction to the text on the right.

Speaking of traditions: Tony joins my unnamed collection of male punching bags, that so far consists of Anakin, Ed and Zuko. (Possibly also Luke, I'm not so sure about that anymore...) There's a pattern here, anyone wanna guess?

(So yeah, I've read quite a few fics in the past two weeks where Tony's ill, kidnapped, tortured, injured more or less seriously, he might have also died a few times...)

Back to the movie. The plot takes awfully long to build up, since every memeber of the Avengers must be picked up from different places over the world. Plus, there are no set locations aside from New York and Stuttgart, as the towns in Russia and India remain unnamed(?). So I think the Helicarrier was at the Atlantic(what preposition do you use in this case? ESL sucks.), but how did Tony fly all the way from New York to Stuttgart in almost the same time that Natasha and Steve took to fly a Quinjet there? (Alright, he might have taken a private jet, but are they fast enough? Where did he put the suit on? Flight clearances and stuff like that?)
And after that they go fight in the forest, which reminds me more of Northern European forests than Central European, with all the evergreen trees and stuff. Okay, they might have been flying to east, but that doesn't make sense. (And how did they get back to the Quinjet? Natasha can't have landed in there, and Tony wouldn't fly all of them up.)
FTS, question flood. As I was saying, the plot takes really long to build up, as Loki returns to Earth, Nick Fury is almost killed to times, all six Avengers are brought together and then the fighting starts. Oh yeah, they visit Stuttgart and make a Hitler-refence, too. And hero vs. hero in the forest.

And when you finally get to the final battle... That's Holy Shit Quotient all over. Continuous fighting, good jokes(Loki has performance issues), awesome special effects. If nothing else, you gotta admire the CGI used in the aliens. (And that they slam a few skyscrapers.)
And the end is just so aww for me, but I enjoy seeing characters get hurt so IDK if it really counts. But I just can't help loving the scene where Tony falls down and Hulk catches him and then he's almost dead and then Hulk wakes him up by yelling him and it's all so sweet and cute and gah I don't know if it's a ship or bromance between Tony and Steve and just asfrghfs

Did you just kill Tony Stark?

(this is actually no longer true as I've seen the Irom Man films but I'm gonna write it anyway)

Speaking of Tony and his history, and by the original writing time I hadn't seen the films, but from fics and the occasional video, I managed to figure out a lot, like what happened in Afghanistan, the ARC-reactor itself and how palladium was relevant. Oh yeah, and car batteries and waterboarding. And while I knew Natasha would be in IMII, her relevance didn't dawn on me until she said in a fanfic that she had stab Tony to save him (or something like that.)

Nobody kills Tony Stark!

And since I've talked so much about fics in this post, might as well rec some. IMO these are good, but there's so much leeway when it comes to opinions on fics. (Shipping, squicks, kinks, stuff like that.)

• Never Forget, the 'compulsory' 9/11 memorial fic for every modern time fandom. This one's so good it made me tear up. And that's saying something, since a: I don't cry to fanfics, b: 9/11 doesn't cause any emotional reaction in me. I'm not American, I'm a little young, stuff like that. (+16, swearing and subject)
• 100 Days of Tony Stark Madness, humor/parodyfic. E.g. crossdressing, infiltrating a gay bar, a game of FMK. And a barrel of monkeys. Nick Fury can't stand Tony. (+13, swearing)
• She's Somebody's Hero, a cute hurt/comfort fic. Tony hates hospitals, but Pepper's always there to fix the situation. (+9)
• I Fell Heavy Into Your Arms, Tony/Stene bromance, with (of course!) hurt/comfort. (+13, swearing)
• Destiny at Work, Steve/Tony. Loki casts a gender-bending spell on Tony. Steve's unsure about his sexuality. (+13, swearing, sexual themes)
• Big Man in a Suit of Armor, crack!fic. Tony replies rather differently to Steve's question: "Take it off, what are you?" (+13, implied sex, swearing)

Footnotes:
- I asked my Dad to buy the six 'phase one' films for my birthday, and got both Iron Mans and The Avengers on Sept. 26th. Since then I've also read quite a few Iron Man fanfics (two very different categories in FF.net, which is my main source for fanfics), and that has given me more of the fics I'm looking for (injury- and sickfics are my favorites)
- I also have quite a lot to say about Marvel and Finland and the relation to MCU in general, but that's gonna be in a different post.
- When I resumed writing this post (had to watch Revival), and I wrote down SHIELD, a track from the movie's OST started playing on iTunes. Guess which? Helicarrier. Can't get much more awesome than that.
- Gonna change my theme today, too.
- I wrote the original post a week after seeing The Avengers, so I misattributed some references to Iron Man II when they in fact were to the original Iron Man! (E.g. I remembered Tony telling Bruce that he almost died because of the reactor(IMII), when he actually said it saved his life(IM)!)
- Is it canon that MCU Iron Man can go Mach 2 in flight? Or is it just fanon? 'Cause that could solve the 'New York-Stuttgart-Helicarrier' problem. And well, Tony was faster on the flight to New York after the battle (they were over Atlantic coast, right? Probably heading south, if I'm interpreting Nick Fury right "Is the Sun coming up? The go LEFT!")
- I can't belive that I used the translated term for 'Avenger' in my original post. Fucking blasphemy.
- You honestly thought I was gonna put AC/DC on my blog? I like my music so I  can hear the lyrics. Plus, I like this track.
- my tags aren't making sense.
- you know it took me two days to originally write this post, but the translating only took around six hours, including all non-blogger activities. awesome.