Revenge season finale: "Reckoning".

Warning: Spoilers for the season finale, and spoilery allusions to the rest of the show. 

Back in the larval days of this blog, I wrote a couple of posts on the costumes of Nolan Ross, the delightfully beanpole-ish henchman character of ABC's Gossip Girl/Count of Monte Cristo/Girl With The Dragon Tattoo mashup, Revenge. In general the costumes of Revenge, while pretty, don't really inspire (or require) much overthinking, but this week's season finale was just too damn awesome not to warrant a post of its own.

BRB turning this photo into a mural for all my walls.

I'm constantly impressed by the abilities of the Revenge showrunners to up the ante without descending into ridiculousness. They've packed at least three seasons' worth of shocking revelations, blackmail scandals and torrid affairs into 22 episodes, but none of it seems unwieldy. When it comes to soap operas or dramas that rely on this kind of rapidly-escalating conflict, new plot-twists quickly begin to feel forced because they are forced -- the writers have to keep them coming in order to fuel the melodrama juggernaut. But with Revenge, the solution to this problem already exists within the show itself. Amanda's main purpose in the Hamptons is to stir up trouble, meaning that the issue of seemingly-forced plot-twists is already out the window. Secondly, every character is either so amoral or so desperate that it's perfectly believable for them all to be constantly collecting blackmail material on one another like a bunch of unusually well-dressed Cold War spies. At the beginning of the series there were a few "nice" characters to balance out the ferocious vitriol and paranoia of the Grayson family, but by the finale everyone has become tainted.

The costumes of Revenge aren't bad, but the nature of the setting means that nearly every character is dressed in a very perfect, studied and formulaic manner. Conrad Grayson is always in a somber, expensive suit; the younger men mostly wear relaxed everyman clothes; the women are dressed up but never ostentatiously so. Women on TV tend to be more put-together than women in real life, but in the case of Revenge we have a whole host of female characters who only ever remove their high heels to put on a negligee, and wear makeup 24 hours a day. In the dog-eat-dog world of being an evil trophy wife in the Hamptons, image is everything, and characters like Victoria Grayson and Lydia are rarely seen out of their uniform of tight, knee-length dresses.

Victoria is the most uniform dresser of them all. I don't think I've ever seen her wear anything that isn't a skin-tight dress plus high heels in the entire course of the show. Victoria's style is so immediately recognisable that I've noticed that Madeleine Stowe (the actress who plays her) tends to show up to Revenge publicity shoots wearing exactly the same kind of super-tight bandage dresses and lacy cocktail frocks.

Revenge is far less guilty of Male Gaze camerawork than most female-centric drama shows, but when it does come to purposefully sexualised cinematography it's usually Victoria on the receiving end of those shots, not Amanda. It's a pretty good characterisation choice, actually, since Victoria is definitely the vampy seductress of the show whereas Amanda's public persona is far more girl-next-door.

Amanda's costumes are almost all disguises. Everything she owns, wears and does in the Hamptons is tied into her revenge plans rather than expressing her own desires or sense of self. At heart she's a very controlled and practical person, someone who has been stripped back to the bare bones and will now do anything to fulfill her quest for vengeance. To that end, she's created the harmless Emily Thorne persona for the benefit of her Hamptonite enemies, a wolf in sheep's clothing. Once you accept that her appearance can't be judged the same way as most characters', her costumes can be divided into three categories:

1. Public Emily. The pretty, chic dresses she wears to parties and meetings with public figures like the Graysons and other Hamptons millionaires. These fall somewhere between Victoria Grayson/Lydia, and Charlotte Grayson. Expensive and classy, but more fresh and youthful and less sexy than Victoria's clothes.
2. Private Emily. Amanda's informal style is quite relaxed and boyish, involving a lot of blazers, sensible sweaters, and low-heeled boots. But since she's in the Hamptons and therefore technically playing at being Emily Thorne whenever she's in public, those clothes are still chic, designer outfits. In the context of her being a millionaire and the girlfriend of a Grayson, she probably comes across as quite preppy/Sloaney. 
3. The real Amanda Clarke. To me, she's at her realest when she's wearing her Girl With The Dragon Tattoo outfits: black hoodies, black jeans, and sensible black combat boots. The minute she puts on her Batmanda gear, we know that someone's going to be in trouble.

Nothing to do with costume design, but one of the little details I enjoyed about the finale was the motif of boxes and containers. In Revenge, all the Maguffin props are information-carriers. We've got to a point where almost every character has been directly involved in some kind of secret spy-camera or webcam blackmail scandal, and files change hands and swap email accounts with dazzling speed. Once upon a time it was just Nolan's infamous whalecam and Amanda's Infinity Box, but now we have any number of secret files and surveillance tapes.

The Infinity Box is this show's one great failing. It's a good prop for scenes where you need your protagonist to stare pensively at something while having childhood flashbacks, but for a character as practical and ruthless as Amanda it seems like a needlessly obvious Achilles heel. I was actually relieved when it first went missing because it's such a clunker of a clue pointing directly to every one of Amanda's well-planned deceptions. The fact that she's still got it now is rather frustrating.

The box may look empty, but it's OVERFLOWING WITH SYMBOLISM.

And then at the opposite end of the spectrum, there's Victoria's gift box to Amanda. This scene filled me with pure glee because it was such a perfect example of Victoria purposefully orchestrating a moment of theatrical cruelty, purely for her own vicious entertainment. And the thing is? Amanda respects that. She even smiles a little when she opens the box, impressed by Victoria's panache -- and glad that Victoria is no longer her future mother-in-law. In a show full of these staged moments of retribution and public humiliation, this was right up there with Victoria holding Lydia close and whispering in her ear, "Every time I smile at you across the room or we run into each other at a luncheon or I welcome you into my home? Let that smile be a reminder of just how much I despise you. And every time I hug you? The warmth you feel is my hatred burning through." I mean, WHO TALKS LIKE THAT? Only Graysons.

"I'm not worthy." -- direct quote from Nolan Ross in this scene.

The relationship between Amanda and Nolan is my favourite thing about Revenge. This show does a lot of interesting things with gender roles, beginning with the fact that the protagonist is a woman who, for all intents and purposes, is Batman. One thing I particularly love about Amanda is that unlike most female spy/deceiver characters, she doesn't rely on sex appeal and seducing information out of people. Although she uses her relationship with with Daniel as an integral part of her revenge plans, it's an actual relationship, not a collection of scenes where the camera pans over her wearing a sexy outfit before cutting to some man's comically gobsmacked facial expression. To me it feels quite telling that although the female characters in Revenge are mostly trophy wives (or, in the case of Fauxmanda, a former stripper), they are judged far more on their own terms than most female characters on TV.

With Nolan and Amanda, you have this brilliant relationship where Nolan is basically her henchman, but also is the one person who knows her secrets. On paper, it seems like he should have been more of a mentor figure to her -- he's older, he was friends with her father, he's her key to the Hamptons -- but instead he's very clearly in the sidekick role. Also, Nolan is the only character in the show who isn't desperate for control, either of his life or the world around him. There's this almost submissive side to his personality that means he's perfectly happy to look to Amanda for direction and take genuine pleasure in her success.

Just got kidnapped; still found time to pick out a pocket square that matches his trousers.

This kind of open, one-sided admiration between main characters is vanishingly rare, particularly when it's a man's (apparently) platonic admiration for a woman. In a less nuanced show, Nolan's loyalty would be written off as a poorly-socialised nerd with a crush on a hot, powerful woman. Rarer still is the fact that every moment of that admiration is tied to her actions and not her appearance. At first he was desperate to be let into her revenge plans, and now he's earned her trust he's openly gleeful about getting to watch her take people down. Although he clearly has a skillset far outside the reach of any other character on the show (those handy hacking skills...) it's also obvious that he couldn't have done any of the things Amanda continues to do. She's got an excellent strategic mind, she's ruthless, and she doesn't back down from a fight. Nolan, on the other hand, literally cowers away from physical confrontation. Gabriel Mann's ability to bend his 14ft limbs into various poses of snivelling terror is both impressive and entertaining.

This episode saw several excellent Nolan outfits. First, the vulnerable white t-shirt, checked trousers and pink/lilac shoes and socks of the kidnap scene. Another wonderful example of gender role reveral in Revenge, because in most TV and movie scenarios where a woman is kidnapped and tied up, she's at least partially stripped to highlight her vulnerability. Buffy and Angel are the only shows I can think of that objectify men in the same way as women in that type of setting, and although I wouldn't say this scene was sexualised, I appreciated the fact that Nolan was the weak one (as always) while Amanda was still tough and fully-dressed in her Batmanda outfit.

I almost punched the air in excitement during this moment of over-the-top visual symbolism. Victoria and Amanda, meeting for the last time on opposite sides of an ice-covered door! Amanda, dressed casually and all in white, comfortable in the knowledge that she's finally getting the revenge she desires! Victoria, dressed all in black like the archetypal Evil Queen she is, looking more like Morticia Addams than she ever has before! Delicious.

The closing montage was stunning. Victoria, wearing pure, innocent white from head to toe, absolving herself of her sins (as, she said to Charlotte earlier in the episode, the only way to cope with your own acts of cruelty and retribution is to forgive yourself and move on) and stepping up the heaven-like staircase to the airplane. Of course, being regular viewers of Revenge, we already suspected that the plane would crash, but on the other hand... as a regular Revenge viewer, I also suspect that Victoria survived that crash.

Links

I didn't used to be a Florence + The Machine listener, but thanks to the excellent usage of Seven Devils in this scene (plus the Snow White & The Huntsman trailer), my current playlists are becoming dangerously Florence-adjacent.

Revenge’s Gabriel Mann Talks About His Snarky One-liners, Fan Appreciation, and Nolan’s Fate.

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Snow White & The Huntsman: How to tell a fairy story.

I'm taking a small break from our regularly scheduled Avengers overanalysis to bring you some LADIES IN ARMOUR.

Today Florence + The Machine released their theme song/music video for Snow White & The Huntsman. I'm not really a Florence fan, but this video is just TOO GOOD FOR ME TO COPE WITH because it combines clips from the (completely awesome-looking) Snow White trailer with war drums and dramatic Valkyrie wailing and somehow, somehow... I am totally sold. After listening to this song and rewatching the trailer, not only am I 100% prepared to declare Kristen Stewart my Khaleesi For Life, but I'm also convinced that I've somehow regressed to the age of 11 because OMG new feminist role-model. Which is slightly embarrassing because I just googled Kristen Stewart and it turns out she's several months younger than I am. But what can I do? I've already sworn fealty. I'm taking up my spear and following Snow White into battle. And so are you.

MY KHALEESI.

Can I just say how awesome it is that they've made a freaking war movie out of a fairytale that's popularly known as the story of a bitter old lady who poisons a girl for being prettier than she is? In these trailers we see Snow White being betrayed and abandoned and strong and sliding through the mud and LEADING AN ARMY. The thing that blows me away the most -- more than the Guillermo Del Toro-esque troll creatures; more than Charlize Theron's fabulous costumes -- is the fact that Snow White is a passionate warrior. The #1 flaw in action/adventure movies is that their protagonists run the risk of ending up as two-dimensional badasses. A lot of the time the emotional hook just isn't truthful enough to engage audiences outside of the basic demographic of "people who like to watch things blow up". Which, by the way, isn't a criticism of that demographic because I fully intend to watch any and all Die Hard sequels, even if they rate 3% on Rotten Tomatoes and consist of a 76-year-old Bruce Willis standing in front of a blue-screen and yelling nonsensical one-liners while people frantically Photoshop burning cars into the background.

Not gonna lie: I basically want both of their outfits to wear in real life.

But Kristen Stewart's Snow White isn't just a badass. During every action clip included in those trailers, you can see the desperation and determination on her face. You feel -- or at least I felt -- a genuine desire to find out why she's having to fight, rather than just treating the fight clips as a sort of placeholder code for "this film includes battle scenes". Is this what movies are like in a post-Game Of Thrones world? We can only hope. 

Unusually for me and my habit of nerding out over behind-the-scenes details, I don't actually know much about SW&TH. And in contrast with more specifically geek-oriented films like Prometheus or the Avengers franchise, I don't really feel that info-dumping is even necessary. Unlike Tarsem's visually wonderful but otherwise unappealing Mirror Mirror earlier this year, the marketing for SW&TH has managed the ideal maneuver for a fairytale adaptation: they've made a familiar story seem intriguing without changing it so much that it seems unrecognisable.

These days, movies based on well-known myths tend to go one of two ways: egregious levels of grittiness, or tongue-in-cheek parody. This follows the same mould as superhero movies, wherein the Batman myth evolves from Adam West cartoonishness to Christopher Nolan's apparent belief that as long as you include enough shots of grim Chicago skyscrapers in the rain, you can make a 100% "realistic" urban epic about people who dress up in pleather catsuits in order to fight crime. For me, gritty superhero adaptations can sometimes work, but gritty fairytales? Not so much. Just look at Russell Crowe's Robin Hood, which removed everything that was ever charming or appealing about Robin Hood and replaced it with endless footage of Russell Crowe glaring at mud. The greatest source of tension in that movie was me desperately waiting for Russell Crowe to take a bath because he clearly smelled so bad, but that never happened. Even when Cate Blanchett's servants poured him a bath he just splashed some of the water on his face and was like, "well, I guess that takes care of all the Saracen blood I've accrued over the past decade of war-mongering". HE NEVER DID TAKE THAT BATH, YOU GUYS.

This is literally the cleanest he ever is in this entire movie.

(Oh, and another thing that bugged me about that movie was that all the supposed realism was meant to add a "historical" edge to the mostly-fictional Robin Hood we know and love, except none of the history was remotely accurate. As in, the film ended with -- spoiler alert for a movie you definitely shouldn't see! -- Robin Hood revealing that his dad wrote the Magna Carta and Cate Blanchett leading an army of tree-dwelling orphan boys to fight off a French invasion on a beach in Dover. For realsies.)

"But Hello, Tailor!" you may (possibly) be asking. "Snow White & The Huntsman looks like it's all about muddy people in nonspecifically medieval armour as well! How can you say it's going to be any better than Russell Crowe's embarrassing attempts to modernise an English folk-hero?"

The answer is: because SW&TH gives every impression of having reached a happy middle ground. Disney already has the market cornered on happy, colourful fairytales, and we know from Robin Hood and Clive Owen's King Arthur that going all-out "historical" (sorry, I can't help but stick some sarcastic air-quotes in there, I'm an asshole) is unpopular. With this film, the trailer gives a darker, more adult hook for Snow White in the form of her new role as a Bourne-esque fugitive and fighter, but we still get to have the more fantastic elements of unicorns, trolls, magic mirrors and so on. Sometimes Kristen Stewart wears a bodice and floor-length skirt that distantly resemble a dirtier version of Snow White's outfit from the Disney cartoon, but when she rides into battle she's wearing armour. Real armour, as opposed to the leather bikini Keira Knightly had to wear when she was playing Pagan Guinevere in the oh-so-historical King Arthur movie. You know that Kristen Stewart's character is Snow White because she looks like Snow White, but you also know she's a warrior because she looks like a warrior as well.

Seems legit. This is basically how everyone dresses in the UK.

Postscript: As of just now, this is the first news headline that comes up when you google Snow White & The Huntsman: "Charlize Theron v Kristen Stewart at Snow White premiere: Hot or Not?" Wow, Internet. I think you just summarised in one sentence everything that's going to be wrong about all the coverage for this movie!

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The costumes and characters of The Avengers. Part 3: Steve Rogers, Captain America.

Previously: The costumes and characters of The Avengers. Part 1: SHIELD. and Part 2: Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, and Bruce Banner.


As a person with maybe too many thoughts and feelings about superheroes (cf. all previous Avengers posts) I have no idea what an Avengers viewing experience is like for someone who doesn't know who Steve Rogers is. However, given the fact that Iron Man/Robert Downey Jr is such a big part of the current pop-culture zeitgeist, I assume that he's enough to hold the movie together for the few people in the audience who have no prior experience of Marvel superhero movies. Given the chance to advise one of the aforementioned newbies, though, I'd say that the prequels most likely to improve your Avengers experience are Captain America: The First Avenger, and Thor.

The Thor movie is relevent to The Avengers not as a source of backstory info for Thor, but more as Loki's own origin story. Already an unusually complex and emotionally engaging villain, Loki only becomes more interesting when you know more about his upbringing. As for Captain America, while I don't think that knowledge of Steve's backstory is necessary to understand The Avengers, an appreciation of his character definitely helps. Seeing Steve Rogers before his supersoldier transformation helps us understand the reason why he "is" Captain America rather than just a star-spangled man, and the fact that he's fresh from the '40s has the twofold influence of making him the ultimate fish-out-of-water character (perhaps even moreso than Thor, who has no real need to fit in with human society) and adding a horrendously depressing aspect to every one of his scenes because everyone he ever knew or loved is dead. The fact that Steve Rogers is even remotely functional in day-to-day life is tantamount to a miracle.

Steve's original 1940s uniform from Captain America.

Steve Rogers has the same goofily earnest attitude as Clark Kent/Superman, something that's rather hard to pull off in a movie aimed at the cynical bastards of 2012. It makes me worry that people who haven't seen the Captain America prequel might misunderstand the charm of the Steve Rogers we see in Avengers. I saw several reviews that commented that Cap seemed clunky or cheesy compared to the rest of the Avengers, and each time I got this ridiculous protective urge to be like, No! Watch his own movie! It's heartbreaking and inspiring and there's a musical number where he punches Hitler in front of a chorus line of girls in spangly stars-and-stripes minidresses! Man, I'm Scottish and a pacifist and barely have any patriotic spirit for my own country (unless you include gallows humour about rain and alcoholism), but if you don't like Captain America then I don't even know what to do with you. He's even better now than he was fifty years go because as a person he's really the exact opposite of the kind of jingoistic sentiment the 1940s propoganda "Captain America" was originally intended to be. Seriously, all I want for his sequel (aside from a scene where someone explains to Steve that Ronald Reagan became President of the United States) is for him to be a feminist, gay-friendly human rights advocate. Look, I can dream, OK!!

He just poses like that naturally. Because he's CAPTAIN AMERICA!!!

I feel like Avengers managed to make a little go a very long way with Steve Rogers, character-wise. While the lack of explicit backstory for characters like Hawkeye, Black Widow and Bruce Banner was most likely a timing issue, the lack of Cap-based exposition was necessary in order to avoid muddying the waters for the writers of the Captain America sequel. Steve Rogers' characterisation had to rely on in-the-moment reactions and visual details like costuming or Chris Evans' remarkable ability to have the facial expressions of a Disney prince. Joss Whedon did do some work on the script of Captain America: The First Avenger, and I have to wonder how much of that was stuff about his sense of humour/speech habits that carried over to The Avengers the next year.

There's very strong line of continuity between Steve's costumes in Captain America and The Avengers. When we first see him in the gym with Fury, the whole aesthetic is very retro -- the old-fashioned gym; the dusty sepia-tone colour scheme; the fact that Fury gives him an actual paper file. The detail of the paper file prop jumped out at me at once because it's so clearly something that Fury has tailored to Steve's comfort level -- or what he perceives Steve's comfort level to be. It made me think that Fury/SHIELD is making a conscious effort Steve feel more at home, and I'd hazard a guess that those attempts are doing more harm than good. At the end of The First Avenger when Steve wakes up in the 21st century, SHIELD has constructed a special 1940s bedroom for him in an attempt to slowly acclimatise him to the "future" -- which, of course, backfires. Although Fury mentions in the gym scene that Steve has his own apartment, I suspect that it's closely monitored by SHIELD, as is every aspect of Steve's life. And I suspect that Steve knows it. The mysteriously deserted 1940s-friendly gym is the first clue; the subtle weirdness of his casual clues are the next.

Steve's casual clothes are just really old-school. I don't believe for a second that he bought these himself because a) I doubt that SHIELD would allow him out into the chaotic environment of a 21st century shopping mall, and b) finding this type of outfit would actually be quite hard. His main casual clothes (see the first picture in this post) are high-waisted pleat-front suit trousers -- which aren't typically available in anything other than "70-year-old grandfather" dimensions, decidedly not the Adonis-like frame of Steve Rogers -- checked shirts, and an old-fashioned brown leather jacket with epaulettes. That jacket is way too specific in terms of quality, fit, and style for Steve to have been able to find it himself a few weeks after being defrosted. I'm very interested to see how his costumes evolve over the course of the next movie, because continuing to wear 1940s-esque clothing walks a fine line between comforting homesickness, and denial. Once he's truly autonomous from SHIELD and able to do everyday things like go shopping, will he stick with what's familiar or head straight for the future? I actually think it'd be a great characterisation decision if they had him leaping headfirst into 21st-century styles while retaining more retro tastes in things like music and movies.

Steve Rogers in the 21st Century. (The final scene of Captain America.)

The direct continuity crossover between the two movies is Steve's white t-shirt/khaki trousers outfit. When he emerges from the magical hot-body steroid machine in the Captain America movie the first things he puts on are the white t-shirt and khakis, which are then mirrored in the final scene when he escapes out into 21st century New York while dressed in a SHIELD t-shirt. At the beginning of Avengers we see the same outfit, this time with khaki workout pants -- which, don't tell me SHIELD didn't personally provide him with those because when was the last time you saw someone wearing khaki workout pants? And it's a great outfit for reasons other than continuity: it implicitly resembles military-issue clothing, the plain white t-shirt is the archetypal wholesome American staple item, and the colour scheme neatly slots into Steve Rogers' sepia/brown/beige palette.

This may seem like a stupid statement coming from someone who writes about both costume design and superheroes, but... I find it hard to write about superhero costumes. Comicbook costumes look cartoonish and ridiculous in real life, but the "realer" you make a live-action adaptation of a superhero comic, the less fun it is -- and the less likely you are to retain the core fanbase. Characters like Batman and Iron Man get a pass because their costumes are functional and double as body-armour, but Superman and Spider-Man? Sorry bro. I can watch it, I can enjoy the hell out of it, but I'm not going to waste time trying to legitimise how and why someone would make a perfectly-fitted spandex outfit for themself and then wear it in public. Especially in the context of urban crime-fighting as opposed to, say, lucha libre wrestling.

Captain America kind of falls into this category because his costume is, fundamentally, a 1940s Americana cheerleader uniform with extra pockets around the waist for bubblegum and hair gel (or whatever the hell it is that superheroes keep in their utility belts). That scene where Agent Coulson tells Steve that "the world needs a little old-fashioned" is enough for me, really. The body-armour and boots they've incorporated into the basic blue body-suit are feasibly practical-looking, and although the cowl isn't exactly great I'd like to see how you would go about designing a winged blue helmet that looks serious and manly. Cap is a cultural icon, a guy whose photo appears on trading cards, a symbol of a naiive, nostalgic idealism that never really existed even in the 1940s. He doesn't need to look cool. And the fact that he willingly puts on a stars-and-stripes catsuit and a helmet with a giant "A" on the forehead is proof enough of his beautifully earnest dedication to his job.

Source: mercmouth @ Tumblr. (Of course from Tumblr.)

I saw Avengers with two guy friends of mine, both of whom are well aware of my love of overanalysing movies and, more specifically, my sensitivity about the sexism present in most geek/superhero franchises. When we were coming out of the cinema, one of them asked if I'd been bothered by the way the film had displayed Black Widow and her catsuit. To which my reply was, basically, "???" because not only was The Avengers unusually equal-opportunities with regards to eye candy, but most of its prequel movies were as well. Both Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger featured sensibly-dressed, awesome female characters checking out the shirtless male heroes in what was pretty much a textbook reversal of the typical male-gaze "pan the camera up and down her body before she gets to say a line" shit you see in most blockbusters. I mean, I don't pretend to be an expert in cinematography, but Steve's first appearance in Avengers is a lingering shot of his ass flexing while he pummels the crap out of a punch-bag.

We know that Black Widow's pockets are full of weapons, but I still say that Cap's are full of bubblegum.

Black Widow may be wearing a catsuit, but so, more or less, are Captain America and Hawkeye, and no one of those costumes or characters is shot in a way that seems any more gratuitous than the others. Joss Whedon isn't perfect, but I feel that his policy regarding eyecandy visuals is indicative of his attitude towards his audience in general. ie, that his thought process is more like, "Who is my audience, and what would they like?" rather than the more typical Hollywood filmmaking attitude of, "This is the audience we think we're writing for, and this is what we've decided they enjoy". Which is how movies like Battleship and Catwoman get made.

Next up:  Black Widow, Hawkeye, Thor, and Loki! 

Links
If there's no such thing as a vintage Captain America venereal disease PSA then I'm going to be so disappointed.
The real contents of Batman's utility belt.

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The costumes and characters of The Avengers. Part 2: Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, and Bruce Banner.

Previously: The costumes and characters of The Avengers. Part 1: SHIELD.
 
From my limited knowledge of Avengers comics canon I was expecting the movie to focus more on the clash of personalities between Steve Rogers and Tony Stark, but the genius of The Avengers was that it explored all these different permutations of the Avengers team that I'd never considered before. The best example of this was the unexpectedly perfect combination of Bruce Banner and Tony Stark. The most poorly-handled character of the Marvel universe thus far -- the Hulk's human alter-ego -- ended up with the most engaging hero's journey in the film.

With two Iron Man movies already under his belt (plus the fact that Robert Downey Jr's media presence is practically indistinguishable from Tony Stark in real life) Tony is the most established character in The Avengers. Audiences are guaranteed to recognise him, and unlike the rest of the Avengers team he's both familiar with SHIELD and with the business of dealing with major, public threats as a superhero. To me it seemed like Tony was the most grounded of the heroes, which was quite a turnaround from the myriad of self-sabotaging insecurities he displayed in the Iron Man movies. And that's partly down to the fact that this time round, the "public" Tony Stark is almost entirely absent.

Tony grew up with fame. He might seem careless about his public image, but that's a carelessness borne of long experience with being in the public eye. We know that Tony is a vulnerable, isolated person, but during the scenes in the Iron Man movies when he's either in public or speaking to the press, you can tell that he's just a little more over-the-top than usual. Not to the extent of Bruce Wayne's idiot playboy persona in Batman Begins, but the Tony Stark who we see drinking alone in a lab full of half-finished robots (because Tony Stark has to build friends for himself) is significantly different from the Tony Stark people would read about in the tabloids of the Marvel universe.

The quantity of luxury product placement in the Iron Man movies is testament to the Tony Stark image. Cars, watches, drinks, suits... Tony, like James Bond, is an advertiser's dream character. There was far less of that in The Avengers, though. Mostly we see Tony at home in worn t-shirts (including a Black Sabbath shirt, a nod to the character's love of classic rock) or dressed in a slouchy, non-traditional suit (pictured above) when he's visiting SHIELD in his role as a consultant, the closest we ever see to him being dressed "like an engineer". He's relaxed, he's grounded, and a lot of that is thanks to his relationship with Pepper.

The Tony & Pepper Show is a delightful screwball comedy back-and-forth, and I would happily watch ten more scenes of them flirting around Tony's hideously expensive and uncomfortable-looking cavern of a house. So for me, the Tony-and-Pepper sections of The Avengers were perfect. Without stepping on the toes of any hypothetical post-Iron Man 2, pre-Iron Man 3 Tony/Pepper details, we know immediately that they've finally made the step towards something like a real, adult relationship, and they are both clearly so happy about it. I've already written at length about why Pepper Potts is such a great character and why costuming is a big part of that, so when she first showed up in Avengers my reaction was basically: LEAVE ME TO DIE BECAUSE PEPPER IS RELAXED AND HAPPY AND IS WANDERING AROUND TONY'S BACHELOR PAD WITH HER SHOES OFF. Note to my family: I would prefer an ocean burial.

I've actually seen quite a few fan reviews that commented on the fact that Pepper's not wearing shoes in her scenes with Tony. Theories include: Joss Whedon's foot fetish; the product placement deal with Louboutin fell through and Pepper simply couldn't wear anything else; Gwyneth Paltrow was injured; they were sick of making Robert Downey Jr stand on a box in every single scene. For me that last theory is a no-go because he's clearly wearing lifts all the time anyway, as you can tell from the mysteriously inflexible hidden-heel sneakers he wears in every scene. Of course, most people aren't on RDJ height-watch like I am. (It's just that once you notice you just can't stop. Because seriously, he's like 5'8" at most and there are multiple scenes where he is supposedly nose-to-nose with Chris Evans, who is definitely over six feet tall in his Captain America booties.)

I think that Pepper's shoelessness is purely a character choice. Up until now she's been the one insisting on professional boundaries between Tony and herself, not just because they both have huge, messy feelings for each other but also because Tony used to be such a relentlessly irresponsible man-child that if you gave him an inch, he'd take a mile. The 4-inch stilettos she wears throughout the Iron Man prequels are part of her business armour, the clothes that force people to look up to her both figuratively and literally. (Which must have been annoying for the filmmakers who had to create the illusion that RDJ was now six inches taller, as opposed to just two or three.) The fact that she feels comfortable enough to slob around his house in jeans-shorts is proof that Tony's finally grown up enough to receive Pepper's stamp of approval. Oh, and she's CEO now so he's totally not even her boss any more.

Bruce and Tony are the only two Avengers who, upon first meeting, actually like each other or have anything in common. Tony is a man so desperate for people to talk to on his own intellectual level that he built himself a sentient house for company. Bruce is an academic who had to abandon his research and go on the run, alone. Everyone who meets either them has already pre-judged them from prior knowledge of their mistakes and disasters. And even after they've got to know each other, Tony is still the only character in the movie who doesn't treat Bruce with trepidation and distance -- partly because Tony is still kind of self-destructive and enjoys poking at things and/or people until they blow up, but also because Tony is the only one who really understands Bruce as a person (as opposed to "that guy who sometimes turns into an unstoppable killing machine"). And he's the only one who trusts that Bruce will show up to help the other Avengers fight, the result being the Hulk's first moment of altruism: saving Tony's life.
Unlike the rest of the Avengers, Bruce Banner's costumes are not really showy or flattering. He doesn't even get a superhero outfit. Bruce is middle-aged, he's kind of a mess, and Mark Ruffalo is the only actor in the main cast who wasn't on a strict diet and workout regime. So physically, Bruce is not a fighter or an athlete, and in terms of his everyday look the costume designers were intentionally avoiding the alpha male appearance of, say, Steve Rogers. When Bruce first appears he's in a wrinkled, dirty suit, and after that we get the purple button-down shirt -- a reference to the Hulk's famous purple shorts. I'm rather forlorn about the shorts thing because I was SO HOPING for a scene where Tony engineers him a pair of stretchy polymer-whatever panties for when he Hulks out. Maybe in Avengers 2?

SCIENCE BROS!

Looking at Tony and Bruce's outfits at the end of the movie, I'm just gonna put this out there: Bruce is wearing Tony's clothes. They're about the same size and build, Bruce' outfit is way snazzier than his usual style, and we already know that Tony practically asked Bruce to move in with him the day they met. Tony loaned him an outfit from his no-doubt gargantuan Stark closet because they're Science Bros now, plus Bruce's only other clothes were reduced to a pair of torn short-shorts when he Hulked out. Also, Tony knows that this is Bruce's first (positive) interaction with the press, and if there's anything Tony Stark's good at, it's putting on a show.

Now, I know we don't see any paparazzi or TV crews in that final scene, but a) the Avengers are now world-famous for saving New York from certain doom, and b) for the first time in the movie, Tony is wearing his Billionaire Playboy Philanthropist duds. The only possible explanation I can think of for this scene is that it takes place specifically for the public. I mean, they're transporting an alien war criminal to another planet from Central Park. If they'd wanted to keep things safe and secret then they'd have done it from somewhere in the bowels of one a SHIELD base. My guess is that the (weirdly deserted) place where the Avengers stand to bid farewell to Thor and Loki is in fact a carefully guarded area with the press roped off somewhere in the direction of us/the audience/the camera. We view the scene from the perspective of "the crowds", who are there to verify and report on the fact that Loki is definitively gone for good. Because there is just no other way I can interpret the decision to film that scene in such an incredibly public area.

Part 3: Steve Rogers, Captain America.

Links

Product Placement in The Avengers.

This photo of Robert Downey Jr in shoe lifts (I think for one of the Iron Man movies).

My weird fixation with the relative heights of the Avengers cast was already pretty awful, but while I was writing this post I got stuck in a google-vortex and ended up at this actor-height related review of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, which is more or less diamond-hard proof that every single actor in Hollywood is standing on a box and/or in a trench at some point during every movie.

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The costumes and characters of The Avengers. Part 1: SHIELD.

This post contains no plot spoilers.

In many ways The Avengers is comparable to the 2009 Star Trek reboot. Both are major Hollywood juggernauts with a huge pre-existing fanbase; both had to deal with the problem of setting up a cast of well-known characters in a way that would seem new and fresh. My trust in Joss Whedon's writing was the only thing that kept me from being skeptical when it was announced that The Avengers would include a lot of adversarial posturing between the teammates, but the fact is that the type of team dynamic that drives a two-hour movie is very different from the dynamic that drives a long-running TV show or comic series. The story of a collection of superheroes meeting and immediately becoming BFFs would be somewhat lacking in dramatic tension.

Maria Hill and Phil Coulson, Agents of SHIELD.

SHIELD represents the unromantic side of the Marvel universe. Individually, each of the Avengers has their own origin story and hero's journey, Steve Rogers' probably being the most fairytale-like: a poor boy growing up during a time of war, gaining strength thanks to his goodness of heart and spirit, and using that strength to protect others before finally sacrificing himself for the greater good. Then there's Thor, an alien prince whose greatest enemy is his own hubris, who must learn to control his temper and act with empathy before he can regain his powers. But in the context of a world very much like our own, these characters cannot realistically survive to become heroes without some more cynical and practical-minded external force buffering them from the rest of society.

Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD.

Nick Fury didn't make much of an impression on me in the previous Marvel movies, aside from the the fact that his presence was telegraphing the possibility of a future Avengers team-up. Samuel L Jackson is one of those actors who can steal the show merely by playing himself, which is great for a cameo role but doesn't have a great deal of emotional or intellectual impact. But Fury's role in The Avengers is far more fleshed-out, and SHIELD is very clearly Nick Fury's baby. And Jackson's as well, in a way, since he originally had a hand in pressuring Marvel to increase SHIELD's presence in the first Iron Man film.

Nick Fury in Iron Man 2. For him, this is apparently casual-wear.

Fury's costume should be the silliest at SHIELD. Most people who wear ankle-length leather coats 24/7 tend to resemble late-1990s Blade or Matrix wannabes, but Fury gets away with it because he's Samuel L Jackson and he can probably have you vanished if you look at him funny. The coat should be cumbersome, limiting and easy to trip over, but since we see Fury firing rocket-launchers at fighter jets while running around his giant invisible flying aircraft-carrier, I'll handwave all that. Either way, we know that Fury's pretty fond of that coat because he wears it all the time, even when he's meeting Tony Stark for breakfast in Iron Man 2. Fury's costume in Avengers is tougher than the more relaxed outfits we see in his previous appearances, though, with a visible thigh-holster and a bulletproof vest. The vest I find particularly telling because while he spends most of the movie in his own home base, the Helicarrier, he still feels the need to be armed and protected at all times. He didn't survive this long by taking any chances.  

The Nick Fury we see in Avengers is far more interesting than the two-dimensional hardass we met in those prequel cameos. He's been fleshed out into someone whose life and work extends far beyond the Avengers Intiiative, who always has to be thinking five steps ahead of his enemies, his superiors and his underlings, and who is altogether a far more morally ambiguous character than any of the other "good guys".

Clark Gregg as Agent Coulson of SHIELD, alongside Thor's biceps, triceps and deltoids.

Agent Coulson is one of my favourite characters in the Marvel universe. Originally appearing in a minor role in Iron Man, Marvel quickly realised that Clark Gregg's sly, understated humour was gaining him a significant fanbase. I've read interviews where Joss Whedon et al seemed to think that Coulson's popularity is down to the fact that he provides an everyman character for the audience to identify with, but I'm inclined to think it's more to do with his quiet competence providing a counterpoint to the bombastic, showy nature of characters like Tony Stark. In a way he's the Alfred Pennyworth or Ianto Jones of The Avengers -- often in the background, but never unimportant.

Coulson's role at SHIELD is never really specified. He's high up on the food chain, working directly alongside Fury and usually getting sent on missions that require someone to act as a liaison or negotiator between SHIELD and a potential threat. He's kind of the superhero babysitter, and seems to be a person who is very aware of his own image -- a small, unassuming man with a suit and a nametag who will pose no apparent threat to the gargantuan egos of people like Tony Stark and Thor. Perfectly happy to act in the beta-male role while remaining quietly confident in his own abilities. The generic two-piece suit is very much part of that deceptively bland persona, but I enjoy how it's evolved over the course of his Marvel movie appearances. In Iron Man, for example, he looked quite different:

The original Coulson was meant to be more of a nerdy beaurocrat, a G-Man who spends most of the film trying but failing to arrange a meeting with Tony Stark. And his suit does not fit at all! The sleeves are way too long, it isn't tailored around the shoulders or waist, and it generally makes him look like a bit of dweeb when compared to Tony's billionaire playboy wardrobe. Whereas in The Avengers, Coulson's Dolce & Gabbana (seriously) fits like a glove, with one precise inch of shirt-cuff emerging from the sleeves.

Cobie Smulders as Deputy Director Maria Hill

Maria Hill, Nick Fury's deputy, is our first real look at a more typical SHIELD agent. The pre-movie advertising gave the impression that she was going to have a far greater role than she actually did, and I suspect that this oversaturation of Cobie Smulders/Maria Hill publicity was because they were very aware that out of an ensemble cast of around 15 characters, only three are women, and only one of those women is in a starring role. While The Avengers wasn't explicitly sexist, it did follow the Hollywood habit of setting all action/adventure stories in some parallel universe where women only make up about 25% of the population. This isn't a criticism of Hill's characterisation, which was more or less what you'd expect from a businesslike second-in-command/expository dialogue character. The cast is already so big that there's no time to expand every character, but the fact that Cobie Smulders was featured so prominently at the Avengers premieres and press events does rather highlight the fact that the first-tier cast consists of seven men plus Scarlett Johansson.
Another issue that The Avengers shares with the Star Trek reboot is that both franchises originate in the '60s, and the characters are now so beloved that augmenting the lineup in a remake/adaptation would alienate fans. This troubles me because while I find it irritating and belittling to watch so many movies where women are under-represented in token or love-interest roles, I'd still react negatively if the next installment in the Star Trek reboot series suddenly introduced three or four new Enterprise crewmembers to a cast that already feels whole and complete. With The Avengers, however, there is the option of including a whole host of female characters from the extended Marvel universe, even women who were in the Avengers team themselves, like Wasp. Because this film was the product of a long game of semi-prequels -- Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and The Hulk -- it would've been difficult to introduce another new first-tier character this time round, but I hold out hope that the Avengers sequel(s) will include more lady superheroes. Or Darcy Lewis from Thor. Because Darcy is awesome.

Recreation of the Helicarrier interior, at Comiccon 2011.

I have mixed feelings about the SHIELD uniforms as we see them in The Avengers. The fitted jumpsuits/trousers-shirt combos worn by most of the agents onboard the Helicarrier don't look too bad, but I'm a little confused as to why they're wearing them. They look like field uniforms, but we already know that field agents either wear normal clothes like the suit-wearing Coulson, or out-and-out military gear (like the soldiers sent to pick up Bruce Banner and guard Loki when he's on the Helicarrier). Also, the people on the bridge of the Helicarrier are analysts and pilots, doing what essentially amounts to desk work. Although Hill and Fury do both carry sidearms, the fact that female SHIELD agents have the option of wearing a skirt and heels indicates to me that the agents on the bridge of the Helicarrier are not expected to be battle-ready.

More from Comiccon -- these uniforms are accurate, as far as I can tell.

Joss Whedon doesn't seem to believe in the idea of "background characters". A lot of the time, his characters are the background characters. Just look at Cabin In The Woods. In the context of The Avengers, this meant that even the dialogue-free SHIELD agent extras got their chance to shine, reacting to Tony Stark's posturing and, at one point, playing Galaga on one of the Helicarrier's display screens when they were meant to be working. But while I always enjoy efforts to give personality to background extras, I'm still not wild about the whole jumpsuit/catsuit thing. Jumpsuits are near-universal in sci-fi/superhero movies, and the current zeitgeist (X-Men; Star Trek 2009; Prometheus) is for the slightly more flattering option of figure-hugging bodysuits with concealed structure and muscle padding. They look more like diving wetsuits than the spandex costumes we know from Adam West's Batman, and even musclebound types like Chris Evans get to have a little shoulderpad action going on.

The captain and bridge crew of the USS Kelvin in Star Trek (2009).

It's all well and good for the crew of fit 30-somethings on the Helicarrier be kitted out in catsuits every day, but even if people in real life were as uniformly slim and well-muscled as the average SHIELD agent appears to be, I still doubt they'd be entirely comfortable about wearing that to work every day. Particularly if their entire job is to sit in front of a computer screen and zap any pigeons that look like they might be getting near to one of the Helicarrier's rotor blades. The best reason I can think of for the ubiquity of pointless jumpsuit-wearing is that it helps to normalise the costumes worn by the superheroes themselves. Captain America's and Black Widow's skin-tight outfits -- both manufactured by SHIELD -- bear more than a passing resemblance to the SHIELD uniform jumpsuits. 

Black Widow on the bridge of the SHIELD Helicarrier.

Oh, and a postscript: The interior of the Helicarrier cracks me up, a little. It looks so shiny and awesome, but I'm not convinced that it was such a great decision to have smooth floors and no barriers on the raised walkways... on a ship that spends half the time flying and half the time in the water, and is equipped for mobile combat. How many times a day do you think people slip over and brain themselves on one of the consoles? Seriously, I want to baby-proof the corners of every single one of those Stark Industries display screens.

CONTINUED IN:  Part 2: Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, and Bruce Banner.


Links
The Pentagon Quit The Avengers Because of ‘Unreality’
Marvel Avengers wallpapers.
Interview with the super-dreamy Clark Gregg about Agent Coulson (after Iron Man 2; before The Avengers).
SPOILERY interview with Clark Gregg about his role in The Avengers.

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Links post: Medieval armour made from rubber inner-tubes, "sexy" 1970s sci-fi convention fashions, vintage crime-scene photographs, and more.

Beyond badass: Chicago designer creates “Joan of Arc” armour from recycled bike tubes. Bicycle inner-tubes are a great material to use for Halloween costumes/punk gear because they're so cheap, versatile, and easy to manipulate, but this woman has made something more awesome than I could ever manage: Medieval-inspired body armour.

Photos from here.

She's clearly thought this through very well because it's not just panels -- she's interwoven the lengths of rubber and used different sizes for texturing. It's so cool! Better than a lot of the post-apocalyptic goth/armour/fetish gear you see in movies like Mad Max because you can tell that this outfit was hand-made using easily-available recycled materials, but it still retains the WTF (in this case, Medieval armour) aesthetic required for this type of costume. I wish I'd thought of it myself!

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25 Vintage Police Record Photographs. Warning: some of these may be disturbing to some people. Nothing graphic, but they do include photos from the aftermath of car crashes, and a deserted backstreet abortion room.

"Missing friend" poster, from here.

Personally, I found this gallery fascinating, mainly because it differs so greatly from what we think of as "crime scene photos". You may have seen vintage mugshot photos before -- the internet likes that sort of thing because it combines a very human morbid curiosity about criminals with the nostalgic whimsy of sepia-toned 1920s flapper girls -- and these pictures share that same sort of feel. These photos seem so much freer and more natural (and probably less helpful, from a forensic standpoint) than the carefully framed and labeled photos we see in the newspapers or on forensic crime shows.

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from here.

Another thing from the department of "awesome costumes made from everyday objects": Nina Katchadourian's Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style. These have been knocking around the blogosphere for a few weeks now and therefore probably qualify as old news, but I don't care. They fill me with glee. Using a scarf and the paper toilet covers one finds in public bathrooms, artist Nina Katchadourian produced a series of photos of herself posing in airplane bathrooms, all modeled in the style of dark-toned, serious-faced 15th-century Flemish portraiture.

from here.

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A Treasure Trove of Cosplay from the Swinging 1970s [NSFW] -- I love this because it combines the horrors of "sexy" 1970s fashion (Will the "sexy" fashions of now look this bad in 40 years? Probably.) with the sort of glorious, idiotic ingenuity one finds in the all the most fun parts of geek fandom.

photos from here.

I tend to agree with the writer of the original blog post, here: there is something more appealing about these costumes in comparison to many of the cosplay outfits we see at conventions today. Although I greatly admire the people who put huge amounts of work into making exact replicas of the Iron Man armour or figuring out how exactly one would construct a steampunk Dalek ballgown, there's something to be said for sheer, balls-out enthusiasm. I'm far from an expert on cosplay culture, but on the occasions when I have dropped into a sci-fi or comic convention, I've noticed a great divide between the truly awesome costumes that end up getting photographed by everyone, and the costumes worn by everyday plebs like you and me. Although there are always a few cool low-budget outfits and witty, clever ideas that people have managed to throw together using cardboard boxes and duct-tape, most of the younger cosplayers always seemed to be wearing costumes ordered from the internet -- especially the anime and manga fans. There are high standards to live up to, I suppose.

Love that soft-focus!

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Finally, this isn't really a link to anything, just a photo I came across on Tumblr today: k.d. lang after winning the American Music Award for Best New Female Adult Contemporary Artist in 1992. In my opinion, this is a very accurate visual representation of what "awesome" looks like (NB: other examples include photos of the original crew of the USS Enterprise). I'm dying over her combination of '90s Christian Slater hair, tiny sunglasses, awesome sartorial dandyism, and unabashed smugness.

 

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