Well, I made it, and am now officially a graduate. As predicted, my home-life is as frantic as ever; I've actually been here for two nights now, and just now is the first time I've had enough time alone and static to even open my laptop, let alone get it set up and connected to the net.

It's fun, though. Not like panicked frantic, just always on the go. Hopefully, it'll settle down soon, at least for a couple days. I'll welcome the actual rest. :P

AVENGERS:

Among the other things my family's been rocketing around to do since the instant I got in the car with them to go home, we went to see the Avengers yesterday, spur of the moment. I went in with my expectations moderately low due to the excess of hype for the film. Usually hype to an extreme is not a good thing from my experience. Afterall, the last time I heard my peers so excited was for Transformers 3, which gives me intestinal pain just to think about...

That said, I can safely say that Avengers too my expectations and completely somewhat-surpassed them. It's good, okay? I mean, it's quite good. As a pure action flick, it does everything 'right', in the same sense that when I ask people why they like Starcraft, they say it's because it does everything 'right' for the real-time strategy genre. That is to say, it all works, and it all works well, but it's absolutely safe in it's approach.

Now, this is both good and bad. Unlike everything Michael Bay has made since forever, for example, it's not offensive in its approach. The jokes and one-liners are smart, and it really got some good laughs from a theater audience, the action is exciting and gets you invested, the bad guy is very well done, the ending is cathartic, and you're more than willing to suspend disbelief for some of the sillier devices of the film (eg. flying fortress. Why? Because it's cool, I guess.).

Now, here's where it gets tricky. The downsides are essentially that the film misses some opportunities to be truly great in favour of playing it safe; but even saying that much is practically a spoiler. In fact, if you don't want spoilers, just hold off on reading this part until you have seen the film.

Are they gone?

Good.

For people who have already seen the film, think of something like The Dark Knight. That film actually wipes out characters that you feel attached too. It makes you hurt inside, and ends with a very 'huh.' feeling instead of that warm glow feeling 'all is right in the world' feel, but that's also part of what makes it stick with you. This film kills -a- character, yes, but it's one you don't really feel into. They try to make you care for them in the beginning of this film solely for the moment where they get shanked, but it's someone who you've never really thought much of over the course of the Marvel films. Heck, it was barely more of a character than the anonymous soldiers that die left and right in the same scene (whom the characters don't care about at all). It doesn't hurt; it doesn't make you feel like you've taken a blow to the gut; they don't even seem upset about their own death. Why should -you- feel bad if they don't? What's more, they really have the chances to get rid of characters you do love, and in ways that would really work. One moment especially is just such a cop-out-for-catharsis that even though it makes you smile, you still want to call bull on it.

TL;DR: This film is only 'pretty good' instead of 'absolutely great'. It's everything you could want in an action film, but it horribly fails to cash in on the chances to make it anything more. Also, there will be a sequel.

EDIT, PS: The judges finally got around to my PMD-E comic. (Not meaning this in a negative way. They had like thousands of submissions to go through. Much respect. X3) They liked it! It's gonna be a good day. ^^