I Saw God And/Or "Avengers: Age Of Ultron" In IMAX 3D

Pretty girl!

I decided it would be a real fun idea to get fucked up on drugs and go see Avengers: Age of Ultron in IMAX 3D at Sony Lincoln Square, or is it AMC Lincoln Square, and then write a sort of review of it as a pas­tiche of my one-time idol Lester Bangs’ fam­ous 1977 piece  “I Saw God And/Or Tangerine Dream.” This made sense to me for sev­er­al reas­ons, the main one being that Lester had seen God and/or Tangerine Dream at the soon-to-no-longer-be-Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center (and would­n’t it give Lester a stroke to learn that the Hall will soon be giv­en David Geffen’s name!)  and that the Lincoln Square theat­er is just a stone­’s throw away from Lincoln Center, a place Lester found fam­ously ali­en­at­ing and weird (“emer­ging from the sub­ways into this slick esthet­e’s Elysium is like crawl­ing out of a ditch into Jackie Onassis’ iris,” he wrote). It did­n’t make sense for sev­er­al oth­er bet­ter reas­ons, one being I don’t take intox­ic­ants any­more and anoth­er being that even under the influ­ence of Robitussin, which I’m told they don’t make like they used to in 1977 any­more any­way, my abil­ity to con­struct a con­vin­cing Bangs pas­tiche is ques­tion­able at best.

Still, although I would not be mon­et­ar­ily remu­ner­ated for any writ­ing I would do about Avengers: Age Of Ultron, I decided I’d at least take notes. The first thing of note, for me, was that when you pay to see a movie in IMAX at the Lincoln Square theat­er (which I haven’t done since 1999, to see Fantasia 2000, and I WAS fucked up on drugs then, so I don’t really remem­ber it all that well), you actu­ally now get a reserved seat. I chose mine, K22, as close to the front as you ima­gine a row des­ig­nated “K” would be, and appar­ently smack dab in the middle. I was sur­prised to see how many seats were taken on a beau­ti­ful spring after­noon. All the bet­ter, for I would enjoy a genu­inely com­mun­al view­ing experience. 

I was unflanked as I settled into my seat at almost exactly 3 p.m., but this would not last. The row filled.  To my left sat a young African-American fel­low with a skate­board, sport­ing a medi­um sized afro and wear­ing a snappy blue blazer. Ultra present­able; with a smidgen more alt-attitude he could play aux­il­i­ary for TV On The Radio. He was soon joined by a perky blonde in a black minidress. On my right, a young fel­low of Middle Eastern des­cent, it seemed, in a polo shirt; to his right, a young Chinese-American. “I love my row,” I thought. “My row looks like America, just as the Furious films do.”  I was already doing bet­ter than Bangs, who, as he left that Tangerine Dream show, hal­lu­cin­ated “a whole audi­ence of shop­ping bag ladies.” 

The lights dimmed; there were sev­er­al trail­ers, includ­ing one intro­duced by Tomorrowland dir­ect­or Brad Bird, who reques­ted that theat­er­go­ers “Get your tick­ets today,” to which one wag in my row guf­fawed “Sure!” The sub­sequent scene from the film itself whetted MY appet­ite, for sure, but the Chinese-American guy com­plained, “It’s com­ing out in two weeks and nobody knows any­thing about it.” Well, they just showed three and a half or so minutes of it just now, dude; THAT’S not noth­ing, I thought. But I kept my mouth shut. There’s just no pleas­ing some people. 

There were sev­er­al oth­er trail­ers, includ­ing one for Fantastic Four, which looks like it’s gonna be a real career high for Miles Teller, and then the main fea­ture began and it was…pretty smash-bangy, a little gen­er­ic, a little on the nose, Downey was­n’t regis­ter­ing for me and…meh. I thought it entirely ris­ible that on the Avenger-jet (or whatever it’s called) ride home, Science Genius Bruce Banner would be sooth­ing his soul via Beats By Dre head­phones, which you don’t have to be a Science Genius to know are com­plete dogshit. But my mal­aise did­n’t last too long, and as the movie settled in to a story line that I had some vague recol­lec­tions of from back when I was a reg­u­lar super­hero com­ic book read­er, I got more in tune with it. Sure I could nit­pick; Ocean’s 13 had a bet­ter pre­text for   Julia Roberts’ and Catherine Zeta-Jones’ non-participation than this movie does for Gwyneth Paltrow’s and Natalie Portman’s. But that really IS a nit, isn’t it. I enjoyed the movie’s con­cep­tion of The Vision, one of my favor­ite Marvel char­ac­ters (because he really DID take the “what does it mean to be human?” ques­tion to places that blew my mind back when I was 16 or so), although I found the pre-Scarlet-Witch-Scarlet Witch’s “I’m not touch­ing you? Am I bug­ging you?” hand ges­tures a little irrit­at­ing, Young Elizabeth Olsen oth­er­wise did a fine job with the char­ac­ter and this title seems to be a good entrée into the world of high-revenue movie­mak­ing for the act­ress. I think of all the dir­ect­ors who do comic-book movie, Whedon is the one who most con­sist­ently gets the closest to the tone of actu­al com­ic books, here spe­cific­ally the Marvel books I found so divert­ing in the ’70s. The know­ing­ness of the humor and the earn­est­ness of the “human­ity will pre­vail” post hip­pie eth­os that so many of the Marvel writers put for­ward is there; Whedon also knows that even when things are a big deal, they’re not SO MUCH of a big deal; he plays cata­clysm for a “whoa!” factor, not to spur genu­ine wor­ries about apo­ca­lypse. He does­n’t get bogged down in heavy­os­ity the way even the admir­able and ambi­tious Christopher Nolan can. Within the gar­gan­tu­an there’s a sense of scale. As for his char­ac­ter­iz­a­tions, there’s noth­ing in them that’s par­tic­u­lar gal­van­ic, or even sur­pris­ing (there really isn’t) but he serves up his com­mon­places with wit and sin­cer­ity and when he offers twists he makes his notes resolve attract­ively any­way. To me there was no real cause for indig­na­tion in the let’s run away/let’s face our respons­ib­il­it­ies push-pull of the Hulk/Black Widow rela­tion­ship, and no mys­tery to Hulk’s self ban­ish­ment at the end (and no, it does­n’t have much or even any­thing to do with Widow). Part of the appeal of the stor­ies these kinds of com­ic books tell is that of a world that ulti­mately makes sense. As loud and as tumul­tu­ous as they can get, they’re still com­fort food. They say everything’s okay and her­oes walk among us. The intric­a­cies of the next chal­lenge are the only part of the story that changes. The Hulk will be back, and many of us will be too. As the lights came up, I got up and shook it off and gave back my 3D glasses and intu­ited that the folks in my row were feel­ing pretty much as I did: that was fun, and now for the rest of the day.

I did not, as it hap­pens, intu­it that any of my row-mates had the the con­vic­tion that this massive enter­tain­ment was not just a massive enter­tain­ment but that it was art, and art that “mat­ters,” at that. Ten or twenty years ago, or maybe it was 25 years ago, it seemed as if every­body who was writ­ing about the arts had read too much Guy Debord; these days I won­der if any­body under the age of 50 has even heard of the guy. Even online crit­ics who don’t seem too crazy about this movie—indeed, espe­cially the people who are kinda ragingly pissed off about it— seem  frantic­ally eager to sur­render their wills and lives and entire sens­ib­il­it­ies over to corporate-produced spectacle.

I don’t think the endgame of the high/low cul­ture debate was meant to be “Now that we have com­ic book movies that have char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, we can throw out Rules of the Game; it’s no longer rel­ev­ant.” And I mean, you know, to a lot of people who are big boost­ers of this sort of thing Rules of the Game was nev­er in their wheel­house to begin with, but they really want to be acknow­ledged as being just as smart as people for whom…well, this has all been gone over over and over again and nobody’s going to give any ground. And it’s got­ten so that I can­’t even thor­oughly enjoy a com­ic book movie that I rather want to like.  So fuck it. I reserve the right to laugh out loud, and heart­ily, and with undis­guised deri­sion, at the phrase “we’re going to talk about Black Widow…like adults.” 

Nabokov fam­ously said that the first “shiver of inspir­a­tion” for Lolita was “promp­ted by a news­pa­per story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes, who, after months of coax­ing by a sci­ent­ist, pro­duced the first draw­ing ever char­coaled by an anim­al: the sketch showed the bars of the poor creature’s cage.” I revere an ostens­ibly high­brow film like Alexei German’s Hard To Be A God in part because it is the work of an artist in pur­suit of  genu­ine free­dom. This obser­va­tion will not make me a lot of friends, but I think if you spend a great deal of time in earn­est rumin­a­tion over, say, the ostens­ibly anti- fem­in­ist com­prom­ises applied to Black Widow’s “char­ac­ter arc,” ulti­mately you’re just grous­ing about the interi­or dec­or­a­tion of your cage. But hey, that’s your prerog­at­ive.  But that is not a prerog­at­ive I feel I’m obliged to take ser­i­ously any longer, is all. 

Now I sup­pose it would be apt to trot out Bangs’ “I will say good­bye to you” bit from his Elvis Presley obit, but that would be melo­dra­mat­ic. I’m not going any­where and neither are people who want to talk about Black Widow like etc. etc. The more apt trope would be Robert De Niro and Gerard Depardieu in the railroad-track piss­ing match at the end of Bertolucci’s 1900. It’s a living.