Superheroes with Personality “The Avengers”

هنر و سرگرمی — 09 ژانویه 2013

“The Avengers” has been a very successful movie for many reasons; the most important of which being the way the characters are described and the manner in which the story unfolds. A superhero based movie such as this has the potential and general pattern of merely relying on the mental clichés and background information of the audience, not to mention spending a lot of time on showing attacks, explosions, and other action scenes. Is it even possible to gather this many superheroes in one movie, and yet, resist the temptation of creating never-ending extreme action scenes?

Well if we didn’t think they could do it before, the fact is that it was accomplished. “The Avengers” is less action-oriented and more plotline focused than most superhero comic films. In addition, most of the movie has been dedicated to introducing the characters and their personal relationships. We can see that despite being superheroes, they also possess complete human identities and personalities. For instance, Gwyneth Paltrow shows up in only one or two scenes just so that Ironman can be portrayed in greater depth. Thor is also shown to possess a photo of his beloved, played by Natalie Portman, so that he can portray his softer side through worrying about her. Compared to movies such as “Transformers” or “Battleship”, the emotional aspect of the movie is undoubtedly stronger. To convey a stronger emotional feel, “The Avengers” includes various in-text references, and the movie has had the same form of referencing to its related movies as the comic “Avengers” has had in relation to its related comics. From this viewpoint, one can see that although “The Avengers” is an independent and self-sufficient movie, even without its previous related superhero movies, without those other movies it certainly would not have possessed the same appeal to the audience.

Out of all the superheroes, only a few were given extra attention and greater focused spotlight. Hulk and Ironman were paid more attention to and were a lot more emphasized than some of the other heroes. The Hulk, played by Mark Ruffalo, is the most successful Hulk of cinema up to date. It seems that after many years of trial-and-error, Hollywood has finally found an acceptable Hulk. In addition, Robert Downey Jr., who plays the role of Ironman, plays his role so fantastically well that without him the role is no longer believable. It is not surprising that the third episode of Ironman has, once again, been inaugurated with him as Ironman. The relationship between these two superheroes, who are the most professional and genius members of the group, is told extremely well in the story. Their deeper competition-friendship type of relationship, which also greatly affects the final battle, is well portrayed in the plotline. In contrast, Captain America also had a good opportunity to show his abilities, but the other superheroes were somewhat overlooked. Moreover, their superhero confrontations, especially the confrontation between Ironman and Loki, were both very well written as well as played out.

A combination of fear and honesty

“I Feel Sleepy”

Yahya Natanzi

In the movie “I Feel Sleepy” by Reza Attaran, we see a newly made character as well as other things different from Attaran’s usual work. In his soap operas and TV series, his work would generally rely completely on satirical ideas and situational comedy. This time however, we have encountered a different side of Attaran, who has chosen black comedy and a different tone for the film “I Feel Sleepy”, which is also his first film as a director.

In his previous TV series work such as “The Right Time” and “Sweet and Sour”, Attaran made the TV audience laugh through putting poor people in situations which were irrelevant to their social origins. On the contrary, in Attaran’s new work, he tries to create happy moments from unpleasant and difficult situations. The audience will experience a dual feeling with these situations and probably not know if they should laugh at the situations the characters are in, or feel sorry for their miseries. This change in approach is the result of Attaran’s assertiveness to possess new experiences, and because of his knowledge, capabilities, and requirements for cinema works.

In “I Feel Sleepy”, Attaran recounts the story of a very clumsy and inefficient man, Reza, who is still single despite being in his late 40’s, and whose great focus and efforts to find the right wife seem to continually end up in disappointment. He lives with his poor parents, who are unhappy with their son’s marital status and are not optimistic about his future either. Reza suffers from bed-wetting due to problems in his childhood, and he cannot control himself when he gets overly excited. Getting dismissed from the school in which he taught and meeting a young gummy-bear selling lady leads Reza, who had not even committed a mere petty crime, into committing a dangerous kidnapping act and creating various unexpected situations for himself.

The lost appeal

“A Long Way”

Yahya Natanzi

There is once again another family melodrama in which the characters seem to be unable to understand each other and suffer from general miscommunications and a lack of sympathy for one another. The TV series that have been shown on Iranian TV channels have been of this form for years, and have been extracting their stories from the stories of victims of social problems. Until recently, many of these TV series were focused on the younger members of the families, ending up in series such as “The Hearts in Love” and “Distances”. This time however, after the fad of focusing solely on the problems of young people started fading away, the parents’ problems became much more important and their problems in managing their families started being used as the main story for various TV shows. “A Long Way”, shown on channel 1 in June, is the latest of such series and illustrates the relationship of an unlucky middle-class father with his demanding wife and children. Morteza, the father, who is unable to meet his children’s expectations due to his low income, decides to take the responsibility of an accident in return for approximately one hundred thousand dollars. After the death of the injured victim in the accident however, innocent and unlucky Morteza becomes involved in a strange dilemma and is forced to experience many unpleasant incidents. In addition, all his efforts to improve his relationship with his wife and children reaches a halt and his family finds themselves more separated and disconnected than ever.

The officials of channel 1 did a good job in ensuring good quality for “A Long Way”. Once Mohammad Reza Takhtkeshian was selected as the producer, professional crew was quickly selected for the series. Takhtkeshian, who is a well-known figure in cinema and the popular producer of films such as “I am Taraneh, 15 Years Old” and “I Feel Sleepy”, invited Reza Mirkarimi to direct the film. Although Mirkarimi already possessed a stable position in cinema, due to his directing in “The Killer”, he accepted Takhtkeshian’s offer. The selection of Reza Kianian, Afsaneh Baygan, and Parviz Poorhoseini for the main roles made the series even more promising. Even with all the cards played right however, like most TV series in the recent years, the result was not very satisfactory and the series did not become that popular.