Ever since the trailer for Thunderbolts* dropped and soft launched a new Marvel heroes team, it's gotten me thinking about how much film has changed since the release of the original team up of Earth's Mightiest Heroes. I remember exactly how it felt to watch The Avengers on opening weekend. It was May 2012, I was nine years old, and watching the first bona fide blockbuster I had ever seen. In fact, it is the first movie I remember seeing in the theatre, period. What a perfect introduction it was.

Every single frame was electric. The car chases, the fights, the snappy dialogue, the superheroes coming together to save the world. I couldn't ask for anything better to go with my popcorn and large Coke. I still remember the belly laugh that echoed around the theatre after Hulk interrupts Loki's villainous monologue by throwing him around the room like a ragdoll. "Puny god" was a running joke in my family for years after that. And I still remember how it felt to come out of the theatre and into the evening light, knowing that something inside me had shifted forever.
I was a pretty.... ostentatious kid. I couldn't be semi-interested in anything; it was all in, or I was out. And when it came to The Avengers, I was all in. As soon as it hit home video, the DVD basically played on loop in my house. My favourite was Hulk, because he was big and green, and he had a killer catchphrase. I made sure that I saw all the new Marvel movies in the theatre, and caught up on all the old ones. It was the time of the superhero blockbuster, and I bought in HARD. I loved them for their spectacle and their commitment to fun, but no matter how many I saw, The Avengers remained my favourite. I did switch from Team Hulk to Team Cap after a few years, though.
Even though bagging on Marvel has become low-hanging fruit in a post-Endgame world, I still love The Avengers just as much as I did when I was 9 years old. But maybe for different reasons. The Avengers is the perfect example of how my tastes—but more importantly, my attitudes—about film have shifted over as I've grown up. It seems that as I grew up, the genre grew up with me. It got a little more serious, and a little less sincere. Irony poisoning is real, and as Hollywood was starting to abandon the childlike wonder of superhero movies in favour of more grounded films, so was I.

I've been obsessed with movies for as long as I can remember, and as I was entering high school I became particularly obsessed with figuring out what made certain movies "good" and "bad." For me, that meant spending most of time reading books on screenwriting and filmmaking techniques and watching a lot of 'Every Frame a Painting' video essays. Without even realizing it, I had slowly begun to be indoctrinated into a very specific online subculture. One that drew very hard lines between which movies were "good" and which weren't worth the celluloid they were printed on. The genuine joy and wonder I felt whenever I watched a movie, and that I felt watching The Avengers, started to harden into self-satisfied cynicism.
Don't get me wrong: I still watched it often. But there was a new tongue-in-cheek sheen to my viewings as I entered my late teens. I sneered at the bright colours, the flat lighting, the schlocky dialogue. The Avengers didn't meet my new standard of prestige. How could I say that it was a good movie, compared to masterpieces like Taxi Driver or Reservoir Dogs or Breathless? The Avengers was for kids, and I wasn't a kid anymore, I was sixteen! If I wanted to be a grown-up, I had to have grown-up tastes. I was also at the age where it feels really, really important to fit in, and it was a hell of a lot easier—and less intimidating—to parrot the internet's opinion on film than to come up with my own.

Then I went to film school, and things got even worse. If I was dipping my toe into the world of the film bro before, now I was fully submerged. An echo chamber of self-indulgent cinephilia told me that I was right to disdain big blockbusters like The Avengers. Anything that appealed to the masses wasn't art, it was a product not worth anyone's time. I could still watch them of course, but only drenched in a thick veil of irony.
The thing was, the further I retreated behind that veil, the harder it got to remember why I fell in love with movies in the first place. Now that I knew all the tricks behind the trade, I was getting impossible to please (and a straight up nightmare to sit next to). Crappy lighting, continuity errors, an errant sound effect. Even just a lens choice I didn't agree with was enough to shatter the illusion of movie magic. On top of that, constantly analyzing everything that I watched was making it harder and harder to turn off the critical part of my brain and just watch a film. I was missing the wonder, and I was missing the point. For the next few years, I struggled to find the joy that studying and watching movies had always brought me. Until one fateful New Year's Eve, when it all came rushing back. What did it, you ask? Take a guess.
I was in my hometown for winter break, separated from most of my friends, and with nothing to do on New Year's but hang out in my living room with my mom and my sister. The three of us were looking for something to do to liven up our evening, so we popped on The Avengers. I've never had so much fun in my life.

The spirit of the New Year really got to me. Fully uninhibited, I finally dropped the facade of the knowing critic, and just went along for the ride. I gobbled up the action scenes with gleeful giggles, and sat in genuine awe during Iron Man's climactic flight. My family and I were enthralled, throwing quotes back and forth just like we had when I was little. The movie's flaws became endearing rather than damning, just adding another layer to my enjoyment. There's a scene where Loki rips out a guy's eyeball to get past a security system, and I thought that was just about the coolest thing I had ever seen. I had a bucket of popcorn and a large drink in front of me, and I was watching one of the best blockbusters of all time. Finally, the movies were fun again.
It might seem overdramatic to say that that viewing experience was one of the most transformative of my life. But it's the truth. That night, I realized that movies don't have to be serious, critically-acclaimed or paradigm shifting to be good. Some of the best movies are silly, campy, entertaining, and above all sincere. That's what The Avengers is. It's a love letter to comic books, made by people who love what they are making. At the end of the day, all I want when I sit down to watch a film is to have a good time. Even if I can see through all the filmmaker's smoke and mirrors now, that is an experience all on its own. Whether that comes in the form of a prestige drama, a cheesy rom-com, or the new superhero flick, I don't really care anymore. Especially now that I left film school, watching movies has stopped being something I do for work, and started being something I do for me again.

So when Thunderbolts* hits theatres, you can bet that I'll be there with my popcorn and my large Coke, just like I was for the first Avengers, and the second, and the third, and the fourth. Because for me, irony has lost its allure. What's the point of being "right" if it means you can't have a little fun?
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