My post wasn’t aimed at stopping any conversation….🤷
My ‘I don’t care…’ paragraph was more about having some sort of check list a film must meet to be accepted as being deemed “worthy” of merit.
Now, I can certainly accept a film when it is absolutely art. Bresson comes to mind. Bunuel. Many others do as well.
Others don’t have that same quality, but doesn’t mean it isn’t lacking merit in being accepted as art, does it? I’m not arguing The Avengers (which, again, I fully enjoyed) has that quality, but I do think one can make an argument for the first 2 Superman films, and Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy (I suspect you’ll disagree on those last three).
Themes are pretty important as well, for me, and I feel those can elevate a film in ways direction may lack. The films I mentioned above are examples of the examination of being a hero and the struggle between the dual lifestyles.
I'm not saying Avengers is not worthy of any merit. I'm explaining where it is lacking on the level of films which offer something, anything, one thing to give it some kind of distinguishing personality. It's an extremely low bar that I'm hoping a movie to make. Even an obvious pile of garbage like a Zack Snyder film at least is identifiable a Zack Snyder film. I'd be more comfortable with the idea of the Avengers being talked about as something worth being talked about if it could at least know how to do bad well. But it doesn't. So far all I've got is it pays proper respect to its source material. Which I think it should be clear, is hardly enough when we are talking about the cinematic value of a film
I also don't need a film to rise to the level of Bresson to be considered art. I've made that abundantly clear simply through my posting history here. I also, in this thread, have distinguished between art (which can be argued to be virtually anything of a creative nature) and Art (which becomes trickier to parse, but it usually involves the piece in question to have some kind of distinguishing characteristics or thematic idea or conceptual framework). My 'check list' is simply me giving someone, anyone an opportunity to distinguish what makes Avengers Art. Can it meet one of these standards? I'm still waiting and it really shouldn't be this hard.
Minio has also made it very clear the type of films he is looking for in this thread. Now I think its completely fine if someone wants to challenge the notion that only Minio branded films should matter. That would be one thing. I myself have already stated that as useless as I find Avengers as Art, it has value in how it represents culture (as any hugely popular film can do). But this conversation has moved past this point where we might argue how we just want this Heritage to be more representative of different types of movies, even if they aren't particularly interesting as art. What we have now are direct comparisons between the Art of Star Wars or Raiders (which, by the nature of their well established auteurship, very much qualify even while being narrative fluff) and the ****ing Avengers.
None of this is me saying no one should enjoy the Avengers. Or, if they can offer a different way for us to appreciate what Avengers is doing cinematically, not to offer it up here in order to defend this choice. As has been reiterated a thousand times in this thread , there are no genres being blacklisted from belonging here. I've already suggested the first two Donner Superman's as better alternatives. Or, even though I'm not a particularly big fan of Dark Knight, that would certainly be a considerably more understandable choice as it's clearly
something.
In regards to themes, while those would qualify as something, for me they don't hold a tremendous amount of value unless they are somehow also being represented on screen. It's great for images to mean something, but unless I can also grasp these ideas instinctively through watching the film, and have what they have to say resonate emotionally with me, I generally find talk of themes to just be that. Talk. But that is just my personal preference to what matters and, obviously for some, it is completely fair that decoding a film for it's more intellectualized ideas has a value that sets the film apart from being little more than a diversion. You know, like The Avengers.