The Avengers Remains a Bizarre Blunder 25 Years Later
Having not grown up on the show, film feels incredibly distant — a ghost of the past that had been sleeping peacefully until the memory of it was awoken, violently, only to suffer. Like a fever dream, I question my memories of that 1998 disaster and what actually happened, but moreso, I ask why it was allowed to exist. The truth is quite simple: mistakes were made.
Based on the popular ‘60s TV show of the same name, this was an attempt to update and recapture the magic of a charming spy thriller with a solid aesthetic, but it’s a throwback that completely missed. The plot sees Agent John Steed (Ralph Fiennes) and Dr. Emma Peel (Uma Thurman) pitted against Sir August de Wynter (Sean Connery) — a classic mad scientist who has used technology to control the weather and is attempting to hold the world hostage because he isn’t rich enough already. It’s a worse version of the story in The Tomorrow People’s “The Monsoon Man” episode. Watch that instead.
Some people do like this film, and I get that the music isn’t bad. The original John Steed (Patrick Macnee) makes a cameo, the visuals certainly aren’t the problem (barring a few odd cuts and in-camera effects), and there is a certain level of cheese some people might appreciate, but it struggles to work as a complete experience. Parts of the story don’t make sense or are dropped, the bad guys leave a map under a van for some reason, establishing shots of London don’t have people, and there are few extras overall, but most viewers only know this one for the boardroom meeting in different colored bear suits. It’s like the cheesiness is so well integrated that we miss the joke — if there was one to begin with.
The cast is excellent, so it’s amazing how bad the acting comes across.
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