This weekend I saw the Avengers with Phil.  I was ridiculously excited to see some of my faves on the big screen again - esp RDJ as Tony Stark who has most of the good lines.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Joss Whedon did not disappoint, but then when does he ever?  Grateful to the ex-bf that made me watch the entire Firefly series in which I gained an appreciation for his work.  (He's no Tim Burton, but he'll do). 

I'm not going to dissect or review the movie.  (Although I will say that there was a serious lack of Thor eye-candy to my way of thinking.)  People who like these kinds of movies will love it, those disinclined to them will not.  I am definitely one of the former.  That got me to wondering what I like about them.  My conclusion was that they are a very simple kind of good versus evil where good always triumphs - sometimes with sarcasm and laughter along the way.  Most of the superheroes in these are only lightly flawed individuals.  This is the way we wish the world worked, where karmic retribtution is meted out swiftly and by someone hotter than snot and then we all go get some shawarma.

I contrasted that later on in the day when Game of Thrones aired a new episode.  I love this too.  It carries a lot of the same fantasy elements.  The major difference is that the characters are drawn less monochromatically, they are none of them wholly good or wholly bad.  And any that are either do not last for long because they are made real world inflexible because of their unidimensionalism.  Even the most deeply flawed characters have some redeeming features.  Even the most honorable have some baser moments.  I enjoy one of the middling bad characters, Tyrion the Imp.  I think it's his humor that drew me in, that and his quick wit.  (As an aside, there's a meme going around the interwebs regarding Jaime, Cersei and Tyrion Lannister in which you choose one to fuck, one to marry and one to throw off a cliff.  Really?  Cersei - thrown off the cliff.  The spectacularly beautiful Jaime?  Fuck him, then throw him off the cliff.  Tyrion is the one to marry because there would never be a boring moment.  Did I mention Tyrion is a dwarf?) 

I love my superheros.  I love their perfect world.  But, I also enjoy that GRRM has written characters that are more life-like than your standard fantasy writer.  And that in his world good does not save you from getting whacked.  It makes things feel fresh in a genre that can be stale as shit.  And it makes you think twice about loving up on a character too seriously.  We all learned that lesson the hard way when the universally adored Ned Stark gets the whackadoo at the end of book one.  I haven't hated a writer so much since I was 13 and Tolkien killed off Gandalf in the mines of Moria. 

It's been a long time since I liked one that well either.