Have you seen the Avengers?

The 2012 movie, not the new one.

Of course you have. Since we spare ourselves the trauma of watching a movie in a movie theater (where narrow seats pinch my fat old lady ass and the floors are sticky with things best not thought of – much less stepped in), we are usually late to the game when it comes to watching hit movies.

But, we finally saw it.  And it’s pretty good, even seeing it at home, without benefit of the huge screen, and even without seeing it in 3D. The writing is solid, the characters are engaging and funny.

And how can you go wrong with Joss Whedon at the helm? Hell, he wasn’t just at the helm, he built the whole frigging ship.  He directed and wrote the screenplay.

But please. Does this movie need to be so freakin’ long?

I know, I know. They spent a fortune on the effects, but how long can you watch comic book characters (no matter how engaging and funny) kick the living snot out of each other and then get the living snot kicked out of them by the bad guys, and finally kick the living snot out of the bad guys? (Sorry, spoiler alert – except, if you don’t know the basic plot of this genre of movies, you’re even more out of touch than I am.)

The official run time is 143 minutes.

It is 15 minutes shorter than Les Miserables. (A movie, by the way, that we still haven’t seen; but I have seen the theater production 3 (miserable) times.) 15 minutes shorter than a movie which is based on a book so long and heavy, it can be classified as a weapon. The Avengers is based on comic books.  WTF?

Maybe I’m just too old of a fat old lady to appreciate and savor the nuances of The Avengers (says the woman whose favorite comics were Millie the Model!).

Or maybe it just needed another 15-20 minutes of snot-kicking cut out.