In general the critics have heaped praise on Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, which currently has a 92% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes with 165 positive reviews and just 14 negative ones.  But one of those negative reviews, A.O. Scott’s notice in The New York Times aroused the ire of Samuel L. Jackson, who plays Nick Fury in The Avengers. 

 

Scott’s review is not completely negative, it’s more of a "herring in the moonlight" ("it shines, but it stinks") piece.  The clever dialogue that has seduced so many other critics didn’t elude Scott, who called the film "a snappy little dialogue comedy dressed up as something else, that something else being a giant A.T.M. for Marvel and its new studio overlords, The Walt Disney, Co."  Scott even admits "At times--when various members of a game and nimble cast amble in and out of the glassy metallic chambers of a massive flying aircraft carrier, cracking wise, rolling eyes and occasionally throwing a punch--the movie has some of the easygoing charm of Howard Hawk’s Rio Bravo."

 

But Scott, who earlier expresses some pretty substantial reservations about the superhero comic book genre of movies in general, finds only emptiness at the film’s center, and seems to find fault with the genre more than the movie, "The light, amusing bits cannot overcome the grinding, hectic emptiness, the bloated cynicism that is less a shortcoming of this particular film than a feature of the genre."

 

Jackson, who may not have been amused at Scott’s characterization of his performance as Nick Fury as being "more master of ceremonies, than mission commander," tweeted to his more than 225,000 followers: "Avengers fans, NY Times critic A.O. Scott needs a new job!  Let’s help him find one! One he can ACTUALLY do!"

 

Was Jackson really trying to get Scott fired?  Can social media be used to stir up the modern equivalent of a mob of angry villagers armed with pitchforks?  Well, Jackson may now wish he had some sort of governor on his twitter finger, but it doesn’t appear that he was really in earnest about wanting Scott to lose his job.  In responding to a tweet criticizing him for going after Scott, Jackson replied: "That’s my opinion, and what’s irrational about it?  They aren’t going to fire his jaundiced ass & you & I know it."

 

While critic-bashing is a thankless enterprise that rarely reflects well on those doing the bashing, it is fairly easy to empathize with artists engaged in a commercial enterprise on the scale of a modern blockbuster.  If the movie is a box office failure like John Carter, critics are likely to sneer in derision at its commercial feebleness in spite of any other qualities it might have, while if a film like The Avengers looks like a sure hit it gets bashed as a giant A.T.M. for a soulless corporation.  And as for Scott detecting the "glowering authoritarianism that now defines Hollywood comic book universe," that sort of overly broad generalization, which Scott doesn’t bother to back up with any thematic analysis, appears highly questionable at best.