Okay so.
I see a lot of people complaining about Jeremy Renner’s archery in the trailers for The Avengers.
Fair enough. He’s not a professional archer. Perhaps whoever trained him should have worked a little harder. Perhaps not. While everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I am in no way attempting to school or scold the naysayers, please just let me suggest a few things that people might not be considering.
In Terms Of The Movie.
- It’s a big movie. There is a lot going on, and a lot that needed to be done. Jeremy Renner is at the height of his fame, and at the height of making Really A Lot Of Movies. If there wasn’t time for a proper amount of training (like you would expect from a movie where the archer is the focus, like A Robin Hood movie or The Hunger Games), it’s a shame, but I would rather sacrifice form than a more important aspect of the movie.
- We have seen, what, ten minutes of footage? At the very most? The Avengers is two hours, and fifteen minutes long. This fandom seems to have a real problem with judging the entire movie on what we’ve seen in the trailer. If the movie comes out, and Renner spends the whole thing handling a bow like an idiot? I will give you that. But lets just calm our tits until we’ve seen the whole thing.
- Be thankful he’s not using the fucking compound bow from Thor.
- The stunts. Hawkeye/Jeremy Renner is not going to spend the entire movie standing square in front of a target. There is buttsliding. There is Falling Out Of Things That Are In The Air. For example. If were you currently in this position, would you be worried about your archery form?
Ah, Clint Barton. A Deathwish wrapped in a Hypcrite wrapped in a Man-Child wrapped in a Carnie. There’s a lot to the guy, most which probably won’t make it into the movie, but some of it may make you a little more forgiving of aforementioned Poor Archery Style.
- He is not clasically, or even really professionally, trained. A young Clint Barton ran away from an orphanage as a child, with his older brother, and joined the Carson Carnival of Travelling Wonders. Although he was originally trained with a sword (Bet THAT won’t make it into the movie!), he was soon trained to be proficient in archery by this guy.
or even ANY mention of his past at all, I’m having trouble seeing the part where he was professionally trained, by a coach, in the art of proper and professional archery form.
- His swag of trick arrows. Hawkeye is pretty famous for being able to do more than just stick-pointy-end-in-bad-guy. He has a plethora of trick arrows in his quiver that can and will be whipped out at any time to save the day. For example!
- Hawkeye isn’t even an original Avenger! The original lineup consisted of Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, The Wasp, and Ant Man. Yep, no Captain America, either. Hawkeye was brought in when Marvel decided there just wasn’t enough Bronze Age weaponry in their books. So instead of focusing on the faults (archery form, not as much screen time as others, lack of buttflap, etc) why don’t we just thank our lucky starts that Hawkeye’s actually going to be on film? I, for one, never thought it was going to happen!
- I guess what I’m trying to say here is that Hawkeye is more than just the way he holds a bow. If it’s Renner’s fault, if it’s the archery consultant’s fault, who cares. He’s a great character, he’s in the movie, and hopefully that will have the added bonus of getting more people into the character, and more people taking up archery.
- Apologies if I’ve offended anyone with this. I’m not trying to tell anyone they are wrong, or stupid, or that they can’t express their displeasure with something on the internet. That, after all, is what the internet was invented for.
(The Compound Bow panel is from Amazing Spiderman featuring Hawkeye, which I recommend everyone reads for a GREAT insight to Clint’s character, and why being an Avenger is so important to him.)
