The remainder of Fresh Horses is relatively impenetrable, with Anspaugh's usual clubfooted attempts at austerity — that his training ground was the
slick and trendy TV series «Miami Vice» (hence Matt and Tipton riding a speedboat over the
opening credits, I guess) surely puts what he knows and what he envisions into conflict — prolonging the agony, though it warrants mention that Anspaugh has some wizardly knack for making dull
movies that are just idiosyncratic enough to stave off boredom.
Thankfully Whedon opted not to try to somehow recapture uncapturable magic and instead gave us the Avengers fighting as a
slick team within the
opening moments of the
movie, a sequence which includes that famous trailer shot of them all leaping into action in snowy woods, a glorious homage to the comics.