What happens when people can pick their own price for a product

What happens when people can pick their own price for a product
买主若能随意定价，将会怎样

EARLY in the study of economics, students are introduced to Homo economicus, a rough caricature of a human being with an eye to extracting the maximum personal advantage from any given situation. In the real world, of course, human behaviour is much more complicated than that. One example is a pricing strategy called "pay what you want", in which customers are allowed to choose any price—even zero—for a good. Despite the obvious benefit of getting something for nothing, many people nevertheless choose to pay. The model hit the news in 2007 when Radiohead, a British band, released their album "In Rainbows" on the internet with just such a pricing arrangement.
在经济学的早期学习中，"经济人"这一概念被引介给学生，用以讽刺人们处处鹯视狼顾，贪图个人利益的最大化。然而，人们在现实世界中的行为可比这复杂得多了。比方说，一种"随你付"的定价策略允许顾客为商品随意出价，甚至可以不掏钱。虽说明摆着，这种定价策略可以让人们白拿东西，很多人还是会付钱。这种模式在2007年被曝光。当时，英国的电台司令乐队在互联网上发布的专辑《彩虹中》就采用了这一定价安排。

A team of researchers led by Ayelet Gneezy at the University of California's Rady School of Management has now published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that makes some suggestions about the psychological underpinnings of this generosity. They finger the ego—in particular, a desire to think of yourself as a good person. And they find that allowing people to name their own price may result in fewer sales than the old-fashioned approach of simply setting a single price for everybody.
由加州大学雷迪管理学院的艾莱特•格尼茨领衔的一组研究人员最近在美国《国家科学院院刊》上撰文试图揭示这种慷慨行为背后的心理学依据。他们将研究结果指向人的自尊心，尤其是把自我视为一个好人的渴望。研究人员还发现，与传统的对所有人采用统一标价的方法相比，允许人们随意出价的方式可能导致销量的下滑。

The researchers ran three experiments. The first involved more than 53,000 customers of a theme park, who were photographed while riding a rollercoaster. In one iteration of the experiment, customers were offered the chance to buy the photo for a price of their own choosing. In the second run, they were offered the same deal, except that half their suggested price would be donated to a children's charity.
研究人员进行了三个试验。第一个实验牵涉到一个主题公园内的53000多名游客，他们玩过山车的场景被拍成了照片。一组该试验的游客可以自定价格来购买这些照片。另一组的游客同样可以自定价格，区别在于他们出价的一半将会捐给一个儿童慈善机构。

The researchers noted two big effects. The average price suggested by those in the group benefiting the charity was over five times as high as that suggested by the first group. At the same time, only half as many people in the second group wanted to buy a photo. The researchers argue that the two results are linked: because the "right" price for the charity-and-photo combination was felt to be so much higher, a significant number of people preferred not to buy at all than to damage their self-image by offering a miserly price, and, by extension, a tight-fisted donation to a deserving cause.
研究人员注意到两个重要的实验结果。支援慈善一组的平均出价是第一组的5倍多。同时，第二组中仅有半数的顾客愿意购买相片。研究人员认为这两个试验结果息息相关：一旦将慈善和照片联系到一块儿，人们心中的合理出价就被大大提升，以至于很多人害怕出价太低伤面子而不买相片。这就好比向一家有广阔发展前景的事业捐款，少捐不如不捐。

The second experiment confirmed the first. Passengers on a boat trip were photographed and then offered the chance to buy the photos. This time Dr Gneezy and his colleagues controlled their subjects' expectations more directly. For one group, the price was set at $15, for another it was $5, and the third were allowed to name their own price. All three groups were told that the normal price was $15. As expected, demand for photos rose when the price dropped from $15 to $5. But it fell again when people could pick their price. Again the researchers suggest that an overly low price can feel unpleasantly parsimonious. In contrast, "when the company sets the price at $5, there is no ambiguity about fairness, self-image concerns disappear and people are happy to pay."
第二个试验证印证了第一个试验。研究人员把人们坐船旅行的场景拍成相片，再向这些人出售。这次格尼茨博士和他的同事们更加直接地控制试验主体的期望值。一组定价15美元，另一组则为5美元，而第三组的人们则可以看着给。然后告诉这三组的人们，照片原价是15美元。不出所料，当照片的价格从15美元跌倒5美元的时候，需求随之攀升。但当人们可以自己定价的时候购买量反而更少了。研究者再次次解释了出现这种现象的原因：过低的定价反而使人们更加小气，甚至觉得过意不去。相比之下，"若公司把价格定到5美元，交易的公平性就毋庸置疑，人们不再担心自我形象，开始乐于购买。"

To determine whether it is your conscience that prods you to be generous, as opposed to pressure from your peers, the third experiment took place in a restaurant in which customers chose the price paid for a meal. One group was allowed to pay secretly; another paid in public. The people allowed to pay their bills anonymously chose to pay more, on average, than those who paid in public. Radiohead, for their part, seem to have anticipated Dr Gneezy's conclusions. Their latest album, "The King of Limbs", was again released online—but only for a fixed price, of $9.
为了搞清楚人们的慷慨大方到底是良心所驱还是群体压力所使，研究人员在一家餐厅进行了第三次试验。餐厅的顾客可以自选价格付账。一组用餐者可以在暗地里付账；另一组则要在大庭广众之下埋单。平均下来，匿名付账的人们比公开付账的人们给的更多。电台司令乐队似乎已经预料到了格尼茨博士的实验结论。他们的最新专辑------《橡树王的律动》，再次上线发售，而这次把价定在了9美元。

Persians v Arabs / Same old sneers

Persians v Arabs
波斯民族vs阿拉伯民族

Same old sneers
依旧相互蔑视

Nationalist feeling on both sides of the Gulf is asprickly as ever
波斯湾两岸两大民族的相互感觉跟以前一样酸楚

May 5th 2012 | from the print edition


Cyrus eyeballs the locust-eaters
居鲁士注视着吃蝗虫的人

THE Persians have enjoyed being nasty about their Arab neighbours at least since the seventh century, when their land was invaded by Arab armies. From satirical verses about "locust-eaters" out of the parched wastes of Araby to periodic efforts to "purify" the Persian language of Arabic accretions, assertions of cultural superiority have masked a deep historical resentment.

至少自7世纪波斯领土被阿拉伯军队入侵以来，波斯人一直厌烦他们的阿拉伯邻居。从讽刺诗中提到的来自炎热的阿拉伯半岛荒地的"吃蝗虫的民族"，到定期从波斯语里清洗来自阿拉伯语的外来词汇，我们可以看到，波斯人坚定地认为自己的文化更具优越性，这掩盖两个民族间深刻的历史积怨。

Now a row over three spots in the middle of the Persian Gulf (which Arabs, naturally, prefer to call the Arabian Gulf) has provoked fresh transports of emotion—on both sides. A recent trip by Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to the tiny island of Abu Musa, about 75km (47 miles) from Iran's south coast, prompted the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to restate in no uncertain terms its own claims to the island and to two barely inhabited chunks of rock nearby.

现今，位于波斯湾（当然阿拉伯人更喜欢称之为阿拉伯湾）中间的，一排由超过三个岛组成的岛链引发了波斯湾两岸民族情绪的爆发。最近，伊朗总统艾哈迈迪内贾德访问距离伊朗南海岸75（47英里）公里远的阿布穆萨小岛，这促使阿拉伯联合酋长国坚定地重申对该岛及附近两个几乎无人定居的岩石岛拥有主权。

Iranian nationalists responded joyfully. Anti-Arab gags dominated comedy programmes on state radio, while astonishment was expressed in parliament and in the newspapers at the cheek of the "little sheikhs" to the south, their confected country barely four decades old, daring to address the heirs of Cyrus the Great. If the people of Iran's southernmost province all blew at once across the Gulf, one wag remarked, "the wind would carry the Emirates away."

伊朗民族主义者诙谐地予以回复。反阿拉伯谐星在国家电台广播台上排演调侃阿拉伯的戏剧节目，同时国会和报纸上都表达了对这群"小酋长"的惊愕之情：他们东拼西凑成的国家也就不到40年的历史，竟敢以居鲁士大帝的继承人而自居。其中一位谐星称，如果伊朗最南部省的老百姓同时朝海湾吹口气的话，"会把阿联酋刮走"。

The war of words may well have been deliberately engineered by Mr Ahmadinejad, narked at being sidelined in Iran's latest nuclear negotiations with the West (see article). But the president's attention-seeking is not risk-free. Abu Musa occupies a commanding position near the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil passes under the protective eye of the American navy. Iran has threatened to block the strait in the event of a Western attack on its nuclear facilities.

口舌之争似乎是内贾德精心策划的。有消息指出，这位总统回退出与西方的核谈判。不过内贾德的这种转移视线的方法并非全无风险。阿布穆萨岛占据着霍尔木兹海峡出口附近的关键位置。世界上五分之一的石油都在美国海军的严密监视下经过该海峡。伊朗威胁一旦西方攻击其核设施，它将封锁霍尔木兹海峡。

Both parties claim that the islands have been part, since antiquity, of their cultural and political sphere. Iran's last shah seized them in 1971, as Britain abandoned its former possessions in the Gulf and the UAE was being set up. The Iranians have since strengthened their grip on the islands, settling mainlanders and building military defences, though Mr Ahmadinejad is the first head of government actually to visit any of them.

双方都宣称这三个岛自古便处于自己的文化和政治辐射圈内。1971年英国放弃对海湾的控制，阿联酋成立后，伊朗的末代国王将这些岛夺走。自此，伊朗加强了对这三个岛的控制，将伊朗大陆居民安排至这些倒定居，并建设军事防御工事。不过内贾德是第一位实际上参观过这三个岛之一的政府首脑。

Barring a rash move on either side, Mr Ahmadinejad's jaunt will probably not change very much. The Emiratis, backed by their Arab brethren, particularly the Saudis, have long pressed for negotiations over the island's sovereignty or for referral to the International Court at The Hague. The Iranians offer only talks aimed at resolving "misunderstandings".

除了引起双方间的鲁莽活动外，内贾德对该岛的访问可能作用不大。由阿拉伯兄弟国家，特别是沙特阿拉伯支持的阿联酋，强烈要求对该岛主权问题进行谈判或者由海牙国际法庭裁判。但是伊朗人仅愿进行旨在消除误解的谈判。

from the print edition | Middle East and Africa

 

Sensational and Sensationalized

Sensational and Sensationalized

By MICHAEL SANTOLI | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

The fallout from JPMorgan's $2 billion trading loss will hurt the bank, its stock and the chances that the Volcker rule, curbing financial institutions' proprietary trading, won't take effect.

When a steady driver suddenly crashes into a hedge, it's time to run down the safety checklist before proceeding. So it is after JPMorgan Chase's clanging disclosure last week of a $2 billion-plus-on-paper loss in a corporate unit charged with hedging the bank's financial risks.
What just happened? Beyond producing what CEO Jamie Dimon called an "egregious" and "self-inflicted" loss, most of what can be ascertained about the trades in corporate-credit derivatives by the bank's Chief Investment Office is that they were poorly structured, improperly sized, and/or insufficiently monitored.
It was most likely more complex than a simple outright sale or purchase of insurance against corporate creditworthiness, probably involving counterweighted bets across the credit spectrum. Dimon's suggestion that this portfolio could produce additional "volatility" in results in coming quarters means the positions aren't fully unwound.
JPMorgan's Chief Investment Office oversees some $350 billion in assets. It is charged with trying to hedge the structural financial risks (credit, interest rates, currency) that a massive global consumer and commercial bank inherently faces. But there is no way for these aggregate risks to be offset or mitigated precisely.
Among the many debates this incident will energize is how to distinguish prudent hedging from proprietary bets -- a grayer area than partisans on either side of the regulatory divide tend to concede. But it's pretty bankable that the voices favoring a more stringent interpretation of the legal ban on proprietary trading will now be more readily heard. Dimon was the one bank CEO who could legitimately argue publicly that the most aggressive of the contemplated new banking rules would hinder well-run banks' competitive position and weigh on economic growth. He can still make that case, but fewer people of influence will be listening.
Should this loss be seen as a sick or dead coal-mine canary, foretelling broader market contagion? This is quite unlikely. As Nomura analyst Glenn Schorr points out, "While the original premise was to hedge the company in a stress credit environment, we haven't seen credit or volatility blow out this quarter," so the mispositioning was Morgan-specific, and hedge funds and others on the opposite end of the trades were net beneficiaries.
How, and how much, will this hurt JPMorgan? With a $2.3 trillion balance sheet and a quarterly run rate of $6 billion in earnings, a $2 billion mark-to-market loss is easily, if uncomfortably, absorbed, as would be the additional $1 billion in potential costs now being estimated to mop up the trades. The $1.20-per-share annual dividend, the $15 billion share-buyback authorization, the bank's nearly $5 in per-share earnings power, and its solid capital ratios look secure.
The pain is being administered to the "reputational premium" that JPMorgan, Dimon, and the company's stock (ticker: JPM) have (justly, to date) enjoyed over megabank rivals. The narrative of Dimon as the banker who foresaw the excesses that caused the 2008 financial meltdown and girded his company for the shock is diminished slightly, but not fully undermined.
Perhaps it's a trivial observation, but not every CEO would chastise himself and his company in quite the blunt terms Dimon did on his Thursday conference call. It's a fair bet that the Chief Investment Office (which, as the Wall Street Journal's Deal Journal blog noted, has grown far faster than the bank as a whole in recent years) will have its mandate sharpened, shrunken…or both.
What does it all mean for JPMorgan shares? The stock's Friday drop of 9%, to $36.96, was both understandable and probably overdone, vaporizing more than $14 billion in market value. With this decline, the dividend yield is 3.25%, making it just about the highest-yielding large-bank stock around. Tangible book now approaches $35, so a lot of the premium formerly afforded the bank has evaporated. Yet JPMorgan's dominant and broad franchise hasn't gone away.
There is an inherent tension between the desire for banks to be strong and vibrant sources of economic strength and the reformers' resolve to force them in the direction of public financial utilities. Bank critics want them to lend freely to lubricate the economy, but hold more capital against loans to protect depositors; to be large and diverse enough to ensure stability, but not so ambitious as to play too heavily in the global capital markets.
John McDonald of Bernstein Research suggests that the Morgan news "will likely reinforce investor concerns about the opacity of big-bank balance sheets, the predictability of their earnings and the ability of the industry to deliver consistent returns," which should "put pressure on bank-stock multiples."
This is true -- but no more so for Morgan than its peers, despite this sensational and sensationalized misstep.

Vulnerable Dragon

By ALAN ABELSON | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

A consideration of Jamie Dimon's and JPMorgan Chase's debacle with a supposed hedge transaction. Also, the dark visage under China's smiling, prosperous image.

 

You can't win 'em all. Every gambler, from sidewalk crapshooter to bet-a-million roulette habitué in Las Vegas, can to his rue verify the truth of that ancient homily. And so can Jamie Dimon, who runs this rich nation's biggest bank, JPMorgan Chase . Last week, he mournfully disclosed that the bank had lost two billion smackers when a supposed hedge transaction involving derivatives and stocks went sour.

Dimon, who has been on a roll for many years and who always struck us as the class act in banking, an industry not famous for its extraordinary execs, refused to soft-soap the enormous hit, blaming "errors, sloppiness, and bad judgment" for the disastrous trade. And he added, in a conference call to shell-shocked analysts and portfolio managers, "Just because we were stupid doesn't mean anyone else was." It's a fair assumption that the "we" really somewhat royally referred to himself.

It's more than a touch ironic that Dimon, who guided Chase so skillfully through the financial crisis, came to grief (if only momentarily) by ignoring the irrefutable fact that derivatives can be weapons of mass financial destruction and are not infrequently an excellent hedge against capital gains.

In this instance, it proved a particularly costly oversight, exposing the bank's stock (ticker: JPM) to a fierce drubbing, and rattling the financial sector as a whole. It also lit a fire under the dithering regulators.

Now, if any institution can absorb a $2 billion whack without fatal damage being inflicted on its balance sheet, if not its amour-propre, it's Chase. But this sort of thing can have a long and annoying tail, so we'll wait to see how quickly and how briskly the bank and Dimon snap back.

For a spell now, Dimon has been butting heads with Paul Volcker over the so-called Volcker Rule, aimed at curbing banks' proprietary trading. And talk about irony, as we did a few paragraphs above, the day before Dimon made his sorry disclosure, Volcker testified before the Senate Banking Committee, beating the drums for the merits of the rule, a key provision of the Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul, due to take effect in July.

Beside curbs on banks dabbling in proprietary trading, Volcker made a pitch for restrictions on trading in derivatives. Who knows? In his present angry, confessional mood, even Jamie Dimon might think that's not such a bad idea.

After a brief and truncated rally, the stock-market response to the Chase fiasco was neither very much here nor there, as investors obviously decided to take the weekend to think it over. That, we suspect, will prove a wise decision.

THAT COLOSSUS OF NATIONS, CHINA, whose astonishing economic growth has become one of the seven wonders of the world (elbowing out the Hanging Gardens of Babylon or the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus; we forget which) is, not surprisingly, the cynosure and envy of this aching planet. But lately, the country has attracted global attention for a vastly different and juicier reason: a lurid glimpse of the corrupt and inhumane visage beneath the smiling face of the ruling regime.

The corruption and ruthlessness of that regime was personified by Bo Xilai. By all description, Bo is no beau. He rose through the bureaucratic ranks by hook and crook, especially the latter, to provincial governor and a spot in the Politburo, the claque of devils that runs the nation. But thanks to his insatiable ambition, unrestrained self-promotion, and take-no-prisoners approach to dealing with underlings and rivals, he's never wanted for enemies, a number of them powerful.

So not too many tears were shed when the roof fell in on Bo.  He has been suspended from the Politburo and is being held at some unrevealed location while under investigation for "serious violations" of Communist Party rules. In China, that can mean anything from spitting on the sidewalk to scooping up for yourself a few hundred grand of the government's stash.

It obviously doesn't help poor Bo that his wife, a lawyer and far from a shrinking violet, is a suspect in the murder of Neil Heywood, a Brit living in China, who was both a friend and a business associate and with whom she argued over money shortly before he was killed.

In China's inscrutable political system, punctuated by periodic struggles for power, today's outcasts can become tomorrow's top dogs. And while such a reversal doesn't seem imminently in the cards for Bo, weirder things have happened. A safe bet is that whoever replaces him is likely to embody the same corrupt and self-aggrandizing impulses.

As to the regime's less-than-stellar respect for humanism, the repulsive treatment of Chen Guangcheng, the courageous blind dissident who finally sought to escape from years of bullying, imprisonment, and house detention and somehow traversed a couple of hundred miles to refuge in the American Embassy in Beijing, is more than eloquent testimony. At last report, he was in a hospital, suffering from internal ailments and a broken foot sustained during his escape, awaiting approval to depart for America and voicing concern that his extended family would be subject to vicious retaliation.

The spotlight on corruption and mistreatment of its populace couldn't shine at a less propitious time for Beijing. For one thing, the country's leadership is passing the baton. And, perhaps more importantly, China's fab economy is showing serious signs of strain. Exports, the engine of the nation's remarkable growth, are lagging; in April, they edged up a mere 4.9%, roughly half as much as economists had predicted. Imports meanwhile managed to eke out a miserable 0.3% rise, far below the 11% anticipated.

Moreover, factory output came in at 9.3%, the smallest increase since May 2009. And residential real estate has hit the skids.

Hard landing, anyone?

THAT AT LEAST IS THE SEEMING PURPORT of a paper on China penned by Harald Malmgren. We've had the pleasure of passing along from time to time Harald's insightful comments on global markets, including our own precious bourse. The eponymous investment firm that he manages advises mostly big-bucks clients -- the likes of financial institutions, sovereign wealth funds, governments and central banks. He's a big picture man and very well clued-in.

In sizing up China, Harald says that he tapped the sentiment of what he dubs the country's "investor class." an amorphous slice of the population that encompasses a sweep of private investors, including high-net-worth families, managers of giant investment funds, and individual entrepreneurs. Such investors, he observes, have growing influence on how China's economy functions and, in consequence, increasing political influence as well. The good thing, presumably for Harald and for us, too, is that their opinions are not very earnestly pursued by the media or academic economists or market analysts.

Harald feels that China's exports are being hurt because foreign demand has been dramatically weakened by the Great Recession and its aftermath and the erosion of China's competitive edge by the rising costs of labor, materials and energy. Domestic demand is simply not sufficient to pick up the slack from faltering exports.

Meanwhile, he notes, the country's "financial bubbles in real estate and commodities are bursting, its banking system is crumbling under the weight of massive misallocated and nonperforming debt," while the ordinary citizen is suffering from inflation in food, fuel and other essentials.

Around the world, Harald relates, investors are weighing what's in store for the Sino economy -- a soft or a hard landing. The answer, he asserts, depends in part whether or not the global economy can stage a real recovery from the financial shocks of the past few years. But, he avers, it also depends upon how quickly China's new leadership can come up with, and act on, fresh approaches to deal with the serious stresses on the economy, which, in turn, will be determined by whether the political transition is smooth or roiled by a lengthy period of power struggles.

The investor class, reports Harald, is worried stiff that the transition will not go smoothly and, to make matters worse, will stretch out over a considerable time span. And they fear that the transition will replace current office holders with a heap of novices lacking virtually any experience of governing.

Another, perhaps more pressing worry is that the new gang in control will include many new leaders and officials hot to gather wealth and wouldn't mind at all shaking down current members of the investor class to get it. There are concerns, too, according to Harald that if China's economy doesn't come up to snuff in the next few years, the new leaders will blame their predecessors for faulty management and corruption, triggering a wealth transfer from the ancien regime to the new one.

Much of the investor class, observes Harald, sees a weak economy ahead for China, and they shrug off Beijing's data as anything but reliable. At best they expect growth to fall shy of the official target of 7.5%, and obviously it could be worse. Maybe the most telling trend is that investors are looking for better opportunities abroad, and that somewhere down the road, the powers-that-be may be confronted by capital flight.

What does it all add up to? A situation that's fluid and likely to get more so, and less than inviting for investors. 

New film: "The Avengers"

New film: "The Avengers"
新影片：《复仇者》

More, merrier
越多越开心

May 5th 2012, 13:13 by O.M.

 

PROMISING to be the first billion-dollar blockbuster of the summer season, "The Avengers" succeeds by turning a seemingly fatal flaw into a winning strength. The film brings together the heroes of a number of previous films based on Marvel comics―Iron Man, a wisecracking one-man military-industrial complex; Captain America, a warrior pure of heart; Thor, a god from Asgard; and the Hulk, a hulk―along with some established supporting characters who have not yet carried their own movies, but are still played by some big-name actors. Together they form a planetary defence team capable of fending off marauding aliens and giant flying space weevils unleashed on midtown Manhattan by a demi-god with daddy issues and an inter-dimensional portal. Its precursor films have all done well-enough at the box office―"Iron Man 2", the biggest hit, earned $624m at the box office in 2010―and despite being pricier to make than those earlier episodes, "The Avengers" was hardly likely to lose money. But fans and others worried that by cramming in so many characters the film would end up bitty, the whole less than the sum of its super parts.

《复仇者》将是今年夏季第一部十亿美元大片，该片的成功之处在于它将一个似乎致命的缺点转变成了一个致胜的优点。这部电影将之前根据Marvel漫画改编的几部大片中的主人公齐聚一堂。其中包括俏皮话连篇，集军工科技于一身的钢铁侠；内心纯真的战士美国队长；来自阿斯加尔德的雷神托尔；还有巨人浩克，此外还有一些有头有脸的配角英雄，他们虽然还没有属于自己的影片，但仍然由大牌影星担纲。这些英雄一起形成了一支地球保卫队，借助各自的能力来对抗在曼哈顿中心横行的外星人和巨型太空飞虫。这些侵略者背后的罪魁祸首是一位有着父亲情结和跨次元传送门的半神。该片的相关前作票房表现都很出色，其中最卖座的《钢铁侠2》更是在2010年拿下6.24亿美元的票房。虽然《复仇者》的制片成本比之前的相关电影都要高，它亏本的可能性并不太大。不过很多影迷和其他人都担心把这么多角色挤在一部电影中会让影片支离破碎，导致整体效果不如其各部分超级英雄之和。

In fact the multiplicity of characters makes the film work better than the earlier ones. This is largely thanks to the skill of Joss Whedon, the writer and director. But it is also because the superheroes are a bit dull. If you want to get a film's worth of fun from them, it helps to buy in bulk.

事实上角色众多恰恰使得该片比之前的相关电影更加出色。这很大程度上要归功于剧作家兼导演Joss Whedon的功力。另外一个原因在于超级英雄电影都有点沉闷无聊。如果你要想从中找到一整部电影的乐趣，大批量产英雄是一个很好的办法。

The typical superhero film has some sort of origin story; the introduction of a villain; a segment where the hero is either misunderstood, self-destructive or led astray; a bit of rapprochement and/or personal growth; and an inevitable and almost always overlong finale in which the superhero battles the aforementioned villain (who often shares the superhero's super-schtick―a powered suit, in the case of Iron Man; mutagenic berserker rage in the case of the Hulk). Acceptable variations include multiple villains and some level of love interest. Attempts to give the superhero a nuanced inner life may be made, but rarely to any great effect.

典型的超级英雄电影首先会有某种英雄起源的故事，再接下来是反派的出场，然后主角会有一段时期遭到人们误解，或是倾向于自我毁灭，或是误入歧途，在那之后就轮到洗心革面的桥段，其中也许会加入个人内心变得成熟的戏码，最后就会是那不可避免，而且永远都过于拖沓的决战情节，主人公将会大战之前提到的反派（反派还经常持有主人公本身的超能力，例如钢铁侠的对手也有一套强力装甲，浩克的对手则带有基因突变引发的狂野怒气）。这个公式可能会有一些适当的变动，例如多个反派角色，或者一定程度上的浪漫恋爱情节。也可能出现一些情节旨在让这些超级英雄拥有敏感的内心生活，但这样的处理很少会出彩。

"The Avengers" follows a similar pattern, but as a group. So the six Avengers come together, they fall apart, they get themselves back together, they win. And this time there is a rich and accessible "inner life"―not within one character, but among half a dozen of them. With an almost mathematical rigour, Mr Whedon runs through the combinations on offer to give almost every member of the team some sort of one-to-one interaction with each other, as well as with the antagonist, Loki (played with glee, menace and Chaucerian obscenity by Tom Hiddlestone). Because these numerous interactions ring true, for the most part, they give the film a richness that the tales of single superheroes lack, and which may even encourage multiple viewings. As an added bonus, most of them are often very funny, the one between the Hulk and Thor sublimely so.

《复仇者》使用的是同一个公式，不过这次是用在一群英雄身上。因此整个大剧情是六名复仇者集合，他们散伙，他们再次重新团结，最后他们胜利。这一次影片中有着丰富且易于理解的"内心生活"，这种"内心生活"并不局限于一名角色身上，而是在六个人之间共同营造。Whedon导演利用了几近数学般的精确度审视了每一种组合，让队中所有人员都有机会和其他队友及和反角洛基（这个由Tom Hiddlestone扮演的反派角色混合了幸灾乐祸、凶狠歹毒及乔叟式的道德败坏这些元素）进行某种程度上的一对一互动。因为这些众多的互动大多都很逼真自然，它们给片子加上了一层单个超级英雄影片所无法提供的丰富感，甚至可能会促使一些观众重看多遍。此外，这些互动还有一个额外的优点――它们大多很幽默，浩克和托尔之间的交流尤为滑稽。

Bringing the funny is crucial. In accounting for the success of "The Avengers" much has been made of the fact that the talented Mr Whedon has a deep understanding of comic books (he has written excellent ones); of how to choreograph an ensemble (the passengers and crew of the spaceship Serenity in his lamentably short-lived science-fiction-western Firefly were a fully believable team from the show's first moments); and of what makes a great heroine (the creator of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" gives Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow not just one of the best action scenes in the film but also the best dramatic scene, making her as central as the boys who've had films of their own).

幽默是很关键的。在列举《复仇者》一片为什么会成功时，有几点被各路评论反复提到。这包括Whedon导演对于漫画书有着非常深刻的理解（他曾写过几本一流的漫画书），他非常清楚怎样编排全体人员在镜头前的行动（在他那部很可惜只播了一季的科幻西部剧《萤火虫》里，从最开始的几个镜头起，"宁静号"上面的船员和乘客就是一个逼真的团体），以及他完全了解怎么才能创作出一个优秀的女主角（这位《吸血鬼猎人巴菲 》的制片人在此片中不仅将最好的几个动作场面之一交给由Scarlett Johansson扮演的黑寡妇，还把最好的剧情场面也托付给她，这让她在片中和那些拥有自己影片的男演员们平起平坐）。

But just as crucial is his early experience in the writers' room of the sitcom "Roseanne". Like "The Avengers", "Roseanne" found its humour in the relationships between six clearly drawn family members; it then polished that humour into great barbs and one liners. The vibe of a quasi-functional family held together by loyalty, compassion and comic timing unites the two works. (One can even see parallels at the character level; Mark Ruffalo's Hulk is not a million miles from bright, moody Darlene Conner, and Robert Downey junior could totally deliver as the loud-mouthed manager of a loose-meat restaurant―in "The Avengers"' final post-credits sequence he sort-of-almost does.)

但同样重要的是Whedon早期担任情景喜剧《罗斯安家庭生活》剧作团队成员时所得到的经验。和《复仇者》一样，《罗斯安家庭生活》的幽默植根于六个性格鲜明的家庭成员之间的关系，这种幽默再进一步被加工成经典的挖苦打趣台词。一个勉强运作的团队被忠诚、怜悯和时机恰好的幽默团结在一起，这种氛围把这两部作品联系起来。（你也可以发现剧中角色间的相似，Mark Ruffalo扮演的浩克其实和聪明忧郁的Darlene Conner相差不远，而小Robert Downey扮演一间肉碎三明治餐馆里口无遮拦的经理完全没有问题――在《复仇者》片尾演员表字幕之后的隐藏片段中，他差不多就已经这么做了。）

It is by seeing (and realising) the possibility of a sit-com aesthetic at the heart of the blockbuster action film that Mr Whedon delivers an entertainment that works. It is not flawless. While "Transformers 3" was loutish in its humours, devoid of wit or subtlety, its trashing of Chicago was visually more compelling. Loki's belief that humans are craven could have bore a bit more scrutiny (but then the question of whether people are really worth saving is one Mr Whedon has already addressed elsewhere). And it's not necessarily an approach that others can or should follow. Christopher Nolan's third and final Batman film, "The Dark Knight Rises", later this summer will hardly be a laugh-fest. But it does make one hope that Marvel, already committed to more Iron Man, Thor and Captain America films, ploughs some of its profits into a film about the lesser-known Ant Man. Edgar Wright, who was one of the creators of a terrific sit-com himself (as well as the director of the inspired, if commercially disappointing, "Scott Pilgrim vs The World"), has been planning such a film for some time. If it found an audience it might have the welcome effect of making a married couple of superheroes, Ant Man and Wasp, available for an eventual Avengers sequel. This would give Mr Whedon, should he return, yet more possibilities for the barbs, bickering and not-always-comforting emotion he does so well.

Whedon导演正是看出了在这部大片的表面之下潜藏着情景喜剧美感的可能性（并成功让这种可能性成真），从而拍出了一部成功的娱乐电影。该片并不是完美无瑕的。《变形金刚3》中的幽默非常糟糕，既不风趣也不微妙，但是那部电影里芝加哥被摧毁的场景在视觉上要比《复仇者》更具有震撼力。洛基认为人类是懦弱的种族这一观点本可以在片中进行更深一步的探讨（话说回来，Whedon在他其它作品中已经讨论过人类到底值不值得救赎这个问题了）。Whedon这种利用喜剧元素的方法并不一定值得其他人借鉴，别人也不一定有能力借鉴这个方法。Christopher Nolan的第三部也是最后一部蝙蝠侠电影《黑暗骑士崛起》将会于今年夏天晚些时候公映，那部电影就几乎完全不含喜感。但是《复仇者》确实让人们不禁希望Marvel在已经确定将会拍摄的钢铁侠、托尔和美国队长电影之外，可以把一部分利润拿来拍摄一部较少人知道的"蚂蚁侠"电影。本身也曾创作过一流情景喜剧（外加执导过那部虽然票房不佳但发人深思的《歪小子斯科特》）的Edgar Wright已经计划拍摄这么一部电影有一段时间了。如果"蚂蚁侠"电影受观众欢迎的话，该片可能会最终将超级英雄夫妻――蚂蚁侠和黄蜂侠――引入《复仇者》的续集，这将会是一大喜事。这么一来，如果Whedon会来继续执导续集，他将会有更多机会展示最擅长的挖苦、争执和偶尔没那么愉快的情绪。

Indeed, Mr Whedon will surely be showing off these talents in his next venture―a very low budget adaptation of "Much Ado About Nothing", which might seem remarkably far removed from the cosmic tag-wrestling of "The Avengers" were it not for the sensibility that will unite them.

确实，Whedon一定会在他的下一部片子――莎翁《无事生非》的改编――中显露他这方面的特长。那部片子的预算极小，可能看上去和《复仇者》中那震天动地的多人战队戏码相差甚远，但是它们透露出的感性将会把这两部片子联系起来。