I saw the best actors of my generation destroyed by B-movie superhero madness, slumming crummy costumed, dragging themselves through the digital streets of universe Marvel, looking for a super-size paycheck, empty-headed hipsters burning for the ancient mythic connection to the star-system dynamo in the machinery of the studios, who filthy rich and smirking sat up playing "Guitar Hero" in their Hollywood Hills McMansions, floating across their pools contemplating the next sequel, who bared their brains to their agent in El Lay and saw terrorist super-villains waiting to be terminated ...

Yes, I saw "The Avengers," where a horde of fine actors — Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., Jeremy Renner, Samuel L. Jackson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johansson, Stellan Skarsgard -were reduced to playing cardboard preteen cliches, solemnly mouthing clunkers such as "If we can't protect the earth, you can be damned well sure we'll avenge it!" or "I remember you tossing me into an abyss; I, who should have been king!" It's hardly Allen Ginsberg, is it.

Ruffalo, speaking of how he inherited the role of monosyllabic green-skinned superhero The Hulk from his friend Edward Norton — who himself took over from Eric Bana — said, "I look at it as my generation's 'Hamlet': We're all going to get a shot at it." It's a comment that makes you either chuckle at Ruffalo's oh-so-deadpan irony or weep with despair.