I am not going to spend too much time giving my own personal back story on the level of excitement for this movie. I am exactly the target audience for The Avengers. I was worried it would be a muddled mess, but Joss Whedon being on board really calmed me down. He has a history of creating stories that involve a big ensemble, but giving everyone a chance to shine. That was going to be key for me. I loved Ironman and Captain America. I really enjoyed Thor, Ironman 2 and Incredible HULK. I love the characters, I love the comic books, and I love the animated Avengers comics. Marvel was doing a big risky thing here and Avengers was meant to be the pay off, but was it?
LOKI(Tom Hiddelston)the viallain from THOR, is back, with a vengeance. After appearing at the secret lair of SHIELD, getting it destroyed and high jacking Clint Barton (Hawkeye, Jeremy Renner) and Prof. Selvig, LOKI puts them all to work to get the Tesseract up and working so he can create a portal that cannot be closed and then big nasty alien monsters can come through and destroy Earth. LOKI believe believes humans do not like the freedom they have and should be ruled by him. Agent Nick Fury (Sam Jackson) is not cool with this, so he attempts to round up a group of remarkable people, beginning with Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson). After dispensing of some Russian thugs, Widow heads off to find "The Big Guy." Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) has been trying to stay off the radar helping those in need and trying to keep "the other guy" in check. He resists, but eventually he gets on board after he is told they just need his help locating the tesseract, and not to turn in HULK and fight things.
Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is busy creating cleaner, more efficient energy sources, but after a surprise drop in from series favorite Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg), Stark is on board. Captain America (Chris Evans) is the first to meet up with LOKI, and with help from Stark, they capture him. The capture is short lived at first because THOR(Chris Hemsworth) grabs LOKI and takes off. This leads us to our first super awesome. THOR and IRONMAN fight it out, with CAPTAIN getting in on the action. Eventually they settle in and LOKI is transferred to the aerial base and stuff goes crazy from there.
If that appears a bit confusing, it is not, it is just tough to write out. If you know the characters the film is incredibly easy to follow. Whedon has written and directed a breezy, perfectly paced summer extravagnaza. It is a summer movie version of a big theme park. If you think fo that as a critique, it is not. I mean it in the very best way possible. However, unlike many theme parks, AVENGERS is totally worth the money. Downey Jr. swoops in with his snarky perfection and creates this perfect chemistry with every single member of the team, Evans remains the calm, quiet confident CAPTAIN AMERICA. Hemsworth delivers the second funniest line in the movie, proving he is not just all biceps, but I want to talk about Ruffalo for a little bit. I have always found Ruffalo to be an actor in search of a great defining role. He is very talented, but it never quite clicked. That is no longer the case. Ruffalo nails Banner's duality even though he only bodies half of the character. He is never quite sure of what he can do and he emotionally drives this movie, I think. He also gets to deliver the best line of the movie, a line so perfect, it completely changed my view on who Banner was. I cannot wait to go watch the movie again with this new Banner lens.
All of this is well and good, but if the action did not deliver, what would be the point? LOKI's entrance is totally bad ass, his fight with Captain and IRONMAN, while short is very cool. I loved the fight between THOR and IRONMAN. The aerial base attack was breathtaking and manages to give us all of our heroes doing something. How kick ass is black widow? But also, how kick ass Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders)? But they are all just teases for the humdinger of a climatic battle.
For roughly 35 minutes, New York feels the wrath of an alien monster race reigning down and wrecking shop. Havoc is their game and they are excellent. However, a newly focused AVENGERS are on the case. Shot with dazzling clarity, insane swiftness and never without losing the Whedon trademark humor, this action sequence is about as perfect as they come. The stakes are perfectly raised, each hero gets to do what he/she does best and the audience never gets to catch its breath, but it is never overwhelmed. CAPTAIN and Black Widow do insane hand to hand combat, HAWKEYE's bow and arrow tricks are awesome, THOR goes toe to toe with LOKI and takes on quite a few aliens. IRONMAN never stops his one-liners as he flies through New York dodging buildings and weaving through the skyscrapers and it is wonderful. However, it is all topped by HULK. For two films I have been waiting for someone to do HULK the way HULK is meant to be used. Finally, I get my pay off. WOW!!! Watching HULK smash everything, was beyond epic for me and for everyone else in the theater. The Motion Capture is gorgeous, as you can see Ruffalo in there, and the way he moves and emotes, makes him my favorite Motion Capture character after Gollum and Ceasar.
For 150 minutes I was in nerd heaven, yes. I am perfectly okay with that. The relationships built in this movie are going to carry this Marvel thing for years and years and I hope they can keep coming back and doing the AVENGERS thing. If the movies come out like this, I will never tire of them. Summer movies in their purest form are supposed to be just like this. It was thrilling, genuinely hilarious, and for a brief moment, it even choked me up. I have a feeling this movie is going to require a few viewings just to hear everything I missed over the sound of my own laughter.
P.S. STAY ALL THE WAY UNTIL THE END!! SO many people left after the first credit sequence scene, but there is a second one and it is perfection.
