- Location: Century Boulder
- Joss Whedon's The Avengers is a film that is precisely the sum of its parts. The innocent bravery and nobility of Captain America: The First Avenger is reawakened here, as is some of the crackling wit and charm of the Iron Man series. The ingredients that made Thor so dull also rematerialize in this realm to lay siege to audience patience. And as for The Incredible Hulk, no wait, I couldn't even bring myself to see that one. At any rate, considering that this is a film whose primary reasons to exist stem largely from cameo appearances, post-credit scenes, and marketing strategies, I'll admit that the end result could have been a lot worse.
- The story, which should really come as no surprise, is that the Avengers have to assemble and save the world. Loki (Tom Hiddleston), the dastardly Norse god of trickery, is back from his banishment, and he's brought along some nasty alien friends helpfully identified as the Chitauri. Fortunately, that eyepatched cloak-and-dagger masterspy Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and his redoutable assistant (Clark Gregg) have been spending five or ten minutes per previous film gathering a fighting force for just such an occasion. I'm sure you're already familiar with Marvel A-listers Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), and the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), but maybe you missed the exploits of lesser mortals Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), neither of whom quite merited a film of their own. I'm immediately reminded of Patton Oswalt's quip about recruiting in a sporting goods store. "Try the Avengers--they'll take anybody!"
- Much of the film focuses on the organizational hazards of having so many superegos all in one place. Think the MLB All-Star Game: a bunch of home run hitters and nobody willing to lay down a bunt. Some of these supersized personalities are entertaining enough, including Downey Jr.'s always impressive self-absorbed genius with an excess of nervous energy. Ruffalo is the film's real secret weapon, however, as an understandably skittish depressive whose ominous references to "The Other Guy" indicate real pain. The Avengers wisely pairs these two together in some of its best scenes, and the film gets a surprising amount of mileage out of several casual conversations amongst the superpowered. But of course no comic book movie can get by on dialogue alone. After an interminably long sequence that involves repairing Fury's flying fortress (why was that a good idea again?), the team finally heads to New York for the big finale. Loki gets punched, aliens get punched, Hulk provides some comic relief, let's do it all again next year, huh?
- In one sense, The Avengers is a perfect film representation of every comic book universe in that it is saddled with insistence on continuity (Natalie Portman's face has an unintentionally funny cameo) and the perceived demand for epic, cross-over events. Unfortunately, this approach to superheroes completely misses the everyman quality that Marvel traditionally excelled at capturing. With all these gods, hulks, and geniuses running around, there is little for the audience to relate to, here. Personally, I'd much rather hear about Spider-Man's bully problems or Rogue's troubles with boys and leave the supermen to that other comic book company. I won't say the film is a total loss -- it's entertaining enough and occasionally even witty -- but Marvel may have errored in launching the Avengers campaign with Iron Man, a truly compelling superhero film that featured far better writing, directing, and acting than this one.
- Cobie Smulders, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Stellan Skarsgård also have roles, but none so great as Harry Dean Stanton's cameo.
- I think Loki destroyed JDEM, but it's unclear if he replaced it with WFIRST.
- It should probably go without saying that there were the now-perfunctory Stan Lee cameo and post-credits scenes. They showed Thanos, but I'm guessing they won't actually put him in the sequel.
