The Avengers (They've Finally Assembled!)

I've spent all day trying to think of a way of reviewing this movie whilst simultaneously doing it justice and not giving any spoilers. I decided to just write and see what happens. I'll try to avoid spoilers, but can't promise some won't just slip through...



Directed by Joss Whedon
Written by Zak Penn and Joss Whedon

Cast
Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man
Chris Evans as Steve Rogers/Captain America
Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/The Hulk
Lou Ferrigno as the voice of The Hulk
Chris Hemsworth as Thor
Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow
Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton/Hawkeye
Tom Hiddleston as Loki
Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury
Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill
Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson
Stellan Skarsgard as Erik Selvig
Gwyneth Paltrow as Virginia "Pepper" Potts
Paul Bettany as the voice of JARVIS

It's been four years since a post-credits appearance by Nick Fury confirmed that The Avengers was on the way. Four long years with enough excitement building up that this moment could even surpass the end of Christopher Nolan's Batman saga as the most eagerly anticipated film of the year. Along the way, there have of course been doubts that a movie on this scale could even work. Take a look at the cast list up there, and you will find that there are ten major characters. Eleven if you include Bruce Banner and The Hulk as different characters. How would it be possible to fit all of those characters into one two hour movie without some of them getting short-changed?

The answer, of course, is to bring in a writer/director who knows a thing or two about writing for an ensemble cast. Joss Whedon is best known for the TV shows Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Firefly - and also had a celebrated run on the X-Men comics. All of those feature large casts that are all given their moments to shine, and are critically-acclaimed across the board for their sharp scripts. You couldn't go wrong, right? Well, the fact that his only directorial effort - a follow-up to the unfinished Firefly, called Serenity - had a budget of $39 million and didn't even break even at the box office, despite it being almost universally applauded. The Avengers by contrast has a budget in excess of $200 million, so despite his undisputed reputation for quality, it's still quite a risk that Marvel Studios placed on his shoulders. And one that surprised a lot of people, at that.

The good news, however, is that it worked. He pulled it off. They said it couldn't be done, but... well, I've been having trouble trying to express in words just how successful this movie is. For the first time in a long time, there just isn't a flaw that I can see anywhere in this movie.

One year after the events of Thor - which in the movie timeline is later than all of the rest - S.H.I.E.L.D. are studying the Tesseract that gave Captain America so much trouble with the help of scientist Erik Selvig. But almost immediately, things don't go according to plan as a portal opens through which steps Loki, who makes off the with the Tesseract and sets about his plans to conquer the planet. A desperate S.H.I.E.L.D. recruits Bruce Banner (they know where he's been all along) to help as a scientific consultant before sending Captain America and Black Widow after Loki in an impressive action scene which also includes Iron Man.

Before you know it, Thor also makes an appearance, and all hell breaks loose. After much squabbling between themselves and hilarious one-liners, Nick Fury has no alternative but to activate the Avengers Initiative - a plan to bring together Earth's best and brightest at a moment of crisis.

And that's as much story stuff as I feel I can tell you. Needless to say, the action - which has been for the most part impressive in the previous movies - really gets ramped up to eleven here, and it just gets bigger and better from there. The final battle, in which our heroes all fight for the future of the planet, far from being the anticlimax we've gotten used to from the final battles in these movies is so big and so epic that you really need to see it to believe it. This is really as good as it gets for a comic book movie... as close to the comics actually coming to life as you're ever going to get. And what's better is that not a single one of the major characters can claim to have not gotten their due. Each and every character on-screen gets his/her moment to shine, and boy do they shine! The final battle plays to each of the characters' strengths which serves to really drive home that, yes... all of these heroes needed to be there. Without any one of them, the whole plan would have fallen apart. Also, any criticisms that anyone had about Black Widow in Iron Man 2 will most definitely be expelled in this movie.

And then there's the script. Joss Whedon really knocks this one out of the park, with his trademark wit and charisma. There are also a few surprises, which is something that Whedon is also known for. Thankfully, though, he's resisted the urge to have the characters speak "Whedonese" which really would've taken the cast all out of character in this case. Another big worry is that by taking these characters out of their own movies and putting them together, there wouldn't be the chemistry required to make even the sharpest script work. These worries disappear the moment the characters interact with each other for the first time. It was like these actors were meant for each other. I don't want to give too much of the script away, but a definite highlight is "Doth your mother know you weareth her drapes?"

So there you go. The Avengers. Go see it. You owe it to yourself to see this movie. I was surprised at how jaw-droppingly spectacular it is. If I had Christopher Nolan's e-mail address I would send him the following single-sentence message... "The bar has been raised".