What do you get when you combine Hollywood’s most profitable superheroes in one film? You get action, effects, humor and fun. In other words, you get The Avengers.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, or movies based on comic books are so not your thing, The Avengers are a team of heroes from various comic books who have been brought together by S.H.I.E.L.D., a secret military law enforcement agency, on a mission to save the world.
The team includes Thor (Chris Hemsworth), The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Captain America (Chris Evans) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) on the superhero side, as well as two regular humans with exceptional skills, Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson). They’re supervised by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and on a quest to stop Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who aims to use the all-powerful Tesseract to subjugate earth.
This film is so action packed that it would take me about 5,000 words to describe everything that happens, but suffice it to say that a lot goes down. We see the team assembling for the first time, their personal struggles and friendships, the reemergence of Thor’s brother Loki as a villain and the mythical Tesseract that we’ve seen glimpses of in all the single character movies that lead up to The Avengers. With this all-star group of heroes, the focus feels equally distributed and we get invested in each one of them in the first half of the film, which eases the transition from origin story to the pure, adrenaline-fueled, CGI orgy of action that follows.
The dynamic between the characters is great. Downey stands out because Tony Stark is such a delightful smart ass, Ruffalo is excellent at capturing the meek alter ego of his not-so-jolly green giant, Hemsworth is jacked beyond belief and Evans is channelling his inner Superman with his straight-laced, old-school hero. The guys get along, the guys fight, and the audience wins.
Let’s face it, movies today are expensive–3D movies even more so–and The Avengers definitely gives you the most bang for your buck. The final battle in New York is so action packed you might need to bring some eye drops because you’re not going to want to blink. Danger waits around every corner and we get to see superheroes do what the do best: throw down. Each character is highlighted individually and we also see their place within the team. This also gives the filmmakers an opportunity to show off just what these guys can do, from shield throwing to hammer tossing to building climbing to dishing out witty comebacks whilst zipping around in a high-tech suit.
If you enjoyed any of the individual character movies, you will loose your freaking mind in The Avengers. Director Joss Whedon manages to give us a hero team that’s even greater than the sum of its parts.
Does anyone think Roberts acting was so much more superior to the other actors in the movie. He is great but they all were, the movie would have worked with whomever.