Paramount Pictures in association with Walt Disney Pictures
Rated PG-13
Running time: 142 Minutes
Click below to watch The Avengers trailer.
In Marvel Studios The Avengers, written and directed by Joss Whedon - the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer - the Trickster Norse God Loki, Tom Hiddleston, steals a powerful power source called a tesseract from the counter terrorism and intelligence agency of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division - S.H.I.E.L.D. In order to recover the tesseract, S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Nick Fury, Samuel L. Jackson, then feels it is time to gather together a team of heroes that becomes - The Avengers.
Based on the Marvel comic book, The Avengers - created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby - the team of heroes that Jackson puts together consists of Captain America, Chris Evans, Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr., Thor, Chris Hemsworth, The Hulk, Mark Ruffalo, along with The Black Widow, Scarlett Johansson, and Hawkeye, Jeremy Renner. This team is a dysfunctional group of people - which eventually become Earth's Mightiest Heroes. The team was so dysfunctional, there was one scene where everyone yells at each other because of their hidden agendas. While this all may seem quite dramatic, and the movie is dramatic, this dysfunction of the team also leads to some funny moments.
With Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, and The Hulk having their own movies previously produced by Marvel leading up to the ultimate team adventure, of which The Avengers is, Marvel built up quite an audience which lead to The Avengers breaking the $200 million mark for an opening weekend and breaking $100 million in it's second weekend - thus setting a couple of new records. I saw the movie as the first showing on a Sunday afternoon the first weekend and the theater was pretty full. When the movie ended, there was a line for the next show when I got out.
While some of the previous Marvel movies were uneven, The Avengers is the ultimate comic book movie. The super hero battles utilized all of the heroes talents and powers, making the battles intense. All of the Avengers had their own little scenes, which gave them some characterization in the movie, allowing you to get to know all of them - although there was not as much characterization done with Renner's Hawkeye - but it was great to see Renner as the World's Greatest Marksman shoot all of his arrows, even if he was not referred as the World's Greatest Marksman but a master assasin.
Hiddleston as Thor's adopted brother Loki is the bad guy of the movie. Although, there were times that Hiddleston seemed to have just accepted things and had just let himself get captured - which made Hiddleston to me appear to be not as strong, or as evil as a super villain who wants to rule humanity as he should have been. Even though I knew Hiddleston had sinister intentions for doing that, I still felt a little wishy-washy about Hiddleston being the ultimate bad guy as a result. However, Hiddleston's interactions and intense battles with The Avengers makes up for Hiddleston being so wishy-washy. Loki's helmet was straight out of the comics and the helmet really made me believe that Hiddleston was the evil Loki when he wore it. With Hiddleston's helmet on, this was the evil Loki that I grew up with.
I was wondering how they were going to bring Hemsworth's Thor back to Earth - because at the end of the Thor movie, Hemsworth had left Earth. While Hemsworth's Thor did return to Earth in The Avengers, Thor's return was more of an incidental thing in The Avengers rather than his return being a significant plot point. Hemsworth's and Hiddleston's fraternal rivalry was great to see again, as their fraternal rivalary is the basis for Hiddleston's sinister motivation - as well as Hemsworth's sense of responsibility, because it is Hemsworth's brother that is causing all of this destruction.
Hiddleston's army from space was alluded to throughout the film, but it is only until the climax that you actually get to see his alien army. The climax is similar to the climax of the Transformer films and Green Lantern, but The Avengers climax is a much better climax as there are multiple threats in the movie and you can tell the bad guys and the good guys apart. Civilians and military are involved in the climax, and not just as victims. One of my favorite scenes in the climax is of a line of New York City police officers shooting up at some attacking airborne aliens in their defense as the aliens are strafing the police. Jackson's Nick Fury must deal with a scenario straight out of the movie Fail Safe. That scene shows how desperate the situation has turned into, although you have a fairly good idea of how it would turn out.
S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Helicarrier as their floating/flying aircraft carrier Headquarters was great, right out of the comic books. To see the Helicarrier take off and fly shows how large a craft it really is. The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents on board the Helicarrier were dressed in the uniforms just like what they wear in the comic books. While I believe there was a resolution for the tesseract, the resolution was not a big enough resolution for me to truely remember it. If the resolution scene is the scene that I think it is, I have to concentrate to remember that particular scene out of all the memorable scenes in the movie. For comic book fans, comic book creator Stan Lee's cameo appearance appears at the end of the movie - so you can concentrate on watching the movie instead of looking for Lee. Cameo appearances of characters from the other Marvel movies also appear in the movie, with the fate of one such character at stake.
With the Hulk being motion-captured from Ruffalo, this was the most believable to me computer graphic of the Hulk. It was still a computer graphic, but this computer graphic Hulk was much more believable as a character to me than other CGI Hulks. It is nice to know that Lou Ferrigno got to do the voice of the Hulk once again after playing the Hulk in various forms over the years since his TV show The Incredible Hulk several years ago.
I saw the movie in Dolby 3D. The film was shot in 2D and converted to 3D. This conversion was most obvious in the slow opening scenes, and was not very good 3D in the beginning, which made me wish that I did not pay for a 3D show - but the 3D did get better as the movie went on and I enjoyed the 3-D look of the movie.
At the end of the movie the audience applauded. There is a scene during the end credits that alludes to the Avengers sequel. While they did not mention the name, the makeup alludes to some known Marvel villains of whom I am looking forward to as they would make great villains - if they are the villains I am thinking of. At the very end of the end credits, there is a little intimate silent scene. Although, like the guy said behind me mentioned at the end - they should have said something during the scene. It was a great place for a joke.
Rated PG-13 for violence. Running time: 142 minutes.
Click for movie reviews of the following movies: Iron Man 2, Thor, and Captain America.
Pancho
All people smile in the same language.
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