The Avengers--Review

“The Avengers.  That’s what we call ourselves.  Sort of like a team.  “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” type, thing.”

          I am going to try and be as objective as I can about “The Avengers”…nope, not gonna work.  I love this movie!  But I would, it was made in part with me in mind, fanboys that is.  The other part of it was made for boys, actual little boys who love to see explosions, superheroes being heroic, and Hulk smashing.  Which indeed he does.  A lot.

Marvel attempted something here, something historic.  They tried to use five separate films (The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, and two Iron Man’s) as a set up to this Avengers movie that would include all the previous heroes plus expanding a few more in the way of Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), The Black Widow (Scarlet Johansson) and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson).  A bold move to be sure, even in the realm of Hollywood.  It’s a good thing for them that their gamble paid off.  They made a fun, entertaining, super-hero charged film that will appeal to both fans and non-fans alike.  And you don’t need to have seen the previous Marvel movies to understand what’s going on, but it helps.

We start with the villain from Thor, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) who is also Thor’s half-brother, he gets it into his head that if he can’t rule Asgard, their homeworld, Earth is the next best thing.  So he gets the MacGuffin (Alfred Hitchcock coined it as the device used to motivate the characters and plot) called the Tesseract, a cube of ultimate power, and then proceeds to play chess with the seemingly unprepared Nick Fury and agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  Little does he know, or does he?  That Fury has begun to gather Earth’s mightiest heroes to help defend it against the Loki’s evil plan.  The ‘gathering’ of the heroes is the first half of the movie, re-introducing Captain America (Chris Evans) Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Bruce Banner aka the Hulk played by Mark Ruffalo, who is the third actor to portray the character in the films.  So while you’re waiting for the big final brawl to come in the last part of the film, in the meantime you get some great banter between the characters, who each are given a moment to shine, something writer/director Joss Whedon (Serenity) does extremely well.

The Avengers does not disappoint as a fantastic summer blockbuster, as a great super-hero team film, and as an epic undertaking that began five films ago, or to put it in fanboy terms.  This is the superhero film we’ve been asking for, and now that it’s here all we can say is, “Thank you sir, may I have another!”

P.S. Be sure to stay in your seat through the first part of the credits, there is a great teaser waiting in the shadows.

--Robert L. Castillo