The Avengers: Assembling Marvel’s Mightiest Movie (So Far)
If you have been watching the movie adaptations of Marvel Comics, you’ve seen this one coming for a while now. Since the start of the excellent Iron Man movies and the teaser appearance of Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Marvel Comics and Marvel fans have been getting ready for the movie adaptation of Marvel’s iconic superhero team, The Avengers. On May 4th, a patient, movie-spanning plan to weld the various stories of the Marvel Movie Universe together finally came to fruition. And by god, it delivers 100% on its hype.
The Avengers kicks off tying together the endings of Iron Man 2, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger; The Tesseract, the ultimate power source Captain America liberated from his enemy Red Skull in WWII, has been a subject of S.H.I.E.L.D. research into the modern day. The story begins when Loki (Tom Hiddleson), Thor’s defeated rival and brother, reappears after his uncertain fate at the end of Thor and steals the Tesseract for himself, embarking on a plan to conquer Earth and grant his mysterious new benefactor the means to conquer the universe. Nick Fury, desperate to counteract Loki’s plans, calls in Bruce Banner (switching actors for the third time so far to Mark Ruffalo), Tony Stark (played as always by the inimitable Robert Downey Jr.), and “Captain America” Steve Rodgers (Chris Evans) to aid S.H.I.E.L.D. Thor (Chris Hemsworth), feeling responsible for Loki, descends to earth to try and stop him on his own. Tempers flare, zingers are fired, and explosions happen as the strongest heroes on the planet learn to put aside their differences and work together to save the world.
The first movie based off of any comic book title is going to be the origin of that hero or team. This is a given, but The Avengers has a huge boon going for it that it has had five or so independent movies acting as its prequels, depending on whether or not you consider The Incredible Hulk’s second movie to be part of the shared universe setup. We’ve seen Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor and know how they work as the main heroes of their stories, and we know S.H.I.E.L.D’s agents as the common element binding the movies together. This gives the script a lot of leeway to dispense with the pleasantries of introducing everyone involved to the audience and instead focusing more on how these well-established characters interact when they are suddenly forced to be a team, which leads to some interesting hurdles to overcome. Clean-cut man of duty Captain America butts heads with the more chaotic and individualistic Iron Man, while Thor underestimates the mettle of human heroes and Bruce Banner struggles with his fear and resentment of his extremely dangerous secret identity, The Hulk, in comparison to the men around him that freely accept and use their powers. The script isn’t afraid to take its time and tell the story it wants to tell, and so it avoids Thor‘s blunder of trying to cram too much character development and action into too short a time; most of the movie is dedicated to the heroes learning to identify as a team before finally rewarding us by showing it in action in the kick-ass climactic battle when each member fully comes into their own. Between Joss Whedon’s typical snappy dialogue and some of the best action sequences in a Marvel Movie to date, The Avengers is one of the most satisfying crossover events I’ve ever seen, and a must-see for any Marvel Fan.
I really loved this movie! One thing I didn’t understand though is how the Hulk suddenly learned to behave and work in a team, while last time he changed into the Hulk he tried to kill one of them. Also the actor that plays Captain America also plays The Human Torch from the Fantastic Four. If the Fantastic Four and the Avengers ever meet, that’s going to be awkward. XD
Really excited for the second Avengers movie. The new enemy is pretty bad ass :3
Okay, now I have to go see the movie.