Movie Review: The Avengers

The long awaited team up film of some of marvels greatest super heroes is finally here.  After years of building and preparation and hype the film has amazingly delivered on its promise of an epic team up of some of our favorite heroes.  Blending so many characters and weaving a story dependent upon so many other films and elements is no small task.  But director Joss Whedon managed to juggle all of these elements and make a fun engaging experience.

The Premise

The Avengers revolves around the organization S.H.I.E.L.D. which is a quasi government operation with cutting edge technologies and a directive of ensuring earths protection from unusual threats.  The threat in this film is Loki (Tom Hiddleston) Thors brother who has teamed up with a race of hostile aliens in an attempt to take over the world.  This extra ordinary threat forces Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) to initiate the long gestating avengers initiative.  Bringing together Iron Man ( Robert Downey Jr.) Thor (Chris Hemsworth) Captain America (Chris Evans) The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson).  This team up has a rough beginning with characters disagreeing, fighting, and struggling to get this amazing team up working correctly before the final confrontation with Loki.

The Bad

This movie is a very tight and well crafted.  There were a couple things however that did bother me.  The main issue being that I was somewhat confused as to what Lokis motivation was.  I had seen Thor and I knew that Loki had been beaten by Thor and I was left to kind of assume that Loki was trying to get revenge from the last movie.  I just wish a bit more time was spent on Lokis motivations since he is such a driving force through the entire picture.  I was also somewhat confused on Lokis plan.  We are giving a couple of different ideas as to what Lokis intention actually was but they never play out on screen.  At one point we are given the idea that Lokis plan somehow includes the Hulk.  But that element never really plays out fully and ultimately felt like a clunky set up some action.

The Good

For the couple of things this film gets wrong it gets almost everything else right.  The idea to blend so many key characters into a single movie sounds like it would be a disaster.  It would have been too had all of these characters not been giving time to breathe in the films that preceded this one.  Taking out the origins of all of these characters and focusing heavily on S.H.I.E.L.D. and the formation of the team and foregoing any origin information really gave the film time to play with and give each character at least a couple of great moments.   All the actors in the film did a wonderful job.  I can not think of a single performance in which I was taken out of the movie or distracted by the acting.  The special effects were wonderfully done as well.  Hulk looked great, the aliens looked really cool, and some of the sets and places we go to in the movie looked amazing. 

Final Thoughts and Recommendation

This film I think most people were really excited to see but were also very worried about the potential for it to be horrible.  The blending of so many characters with such large and imposing personalities is a daunting task to say the least.  I think though that the director Joss Whedon did an amazing job bringing all of these elements together.  The visuals are great, the acting is great, the story is solid, and the pacing was pitch perfect.  The Avengers is a great time at the movies and if you are a comic fan or a fan of marvels previous movies then don’t hesitate to go see the avengers.  This film comes highly recommended. 

Final score 5/5