I wasn't surprised to enjoy this movie, given that I'm a pretty rabid Whedonite. Evidently a script already existed for this film, but Joss rewrote it, and I'm sure vastly improved it in the process. The dialogue for the most part is really good, moving quickly and with funny parts in just the right places. Exchanges between Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) can become a bit labored, with all the elaborate phrasing, but I suppose that isn't to be sneered at since it fits with the characters.
The basic premise of The Avengers is as follows:
Multiple superheroes of one ilk or another are off doing their own thing when disturbances start occurring at a remote research facility housing a tesseract. I'm assuming they're drawing directly from Madeleine L'Engle's concept of this, and I hope they paid her royalties. In both instances, a tesseract is essentially a wormhole, folding space to create an instantaneous path between two extremely distant locations. Her definition is the title of the book, A Wrinkle In Time, but since it also appears to work within space, that's the one I'm going with. (We could argue for a while that space and time are the same thing, but I'm just going to leave this here and move on.)
At any rate, our villain Loki appears and proceeds to wreak havoc on his new surroundings, killing some people and enslaving others, the latter including a hero, Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), and a physicist to whom he's given the task of preparing the tesseract for a very specific portal in order to let his massive army through and subjugate all of humanity. Since this development seems like a bad idea (few people think letting a delusional narcissist from another planet be in charge of an all-powerful energy source and portal through space is a good thing, particularly when he wants to use it for military transport), Director Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) of S.H.I.E.L.D. gathers together his motley collection of superheroes. Some are more willing than others, but all show up eventually.
Much bickering and in-fighting ensues as these larger than life characters become accustomed to having one another around in close proximity, and of course they eventually learn they must all work together to defeat Loki, including getting Hawkeye and the physicist out from under his control as soon as possible. Rogue scientists are never good news, as we've seen in every outbreak movie ever, and Hawkeye keeps trying to murder them all by taking down their giant flying aircraft carrier. Excitement! I won't spoil the ending for you, but there are some tense moments involving Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.). This is of course idiotic since we all know there's an Iron Man 3 coming out, but I still found myself worrying for the character. I blame RDJ for this, since it's his fault for playing Iron Man so engagingly.
Whedon's directing is very good, sometimes giving us interesting perspectives on the action, such as showing one of Captain America's (Chris Evans) exchanges through the mirror of a downed motorcycle. The cameras aren't too shaky, which is good for those who have motion-sickness issues and don't wish to spray puke all over the unfortunate souls seated in front of us. Poor Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) evidently spent most of the film in a leotard as his character's shape was computer-generated, so I hope the box office numbers make him feel compensated for that indignity. Gwyneth Paltrow's Pepper Potts is barely even in this movie, but she's entertaining for the few moments we see her. Well done, GOOP!
The film is approximately 90% action, so if that isn't your bag, I suggest you pass on this. Also, depending on your theater, the explosions in this movie may turn you partially deaf for a short while afterward. Ours had the volume up a bit too loud, and I had an amazing headache toward the end. If you do enjoy action films and Joss Whedon's writing in particular, I highly recommend Avengers.
The only real gripe I had was that Loki's costume (and Thor's, to a lesser extent) looked an awful lot like it was made of plastic. I can see how wearing giant metal horns on your head would be troublesome for an actor, but surely they could've found something that looked a little less like it came out of Walmart's end-of-season Halloween bin. On the up side, at least Loki wasn't wearing the bacon sleeves sported by Khan's primary minion in Star Trek II. So there's that.
Two things to bear in mind:
Firstly, as with The Hunger Games, this film is incredibly popular even more than a week after its release. If you are going to a weekend showing, arrive at least 30 minutes early to ensure an excellent seat. We were 45 minutes early and were among the first, but there were a full two lines of people waiting by the time we were allowed in, and even the bottom nosebleed seats were packed when everyone was inside.
Secondly, there are two chunks of film that happen after the initial start of the credits, so DON'T LEAVE if you wish to see them. One takes place after the first main bit of credits (all the stars, director, etc.), and consists of the Big Bad having a conversation with a failed minion, along with some foreshadowing and creeptastic smiles. The other takes place after about a minute of scrolling credits, and shows the gang sitting around eating the shawarma mentioned by Iron Man. We left after the first chunk, and I only found out later about the other one, so let this be your warning.
All things considered, the film is funny and engaging. It doesn't drag, and Whedon fans will be pleased to see that his style infuses the movie without turning it into Buffy, Dollhouse, or similar. Even relatively minor characters (Renner's Hawkeye and Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow) are given their own time to shine, so nobody feels left out, and each role is very well cast. I wouldn't recommend 3D (really, is anything less impressive than a giant spaceship zooming out at you and then having parts of it clipped off because the 3D doesn't extend out far enough?) or IMAX, mostly because there is so much going on in this movie that if you have to keep sweeping your eyes back and forth across a massive screen to take it all in, you won't appreciate the finer details. 9/10
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