The Avengers

All of the Marvel movies had been leading up to this one.  It all started way back with the first Iron Man movie, then the Hulk.  The after credits scenes hinted that this movie would come.  People complained because the second Iron Man movie was more of an advertisement for Thor than anything else.  Then Thor and Captain America were released, and the idea of there being one movie with all of them seemed to be more realistic than ever.

Unfortunately, I had some reservations about it.  I mean, how could they really put this many characters together and make it work?  The previews looked really good, and the one with Tony Stark saying "we have a Hulk" was great.  Needless to say, my excitement for the movie started to amp up over the winter, and I was only worried about being somewhat letdown.

Fortunately, Joss Whedon not only lived up to expectations, but he surpassed them.  The movie was pretty damn good and I am happy to see that it had the biggest opening of all time.  I just wish DC would pay attention (or just allow Marvel handle their movie projects). 

The movie started pretty quickly with Loki stealing the Tesseract and then a pretty funny scene with Black Widow, which ends with her beating up some Russians.  The team is assembled fairly easily and we get a nice battle between Iron Man and Thor, with Captain America jumping in the middle and an amazing scene of Thor's hammer versus Cap's shield.

The only slow part came after the death of Coulson and the team splitting apart.  It seemed like that half hour was the slow point of the movie and I really thought that it may end with a cliffhanger.  Maybe the Chitauri would attack the city and pretty much have beaten each hero individually.  Actually, that would have been pretty cool.  It could have ended on a moment where the world is being conquered and Captain America calls out through secure lines "Avengers assemble!"  And then boom, end movie.

Instead, the team comes together pretty quickly and saves the day.  Do not get me wrong, it was pretty badass.  I loved the way Banner tells the group that his biggest secret is that he is always angry.  The Hulk destroying that flying monster was great and when he and Thor take down another one and then Hulk just punches Thor was pretty damn hilarious.

I do want to mention that Hawkeye was pretty much how I imagined.  I am glad they did not go with his traditional costume and instead used a black suit.  I think everyone was wrong about the majority of the fight scenes involving the three human characters.  I did not feel like they were chewing up the screen time to save money on CGI, did anyone else?

The first post-credit scene showed Thanos finding out that the humans put up a good fight.  If I remember correctly, Thanos has a thing for death.  He will want to come to Earth to give Death a gift.  I just wonder if this will be more of the plot of the next Iron Man movie?  Also, will the next Thor movie have something to do with this, or just be separate?  I am excited for the future.

I think Maria Hill will end up dating Captain America...

My favorite line from the movie was probably when Captain America is about to jump out of the plane to go after Iron Man and Thor, Black Widow yells "Captain, that is a god you are going after."  Cap responds "There is only god ma'am, and these guys ain't him."  I am obviously paraphrasing here, but I just love the way Chris Evans pulls off those lines of a guy still from the 1940s.

I would also like to note that Mark Ruffalo was fantastic as Bruce Banner.  He had that nervous, quiet, shy quality that Banner needs.  I also thought his reference to the Hulk as the other guy was pretty cool.  The banter between Banner and Stark were cool, I loved the way Stark was trying to push him to accept the Hulk.  Actually, I enjoyed all the banter between the different characters.

Let me know what you thought of the movie.

Comic Book Movie Grade:  A