AVENGERS ASSEMBLE! (Review)

The Avengers is a damn good movie

No other way to put it. After many years of build up with the 5 previous Tie in movies of Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Iron Man II and Captain America the Avengers has arrived and everyone loves it. As much as I claim to be a movie buff (I'm not). I use to watch a lot of movies but I never really appreciated them that you would adequately review a film to where you could point out specific film techniques and how well it was paced and the performance of the actors and all that junk that would legitimise a film review. All I know is I saw this movie 8 days ago when it came out and I'm still agonising over what to tell people about it. This movie in a word... is Awesome.

I honestly don't trust my own judgement and ability to portray my exact feelings adequately so Here is Neil Cumpston's review of the Avengers, a legendary internet movie reviewer from Ain't it Cool in the sense that his reviews aren't really reviews. They are like crazy hobo fever dream ramblings written by a coked up English major frat boy that hasn't sleep in the past 3 days but really needs to get this paper done before he passes out.



Regardless here is my poorly planned and rambling review of the 2012 Marvel film, The Avengers.

I was literally expecting one of two things, either a freaking train wreck of a film or at least something just tolerable and watchable that it wouldn't offend me too much. I wasn't expecting such a complex and well structured action movie. Now I was expecting the Avengers to be all about Robert Downey Jr and it basically being Iron man 3 because let's face it Robert Downey Jr is one hell of a talent and frankly he's Awesome. There is something magnetic about his film presence and his portrayal of Tony Stark is a thing of beauty. But that isn't the case, Joss Whedon who is known the internet all as a King of Nerds really handled the epic undertaking amazingly well. The creator of critically acclaimed shows Buffy, Firefly and Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long blog was in charge of Directing and Writing the film. Under his guidance each character had essentially equal camera and development and had great back stories for their characters. How he was able to do this is really just what we've already seen him do with his Television shows that are strongly character driven with snappy witty dialogue and amazingly crafted Universes with excellent attention to detail. Joss Whedon was essentially the perfect man for the Job, his style of film making perfectly portrayed a rag tag group of super humans coming together and overcoming their differences to save the World. (No big surprise the Good Guys win right?)

To me the story is strangely pieced together at the start with Loki who is Thor's adapted Brother that was exiled from his Home planet of Asgard and is still rather resentful of Thor for being their Father's Favourite has amassed a giant space army. Armed with a sweet magical sceptre and using the Tesseract (Cosmic Cube) which is an alien source of energy of unimaginable power he is able to charm people and help him build a portal for his cosmic army to come through and take over the Earth. Why Loki would want to take over Earth is actually beyond me considering that we are essentially one of the weakest and most useless Planets in the Universe full of Demi-Gods and Intergalactic alien monsters. But regardless the Government espionage agency SHIELD calls into effect the Avengers initiative. A project where they will assemble a team of Earth's mightiest warriors in hopes of defending it against unforeseen terror. So yeah, it's written like the pilot of a new Sci-Fi show coming to a cable network sometime later this year expect there are Superheroes in it.

Under the supervision of Nick Fury who is basically just a one eyed version of Samuel L. Jackon himself who spends most of the time either yelling at someone, running around looking old or shooting something the Team is formed. The Team comprised of Norse God of Thunder Thor, Billionaire playboy philanthropist and arms developer Tony Stark aka Iron Man, Frozen Hero of World War II and Super Solider Captain America, Gamma Radiation Expert and Scientist Dr Bruce Banner aka The Hulk, SHIELD agent and expert marksman Hawkeye and the beautiful yet dangerous Russian Spy now SHEILD agent Black Widow. Also you can't mention the Avengers without key SHEILD Agent Philip Coulson who is responsible for shepherding the team together in hopes that they can fight as a team... Also because he's basically been the guy responsible for keeping an eye on Iron Man making sure things get done around SHIELD headquarters.

Of course with a team comprised of Super Humans, Gods, Machine Men and Raging Hulk Monsters its hard for anything productive to be done when their larger than life egos start clashing. Each member of the team is dealing with their own personal issues, whether it be Thor who feels enormous guilt for what his Brother Loki is doing in hopes of taking over the World to The Hulk who all he wants to do now is the help people but he can't while this other part of him is so used to destroying things. Each Avenger has their own personal demon to conquer in their own special way, it's actually amazing to see them get fleshed out, especially with Hulk where he starts about his crippling depression that he attempted suicide but "the other guy just spat out the bullet". Captain America feels out of place and lost in this strange new World where the values he was use to have fallen by the wayside. Black Widow and Hawkeye deal with being the only "Human" Avengers but also with their dark pasts and relationship with one another where as Iron Man's problem is he is incapable of putting his ego aside and listening to other people's ideas and opinions.

That being said, I honestly think this incarnation of the Hulk portrayed by Mark Ruffalo is the best one to date in film. There was something so sad about Bruce Banner in this that you couldn't help but feel for the guy even before he starts losing control and breaking things.

And if I'm giving out kudos to actors, another one for Tom Hiddleston as Loki who was amazing in Thor but he really shone through again in the Avengers. He was riveting, every time he's on screen and he commands your attention. Dude was smiling from ear to ear and you could tell he was having a great damn time.

However once all that gets resolved the Third Act of this movie is nothing but a straight up War in Manhattan. Just 30 minutes of explosions and bodies flying and everything great about comic book heroes doing awesome comic book hero things. The rotating shot of all the Avengers standing together was such a stirring movie moment I actually felt the giddy child inside me squeal with delight to see them all fighting together. The Final Battle is something out of a Michael Bay's play book, Aliens and Explosions... EVERYWHERE! Except the audience can actually follow what is happening on screen rather then being overwhelmed with a bombardment of fire and sparks and poorly framed explosions.

I would be remiss to not say something about the use of Hulk in the final fight. The lumbering giant was easily my new favourite of the team as he went around destroying giant flying machine... fish looking.... monster things with savagely graceful swings of his mighty fists. Like watching a baby destroying his brother's sand castle at the beach whilst having a sick grin smacked across their face. Seriously, the Hulk is Awesome in this movie, I was never really a Hulk fan until now. His confrontation with Loki is one of the best physical gags I've seen in long time in film and was so unexpected and shocking I literally had no other choice but to break out in laughter. Again the genius of Whedon's vision shines though as Hulk mutters a smug one liner afterwards and continues on his merry way.

All in all this is great film, Joss Whedon has done something short of a miracle here and has delivered an amazing cinematic experience. Usually these days of shallow and vapid sequels, reboots and blatant money grabs from Hollywood studios is good to see a franchise being handled by someone who loves and respects the actual source material. With such high expectations and hype going into the movie I left deeply satisfied and actually craving a second viewing of it. I still plan on catching this in the cinema again. Although there is a 3D option to view this movie I wouldn't bother, the film was transferred in post so the movie wasn't optimised for it but it is still great enough to warrant you actually going down to the local cinema and watching it with Big screen, surround sound and a handful of other people.

Also be sure to stick around after the movie for bonus scenes. There are 2 additional scenes waiting for those patient enough to sit through some credits.

But seriously.... Go see this movie, it's not often you have a good reason to go and watch a movie these days.