close, but no cigar

Rating: 8/10 (27 April 2012)

since everyone has talked about the good pts. quite lengthily already, let me share my thoughts on why it still fell short of my expectations:

didn't get what loki was up to with the whole alien invasion plan; i mean, what's his end-game assuming they win, when it seems the aliens are in it for themselves

speaking of the aliens.. they're just too inept and posed almost no threat at all, other than the sheer size of their army. even black widow thrashed a number of them, when i was expecting the skill level and strength of these invaders would at least be "capt America" level;

capt America.. now there's a character who was just embarrassingly poorly used. i felt like he was being bossed around by everyone, when in the comics, he is the true leader. the scene, where all of sudden, he was giving orders to everyone, was just trite. i mean, where was this even coming from? never showed any true leadership qualities for a good 2 hrs of the movie, and now he's calling the shots? could've been better developed

and the team, after fighting and arguing the whole time, i just didn't see a good enough plot device for them to get their act together, for the big alien battle. it was just too abrupt for me, w/o any clear progression from individual issues to being integral members of a team. and the death of the agent as a trigger? c'mon! that's just lame. there was no emotional investment for anyone on the team to decide on what happened next. other than widow and hawkeye, who barely worked with the guy, the rest just didn't have anything much to do with guy, even ironman, for that matter. i think what i'm driving at is the transition, how these superheroes should have evolved from individuals to being members of the team, begged for improvement.

minor gripe: though ruffalo did pretty well, i think the part wasn't as well written. hulk/banner character was just confusing. he attacks widow & thor, and next thing you know, he develops compassion, camaraderie, and heroic tendencies. plus, this banner is completely diff from the norton banner in terms of how he was written. can't imagine norton referring to "hulk" simply as the "other guy", and in that manner; was just so out of character for me.

don't get me wrong, i did enjoy the movie. great action scenes. just wasn't too thrilled with the plot and story. they could have taken a page from the animated movie, "ultimate avengers". now, that was tight story that the live avengers movie could have been, even w/o giant man & wasp.