Avengers United

Rating: 8/10 (3 March 2013)

Take that, Transformers! THAT'S how you show a city under attack with heart, action, pacing, special effects, fun, excitement, characters to root for, humans to empathize with and most of all, legitimate comprehensiveness.
Cross-over films are rare, but I'm a fan of them. Freddy Vs. Jason did a great job of bringing two of my childhood favorites together in 2003. Nine years later, The Avengers didn't really bring together my favorites, but it sure as hell put very good characters in a fantastic action/adventure superhero film.
Aside from some second-act pacing problems and an insipid villain with extremely questionable and blurry motives, the movie worked extremely well with huge, unique and deafening explosions, some of the best 3-D I've seen – and I'm hugely critical of that format, large action sets, fairly good score and cinematography, deep characters and a whole lot of humor. Further everyone with the exception of Hulk, had equal sharing time on screen. (Sadly, Hulk had only two scenes, albeit THEY WERE WORTH IT. They blew whatever the previous two entire movies based on his character out of the water.)
Very nicely, you wouldn't have had to see the previous six or so Marvel/Avenger movies – they were extremely crafty re-introducing them and their individual backdrops with swiftness. But, if you had see the other films, like I have, they included everyone you loved from before, including a cameo from someone I prayed would be in this. Hint: Initials PP.
During a secret-agency S.H.I.E.L.D experiment with a mysterious blue box of the gods, evil and jealous brother of god Thor, Loki strolls into our realm and is hell-bent on ruling Earth. I guess it's time to assemble Earth's Mightiest Heroes for the Avenger initiative.
Of course, like creator Stan Lee's brilliance displayed over the decades, these aren't your normal super-heroes; they have depth and typically are individuals not playing well with others. Hence, a good portion of this film is a boxing match. Naturally, there are reasons behind this as well furthering the overall depth of the epic.
Will the Avengers avenge Earth? I don't want to spoil it, but you'd really have to be blind not to know. I can definitely say they each uniquely KICK ASS in their respect roles.
Probably thanks to, or in conjunction with good direction, these actors KNEW their roles and had them down pat. With the exception of new-(to the series)-Mark Ruffalo as Dr. Bruce Banner, each one of them, again with 80% equal sharing time, were pitch-perfect.
I always love Robert Downey Jr and especially in his Iron Man role, and if you did, too, you'll be laughing and marveling at his performance all over again. Same with Chris Evans who was GREAT as Captain America and really had his character pegged. Chris Hemsworth as Thor and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury were good and even though Jackson had to tone down to the PG-13, he was still badass. Scarlett Johansson was awesome and still gorgeous and Jeremy Renner was a lot of fun to watch again. (Recently he was wonderful in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and hopefully he'll continue the trend in the fourth Bourne film later this summer.)
Finally, Mark Ruffalo has always been an actor I've admired and I think he did fine here and oodles better than Edward Norton, the last Dr. Bruce Banner actor. But, I still think, movie-wise, that is, Eric Bana has been my favorite Bruce. (Note: I said Bruce, because Bill Bixby will always be the best Dr. Banner ever.)
Excluding Loki's horned and silly god-outfit, I actually bought their costumes. And this is saying a lot for a movie that I previously scuffed at the sight of the funny blue Captain America uniform and when he donned them in the film, I feel right into it. I believe that's thanks to Evans who was so great that it never occurred to me for him to have anything else on.
I believe the overall movie elevated itself higher than what could've happened with a premise of assembling multiple superheroes and story lines. That said, the special effects were about 90% fantastic with the remaining percentage devoted to the awful out-of-world and in space aliens surrounding the ho-hum and dull villain. They had the same problem with the original Thor movie and (on the DC-side) Green Lantern.
I wanted to rank and rate this movie higher, especially since I had an absolute blast laughing my ass off and was captivated with the action fun, but in addition to what I previously wrote: second act pacing problems, laughable aliens and bad villain, it also had the clichéd go-to "idiotic idea" in the very climax, I downgraded it a bit. Still, I awarded it 4/5 stars and cannot wait to see it again. Preferably on IMAX again.
SEE IT – even if you're not a fan of the superhero franchises.
Now BRING ON WHAT I REALLY WANT TO SEE: the Justice League movie!!