Everything you could have wanted

Rating: 9/10 (8 May 2012)

The Avengers was a film with so much hype it was of course difficult to see it really living up to expectations. The film absolutely does and then some, wasting little time with exposition we meet all the characters fairly quickly making for an impressive feat in that the film ran at over two hours. If you have seen at least some of the films starring these characters you will be more than aware of them, but even if you haven't it is not difficult to pick up on the characters that have had their own films. In the case of The Hulk it really doesn't matter. So newcomers are welcome but some familiarity with Thor may be of preference although personally I didn't have it. In terms of the development it seemed as though there was an inevitability that some would get the upper hand. Namely Iron Man, Captain America and Thor with some coming for the Hulk. The likes of Black Widow and Hawkeye having less but still getting enough to get by, even if Black Widow's felt a little like it was produced in short bursts.
Even early in the film I felt like Iron Man was stealing the show, this felt like a strength as egos can become rife in the characters if they are not written properly. Luckily we didn't have to endure poorly written blanket egos on screen. The Hulk was probably the character that stole the show throughout the entire film at least outside of the villain Loki. The Hulk was approached in a humorous manner devoid of complete seriousness from Eric Bana's and semi seriousness from Edward Norton's. The character is played in some way for comedic effect and once the Hulk is on screen he has the largest presence out of all of characters and Mark Ruffalo played it brilliantly knowing exactly what he was there for. Back to Loki, where he worked as a strong villain never quite making for a hammy comic book villain tailored for a family audience or the dark interpretation that has become typically associated with Christopher Nolan's Batman films. In terms of action it was excellent, earlier parts of the film were lacking light at all so it may be worth missing 3D. However the action later in the film worked brilliantly in 3D, especially for a post conversion. For some viewers it may bring back memories of Transformers: Dark of The Moon but at no point was it a cluster of images. The Avengers works as a film not requiring multiple things happening on screen and unlike the Transformers films the action always stayed exciting and left you wanting more. It also utilises humour in a brilliant way using it fairly frequently without reaching gag territory. All in all it is a very fun film and should you not like superhero films (because if you do you don't need me to tell you to see it)then you should just see it as it works as just a fun and sometimes epic summer blockbuster.