A waste of time, money and Joss Whedon

Rating: 2/10 (9 May 2012)

As I finished watching the Avengers, the main thought in my head was, why on earth did they get Joss Whedon to write this???? Whedon is a master of witty, earthy dialogue and anyone who's ever watched Buffy, Angel or Firefly knows that he can direct action scenes and powerful interpersonal character connections, often in the same scene. Who directed this bland, one-dimensional shoot-em-up and what have you done with Joss Whedon?
This humorless CGI fest could have been handled by any number of robotic Hollywood hacks. I looked forward to this movie because I was over the moon with excitement at the thought that it COULDN'T be a typical jump-cut, screaming video game, and that's pretty much what we have here. The jokes are flat and the dialogue is embarrassing. I thought Scarlett Johannsson was charming, and I usually don't like her too much. But even worse is how the always incredibly watchable Mark Ruffalo was rendered a total snooze, how is that possible? Robert Downey is sarcastic as always and fun to watch but... God, it was just SO not good, a real letdown all around, like potential greatness flattened and made super dumb by the Hollywood crap machine