The Marvel Team delivers a top-notch series home run...

Rating: 9/10 (4 May 2012)

This movie was absolutely a masterpiece of direction. Josh Whedon literally knocks them out of the park again and again. This movie has an opinion, a vision and a determination to deliver on them in spades. GO SEE THIS MOVIE!
It's to Marvel's credit that they managed to pulled off the long windup of movies presenting each of the individual characters as well as they did (even if it's taken them a few tries on the Hulk...). There choices of directors has been relatively spot on both for pulling off the individual movies, but also to deliver enough stylistic continuity across all the movies such that they could eventually all come together in the The Avengers.
Joe Johnston, Ang Lee, Louis Leterrier, Jon Favreau, and even Kenneth Branagh (almost unbelievably) all did stand-up work setting the stage for this film. Of the bunch, I personally think Jon Favreau really hit the nail on the head and set the tone for this movie with his stellar work on Iron Man and Iron Man 2.
Kudos to the Marvel Team for sticking with it all and delivering a home run at the end of the series.
[ Sidebar: Oh, and Hunger Games was a complete and utter creative failure in both vision and execution compared to this movie. In fact, it's quite a shame it was put out at all as it has now set such an amazingly low bar for what should have been the real deal - like this movie is... ]