Very very good but not without its flaws and has room for improvement

Rating: 9/10 (4 May 2012)

Let me just state something from the beginning, I had extremely high expectations for this movie and that deeply affected how I viewed this movie. I have not seen Iron Man 2 or all of the Incredible Hulk before seeing this movie so that may have effected my view as well.
Alright now to the movie. This movie in general has some great parts and some terrible parts. The first half of the movie was very slow but understandable because of the need to introduce the characters. Toward the beginning/middle of the movie, in all honesty, I hated it. I just felt that it was terrible. I didn't understand it at all, but the movie went on and things were okay after that.
The character's dialog was very funny at times which had the whole theater laughing (Tony Stark: to Bruce Banner You really have got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed? for example.) Samuel L. Jackson did a decent job as Nick Fury, but was not as good as I would have expected from him. Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner, and Scarlet Johansson all gave very good performances. Chris Hemsworth was good but not great as Thor but I don't feel he was given enough screen time. Tom Hiddleston was OK as Loki but not great. The CGI however was very good and the 3D was not very distracting even though at times it did bother me.
I think the absolute best parts of this film was the action sequences as they were very good but could be better. The large action sequence near the end when the alien army attacks is very good but simply could have been much better. If it had been extended and more intense explosions were included that would have solved the problems.
The story itself seemed a little thin at times but then again I don't know how it could have been done much differently. This movie I see as the superhero equal of The Expendables which I felt had great action but a thin story and a cast of superstar actors. The entire movie seem a little off to me but that was just me. There was no deeper connection like I have with many great films.
In the end, I only listed many of the negatives about the movie but there are many good things in the film as well. But all and all this is the best Marvel movie to date and I can't say I'm excited about Phase 2 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe but we'll just have to wait and see. But like all Marvel movies, the more you think about them the less you tend to like them.