Pummeling, fanboyish 1st half, much better themed 2nd half

Rating: 6/10 (12 May 2012)

Clippy, extremely lore-crammed launch of the first major big-screen Marvel Comics teamup goes a little too much into the anime-type features and weaponry of the SHIELD spy agency and its monochromatic personnel during its first half but soon settles into a huge yet decently Medea-theme-motivated exploration of the superhero identity, and an occasionally funny action film based upon several evolving lines of the comic characters' histories (non-readers who know little if anything of the arcane intricacies of the Marvel Amazing Fantasy/Strange Tales/Tales of Suspense/Ultimate Avengers lines will find this a bit of a slog) as SHIELD's eyepatched lead agent Nick Fury's agency's base is invaded by the Norse god/trickster, Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who steals a new intergalactic energy cube called the Tessaract for the invading alien race called the Chitauri. Fury, with the help of the slinky, red-headed Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) organizes the participation of a small group of terrrestrials/magnates/scientists better known as the Hulk (a pleasantly-greyed Mark Ruffalo)/Iron Man/Thor (the sturdy Chris Hemsworth)/Captain America a.k.a. the Avengers, who recently had a variety of individual adventures but are now needed to defeat Loki and send the Chitauri back to their interdimensional plane. The film's unexplained, insistently locale-centered structuring—weaving from a destroyed SHIELD hidden land base to their floating battleship called a helicarrier, where the Avengers collect and argue their theories—seems almost at cross-purposes at times from the charmingly insultive, rowdy, obdurate band of costumed characters getting some help from the crunching sound-effects and punchy yet glacial camera-work. Director Joss Whedon is not David Lean or even Superman I's Richard Donner (he doesn't seem to know how to subtly build grand and stacked sequences or use scale into centered release points for the audience to invite them into constant rousing applause for these 'heroes'). But Whedon does evoke a non-cynical appreciation of these characters minds (Chris Evans' Captain America is as much a straight shooter as straight arrow) and hearts (Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark/cardiac-wounded Iron Man probably comes off the most believable considering he had two full screen adventures of his own, yet the character's mogulistic resources—enough to bankrupt several continents—beggar the question as to why he would need SHIELD at all instead of starting his own superhero gang), and their clear-cut stagings and streaking, powerful choreography even during the most complicated effects scenes does make the appropriate impact. Once the Avengers assemble to defend New York City against a final invasion of giant slug-like creatures and Chitauri attackers THE AVENGERS illustrates the dichotomy of current genre epics, written for tween or undiscriminating audiences yet grandly casting decently talented actors in noble roles for the staying power of a halfway legitimate drama, and settling for digital-image glorification of a superhero costume instead.