How Loki can you Go-ki ?

Rating: 8/10 (24 April 2019)

"Endgame" prep began with me deciding to rewatch the three Avengers films starting with 2012's "Avengers Assemble" as it was called in the UK. I can't believe it was only 7 years ago, it seems like so much longer.
Thanos (inexplicably, given what's to come) lends an infinity stone to Loki, so he can head to Earth and conquer it. In return, Loki will acquire the Tesseract, use it to transport his Chitari army across the galaxy and then, presumably, hand the stones over to Thanos. Following the loss of the Tesseract, Nick Fury instigates his Avengers Initiative program, pulling together some of the exceptional people known to SHIELD to form a response unit, to the threat of intergalactic war.
Happily, "AA" still holds up really well. The effects are still strong, only one little scene of Captain America outside the Helicarrier clearly looking like a CGI stuntman and some weird scaling on Hulk in the final stare down with Loki. There are some awesome scenes in it, iconic even. Hulk chasing Black Widow down the corridor before leading into the fight with Thor, the "Puny God" moment and essentially the whole Chitari showdown battle.
Character wise it's strong too. Starting some relationships that continue to pan out in the series. Friendships between Romanov and Banner and Stark and Banner. The immediate antagonism between the opposites of Stark and Rogers, but also starting Cap's distrust of organisations that would pay off in The Winters Soldier. The character whose probably least like he is now is Loki, much more vicious and condescending in this than he becomes... though even there, there are moments, between him and Thor.
It's not a perfect film though, it does have quite a large block in the middle, between the capture of Loki and Barton's attack that feels a little draggy, again there's a lot of good character work here but compared to the later films it's a little slow. Though it has funny moments, it's obviously not as referential as the films could become later, when there were a few more of them.
Though it's been superseded in quality over the years, "Avengers Assemble" remains a high point in the series and a real indicator of what a combined cinematic universe could offer.