Avengers Assemble Most Adroitly

Rating: 9/10 (3 June 2012)

Unless you are the sort of cinematic snob who can only appreciate avant-garde short subjects in tiny projection rooms, then chances are pretty good that you'll have a rollicking good time watching this 2012 megawatt adventure epic. I certainly did, and I wouldn't consider myself a die-hard Marvel comic book fan. I enjoyed the derring-do and ironic humor that infused the comic book films preceding this one, but director/screenwriter Joss Whedon really whips together all the formula elements that made "Iron Man" (1 & 2), "The Incredible Hulk" (the 2008 version), "Thor" and "Captain America: The First Avenger" purely entertaining into something that miraculously makes the larger-than-life dimensions of the superheroes more instantly relatable. A top-notch cast certainly helps as does the armada of technicians who pull off the effects in all their 3-D, eye-popping glory, of course, but much of the credit really needs to go to Whedon for making this film as much fun as a comic book.
Running a surprisingly fleet 143 minutes, the potentially convoluted plot allows Nick Fury, a character heretofore limited to tantalizing post-credits scenes in the previous movies, to take center stage. He's the surly one-eyed leader of S.H.I.E.L.D., the peacekeeping agency who must quickly recruit a team of superheroes to do battle with Loki, the deceitful half-brother of Thor, the Norse deity of thunder. Loki has brainwashed archer supreme Hawkeye and brilliant physicist Dr. Erik Selvig (already seen in "Thor") while stealing a cosmic cube called the Tesseract, a powerful energy source of seemingly limitless potential, from a remote research facility. Fury recruits Black Widow, a former Russian spy last seen in action in "Iron Man 2", to gather the troops including a highly reticent Bruce Banner a.k.a. the Hulk. Meanwhile, Iron Man, Captain America and Thor have to learn to get along before facing the enemy.
Loki turns out to be the least of their problems as the Tesseract unleashes a powerful alien race known as the Chitauri, which leads to the inevitable battle royale on the devastated streets of Manhattan. While the state-of-the-art action scenes are everything you want them to be, it's really the film's unexpected sense of humor that consistently buoys the story. Realizing the escalating level of implausibility, Whedon smartly provides clever lines and scenes to everyone (and not just Robert Downey, Jr.) For instance, after Thor proclaims Loki solemnly as his Asgardian brother, Black Widow points out that he killed eighty people in two days to which Thor points out Loki was adopted. Later, in the most crowd-pleasing scene, the Hulk grabs a character by his leg and whip-slams him into the floor like he's beating a dust rag. The defiance of logic and physics is par for the course here, and Whedon's kid-like attitude and deft hand make it all the more exhilarating.
The physically fit cast work surprisingly well together as an ensemble. While Downey's scene-stealing as Iron Man is a given, Chris Evans' Captain America, Chris Hemsworth's Thor, Mark Ruffalo's digitally altered Hulk, Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow, and Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye all get their moments to shine. As Loki, Tom Hiddleston effectively conveys the inferiority complex that drives his villain with slithery cunning, while Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg take full advantage of expanded roles as Fury and Agent Coulson respectively. The mistake most filmmakers make in showing an Armageddon situation is applying too much soul-baring gravitas to the proceedings. That's definitely not Whedon's take as he never lets us forget that we are watching a comic book come to life. It's gratifying to watch a popcorn movie that actually lives up to the hype in all its commercial glory.