Style.......lots of style, and when all the style is done, some more style

Rating: 8/10 (29 April 2012)

There is one word that sums up Avengers and that is style and it has awesome witty dialogues that are funny as hell.
There was always this fear with Avengers that it would fail to give every character its due, but every single superhero gets time to do his thing, do it in style and look really cool doing it. The interplay between the characters is brilliant. There are lots witty dialogues and most of them range from being very funny to being downright hilarious and there are many scenes that had the audience laughing really hard. Without intending to give much away, there is one scene towards the end involving Hulk and Loki that may just be the funniest scene ever in the history of movies. Each characters gets his due, they play off each other brilliantly. Above all the movie when it decides to get the audience to laugh does a hell of a job.
The story is one of weaknesses and it never immerses the audience in the movie and you always feel that you are watching really cool stuff happening from a distance. The story, which is quite simple really, can be summed up in two sentences. Loki has a deal with some aliens that if they help him take over the earth, he will give them a blue cube sort of a thing, which is very powerful. Loki builds a gateway, something like the one between Earth and Asgard in Thor, and the aliens arrive and the Avengers beat them and Loki.
Though Loki is the main villain, and he does get nasty and clever at times, he is not who the heroes end up fighting in the final battle. A whole army pops out of the sky, (quite literally) and while all along you are told an army is coming, when it does arrive you sort of wonder who are they exactly. Consequently the army itself, which in this instance happen to be essentially aliens from another of the nine worlds in the Thor story, seem very replaceable, and it would really not make a difference if the army the Avengers end up fighting were huge giant robots. Essentially what the movie makers are telling us that now a big army has arrived and the heroes have a hard task, and that isn't exactly great storytelling.
Secondly given the way this alien army is disposed off, by essentially shooting them with guns and arrows, you sort of wonder was this threat big enough to require the Avengers, I mean the army or the navy would have taken care of it, really. In other words the threat doesn't exactly overwhelm you when it arrives.
My biggest problem with the story however is that when all the fighting is done there are no lasting impacts, I mean everyone walks off as if nothing happened and things are normal. The kind of invasion that has just taken place would quite frankly be one of those world changing events, but not in the movie, everyone just walks off as if nothing happened.
In terms of performances there is not one performance which seems uncool, everyone has they fair share of funny lines to say and look really cool and do things in style. One set of dialogues sums up the final battle, and it goes like this:-
Loki - I have an army
Iron Man - We have Hulk.
This in essence is the final battle for you. Hulk is good enough to wipe out the entire army, and really owns the final battle. Had it not been for the fact that the aliens were just too many in number and even Hulk is not someone who can be everywhere, the other heroes might not even be required. So to give the other heroes something to do there are enough aliens to keep everyone busy and a nuclear bomb thrown into the mix. However don't let this give you the impression that the movie is about Hulk, no its not, its about the others as much as it is about Hulk, just that Hulk is the biggest weapon the Avengers have against the alien army, and he pretty much owns every scene he is in. Some of the comedy involving Hulk is just awesome as well, and let me again remind you not to miss the Loki and Hulk Scene towards the end.
So in short the focus of the movie is not on an in depth story, its purely about style. The Avengers is a great example of how if you put enough style into a movie, the simplest of plots can provide tonnes of entertainment. I keep harping on the fact that Avengers is an "entertainer" meaning that if you want to have a good time you need to go this movie, you will have a really very great time. The story has its flaws, but if you are out with friends and looking to have fun, you won't exactly watch Schindler's List will you, you will go for something like Hangover. Avengers is awesome entertainer and right up there with the best of them and is a definite must watch.
Lastly a lot of talk was on how the Avengers will compare to the Dark Knight and really there is no scope for comparison. I mean trying to compare the two movies is like trying to compare an Apple and a Television Set. I mean they are so different to each other that a comparison is not possible. The only similarity is that they both have Superheroes in them, and that is where the similarity ends. They both are trying to be very different movies, and to try and compare them is futile.
So go watch Avengers, you will have a great time.
8/10 (only because I cannot rate it 8.5/10)