A delightfully enthralling blockbuster that beats all the Marvel films put together so far. It's unfortunate that it doesn't work on rewatch.

Rating: 7/10 (26 June 2013)

Now, the problem with a film such as The Avengers aka Avengers Assemble aka Marvel's Spectacular Avengers Spectacle! is that it can only be compared to its predecessors and can not be a pure fresh story. It does indeed, have cracks in its foundations, with the decent Iron Man and Captain America and mediocre Iron Man 2 and Thor. But The Avengers is as great as it could be. The main factors that makes it stand above those rushed charmless creations is its genuine heart pumped in by Joss Whedon.
It has a genuine tension, something that was dramatically lacking in the other films based on the mere concept that they were setup films for this blockbuster, therefore the protagonists nor throwaway side characters simply could not be in any meaningful peril, despite that being what the action films were about. In The Avengers, the characters (or egos) can barely stand to be in the same room with each other for too long without the chemistry exploding. As it has multi- protagonist stories, it opens the opportunity for there to be a real chance of one of the characters being in mortal danger without being contrived, and that is pretty much expected from Whedon's trademarks.
The heart of the film lies mostly in Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, as it develops Stark as a human being in very brief sequences, though of course his classic punchlines are a particular highlight, but The Avengers paints the Hulk as the secret ultimate weapon, which is a difficult task as the terrible Hulk (2003) and equally awful The Incredible Hulk (2008) struggled to portray the scale of his power. He certainly steals the scenes that Stark doesn't. I saw in in 3D so it was a particularly intimate experience - there are some amazing goose-bump worthy shots of the superheroes all together - but it made it sometimes confusing as the effect doesn't work well with closeups of action, especially as it distracted from the science jargon thrown around by Stark and Banner, rendering some of the scenes hard to follow, but it didn't matter in the end.
It's still astounding in how Whedon crammed everything in, despite the 142 minute running time, of which it had a comparable pace to The Dark Knight in the scale of the sequences. It was incredibly satisfying and creative by the end. However, the series may struggle as they don't have the benefit of having equally famous villains as Batman and Spiderman have. I don't think I have the patience to watch the sequels to the rest of the Avenger films just to keep up with the characters, but it really does depend on the writer and director, as I didn't like Thor and Loki in their own films but enjoyed their relationship here. Nevertheless, The Avengers is the perfect summer blockbuster; intelligent, witty and action-packed. And I wanna see it again already.
Update: I did. And it lost most of the shine that charmed me. Still entertaining but just not the same.
7/10