Great Movie

Rating: 8/10 (18 November 2012)

Marvel has taken over the movie industry with their movies: the Hulk, Iron Man 1 and 2, Captain America, Thor, and its most recent and greatest film, the Avengers. Despite the Avengers being one of the greatest films I have ever seen, it fails to establish a sense of character development. On the other hand, the Avengers has the greatest special effects of the century and does a great job of capturing a comic book feel while implementing real world issues.
If you haven't seen the prior Marvel movies, you are a bit behind. In the Avengers, Joss Whedon expects you to know who the characters are. Its as if he expected comic book junkies to be the only ones watching this movie. Granted, the Avengers is a sequel to the prior movies but that is no excuse for having certain characters appear in prior Marvel movies and this one and not telling us anything about them. If you haven't seen the prior movies, you would know more about the disappearance of Natalie Holloway then you would the characters in this movie. I have seen the prior movies and I would have just as good a chance at passing a foreign language exam as I would at telling you three or more facts about the Black Widow and Hawkeye. If you do know the characters, or you can get over not knowing them, The Avengers is a very good movie. The special effects in the Avengers are the best of the century. Director Joss Whedon took all of the available technology and used it to his advantage. All of the effects are completely believable, which is tough to do considering they had to be able to do special effects for multiple characters. A prime example of special effects is the Hulk and his ability to smash things and kill people. If you have seen the prior Hulk movies you realize that they found the special effects to be very difficult. In the prior movie, made in the early 2000s, the special effects look as if they were from the early 90s. The special effects weren't the only way that The Avengers managed to recreate the comic book feel. Most of the dialog and actions of the characters were very comic book like. By this, I mean short and straight to the point. This is good for the movie because it brings it back to its original roots, the comic book. And if you're not a comic book fan, The Avengers is full of real world issues that provide a sense of connectivity to the people who aren't avid comic book fans. First, we see the issue of the military constantly trying to upgrade their weapons system. The American Military thought the Tesseract could help them upgrade their systems, which is why they had it in the first place. Second, the battle, a foreign war, takes place in New York. This seems to be a common battleground in movies and in real life. In the movie they are not fighting Iraq or Korea, they are fighting foreign creatures from another realm. Despite them not fighting another country, the idea of foreign war is still there. To build on this, we see the destruction of New York, which also happens to be the last city destroyed in real life. Last, but not least, is the idea of superheroes winning a war. In the movie (and every other superhero movie for that matter), we see the superheroes solve the minor problems, such as war. We never see superheroes solve the big picture problems, such as world hunger. Overall, The Avengers is a must see. Try to get past the poor character development and see that the special effects are amazing and that the movie, although not directly, relates to real world issues. If you do this, you will be thoroughly impressed with Whedon's work.