Amazing it ain't but good it is - finally Marvel assembles those avengers !

Rating: 7/10 (13 June 2012)

OK where do I begin with this. Well firstly for those of you that don't know me personally I am a massive geek fanboy of comics, namely Marvel. I have anticipated a Marvel mash up of characters ever since the first Xmen movie hit our screen's in the late 90's. To have that dream finally come true with some of my favourite comic characters (Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man) I was wetting myself just watching the promo's and the lack lustre build up movies (Thor, Iron Man, Captain America & the really dire Incredible Hulk). Not since 1999 and the release of the first X-Men movie had I anticipated a Super Hero movie so much, so obviously the hype and level of expectation I had was very high. All the positive reviews & ground breaking box office takings were pointing at this movie being GREAT.
Good it is, Great it isn't quite there. Don't get me wrong, I loved it, easily one of the best super hero movies since X-Men First Class, X2 & The Dark Knight, but is it really better than these??? In fact is it even better than The Punisher (which I loved by the way). Well I ain't so sure. To begin with the movie brings the ensemble cast together really nicely, they all are fighting towards a common enemy. There isn't much need for a backstory to any of the audience as you are assumed to have watched the individual films before watching Avengers but even if you haven't it's not exactly rocket science (we all know Bruce Banner was hit with Gamma rays and turns green when he's mad). The story is pretty simple. The earth is threatened by another world forces led by Thor's half-brother , Loki and back on Earth, Nick Fury leader of Shield assembles the rag tagged bunch of super heroes we all know as The Avengers. Each Avenger gets good equal screen time which is another plus of the movie, even the not so super heroes like Hawkeye & Black Widow who are just glorified normal humans get a good amount of screen time, I'd say Hawkeye more than Black widow actually. But the whole movie is rather predictable. Now I know I shouldn't complain about this and it shouldn't really count as a negative towards this movie. 10 times out of 10 if you go to watch a super hero movie you know the good guys are going to prevail over the dark forces. It's just the route taken to defeat the enemies that got me a little annoyed. First the mind control of Hawkeye to trying to get the Bruce to turn into the Hulk on the Shield sky ship. All of it you could see coming a mile off and were kind of just waiting for these bits to end. When would the avengers rescue Hawkeye from his mental capture? When would Bruce turn green? If they kind of just sprung it on us instead of building up to it and spoon feeding us it could've been better All in all an enjoyable action movie with surprisingly funny bits mainly thanks to Downey Junior delivering his lines to aplomb Still looking forward to the sequel which should be better