lots of powerful guys deliver "clever" dialog while fighting a weak guy with a magic stick

Rating: 5/10 (7 May 2012)

i like some avengers comics (especially the first ultimates series) and thought the second iron man movie was pretty good, but the avengers is a mess of exposition, cluttered action and pandering references.
some problems...
1. loki is the villain. terrible idea to have this team essentially fighting 1 medieval hero for most of the movie. and makes them seem weak, too. 2. stupid proclamations about "we're at war" seems silly throughout (until the end) when really...they're just fighting loki. 3. good guys with mind control turned into bad guys is always very bad in movies. 4. roughly 30+ minutes of bad speeches by & conversations with loki, each like the dumbest bad guy explaining himself scenes from james bond movie. 5 scarlett johanson is as bad as she is cute. totally unbelievable at all times. 6. lots of self-conscious dialog that would play okay in a comic book, not great here. 7. samuel jackson should be a newscaster 8. the good build to the hulk transformation was then injured by a weightless, bad cg hulk no better than the ed norton version. like all thoughtless directors who don't understand physics, wheedon has the huge character move like hummingbird or a gnat and thus it feels like a weightless video game. as bad as the cave trolls in fellowship of the ring or worse. 9. the only clever idea--- stark starting the propeller with his suit--- just "happens" rather than having a sequence building up to it of the ship going down and him getting in there and helping. like all action scenes in the movie (except the long take) it is unfocused and "shows" rather than "builds." 10. if it weren't for the character development outside this movie, the iconography of these characters and the charisma of iron man & thor, this wouldn't even be a 5.