Yup. They did it right.

Rating: 9/10 (19 May 2012)

Guess I'll come out and say it right away: The Avengers may be the best superhero movie made to date. It has plenty of action, an understandable plot, multiple and discernible heroes, plenty of laughs, and terrific effects. Now, I'll admit it: everyone else seems to be saying the same thing. So do I need to maintain my integrity as an amateur reviewer- person by going against the grain and finding fault with the movie? Or can I feel secure in my own opinion, even if it's shared by fanboys and nonfans alike? (Hint: it's the latter.) Who are The Avengers, anyway? Well, there's Captain America (Steve Rogers), who's actually from the 1940s but was frozen for about seventy years. There's Iron Man (Tony Stark), a man in a weaponized metal suit. There's The Hulk (Bruce Banner), who smashes. There's Black Widow (Natasha Romanoff), a superspy with some powers of her own. There's Hawkeye (Clint Barton), a master archer. And then there's Thor, a Norse god. We've been introduced to most of them already through their own films, so they seem like old pals to us. Helps cut down on backstory issues, anyway.
It seems that Loki, the half-brother of Thor, has decided to open up a portal from his side of the universe to Earth itself, thus allowing a rampaging army of aliens to come in and slaughter us wholesale. Colonel Nick Fury, who's been recruiting our heroes to fight as a team, calls everyone in from wherever they were. They don't know each other, except by reputation. Can they stop bickering long enough to save the universe? It is possible.
I mentioned before that our heroes are, well, discernible. This is no small feat, considering how many there are in the movie. Tony Stark is a narcissist. Steve Rogers is an anachronism. Bruce Banner has anger- management issues. Natasha is manipulative; Barton is manipulated. They're simultaneously human and superhuman.
After assembling his team, Fury gives them the skinny. Banner's job is to find the Tesserac's location, an artifact that can produce immense power – or be wielded as an immense weapon. Supposedly, the Tesserac is high in gamma radiation, something Dr. Banner knows a little bit about. Meanwhile, the others are tasked with finding Loki, who's quite the badass. All of this is directed by Fury from a flying fortress that also can float. Kind of neat.
Without the burden of needing backstories for everyone, writer/director Joss Whedon is free to throw thrills at us. The fight scenes are plausible and, at times, not at all cartoonish. This means that younger kids (it's a PG-13 movie) might find it a little intense. But there's very little blood, and what's seen is more like scratches on a face, or something. At any rate, although it's an unapologetically violent movie, it's carefully done; the amazing set pieces don't get in the way of a compelling story fraught with plenty of angst and anguish. This is how Transformers should have been.
Boy, is there conflict. It's not as if the superheroes all show up mentally on board with Fury's plan. Not only are some of them mad at him, they snipe a little at each other. Sometimes this is the work of the masterful Loki; sometimes it's the natural difficult of strangers needing to form a cohesive unit.
The acting is superb. Nick Fury is a role for which the estimable Samuel L. Jackson was born to play (and which he's played as a cameo in several movies already). Scarlett Johanssen picks up where she left off as Black Widow in Iron Man, and Robert Downey Jr., to no one's surprise, is effortlessly suave and jerkish as Stark. Chris Evans, as the idealistic Captain, and Chris Hemsworth, as the mighty but humbled Thor, are both terrific as well. Mark Ruffalo makes for a quietly intense Banner (and portrayed The Hulk via special effects). Jeremy Renner, seen very briefly in the Thor movie, is Hawkeye, a character with which most of us had had no prior exposure; Renner, however, gives his character so much depth that we're involved in his side story even more than we are with the others.
So why wouldn't you watch this movie? It does have a lot of action, so if you hate that you should skip it. It's over two hours long, so if you don't like to sit, you should also skip it. It has strong female characters, hissable villains, heroes of all sizes, complicated love stories that sit in the background, and the fate of all mankind resting in the balance. Wait, I was supposed to be giving reasons not to watch it. Too bad, I've run out.