Action-packed but hollow

Rating: 5/10 (31 October 2019)

I heard somewhere this was the first great Marvel flick, or this was the one to watch first, or something like that. Overall, it was entertaining but nothing special. The characters and story are pretty cliched. Some powerful object (a tesseract) falls into the hands of a malicious superhero (Loki, well played by Tom Hiddleston) and a crew comes together to try to get it back from him before he can pass it to the evil aliens who want to destroy Earth. They try to liven things up by creating some character and conflicts and the like, but for the most part it is a snooze. Downey's Iron Man is ironic and witty, Thor turns out to be the estranged brother of Loki, yeah yeah. These kinds of flicks are plug and play, get some star actors and plug them in, and so long as they look the part, things work out. It is fun to watch them flying around midtown Manhattan and smashing things up. The effects are the real stars.
It is interesting to note that like our ancestors from previous centuries, the modern world wants to have its myths and its heroes - I guess old habits tend to stick around. But these myths mean very little and serve mostly to keep people's eyes glued to a screen.