An Impressive Accomplishment

Rating: 9/10 (5 May 2012)

This movie is all about the hype. Its existence is based on four years of gradually building anticipation in the nerd community, so that now some of us are at the breaking point waiting for what we all hope could be the perfect movie. The big question on all of our minds is 'was it worth the wait?' My response to that question is yes. The Avengers is shockingly good in every way.
The plot concerns Loki, god of mischief, who, after receiving a magic death wand from some aliens (yeah, that's about how much they tell you about it), comes to earth, steals the mysterious otherworldly megabattery the Cosmic Cube, last seen in Captain America, from the supersecret spy organization S.H.I.E.L.D. He kidnaps a few of their scientists and agents, and takes off. Concerned, Nick Fury, the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., played by a Very Awesome Samuel L. Jackson with no hair and an eye patch, wants to begin rounding up earth's mightiest heroes to combat the threat. The government argues that it doesn't make sense to round up civilians who happen to have acquired powers and expect them to act as a dependable military task force. Fury argues that they don't have a dependable military taskforce equipped to handle a God and an invading alien army, so he goes ahead and does it anyway.
His heroes consist of Iron Man, who has just completed work on an energy efficient tower that he can't seem to stop talking about, the true significance of which doesn't come to light until the very end of the movie. Captain America, who is understandably depressed since waking up seventy years after he last fell asleep, and is trying to figure out if he has any place in the new world. Thor, who is obviously having some personal issues because he feels responsible for his brother Loki's actions. Black Widow, who is technically not an Avenger, but just a really talented agent who hangs out with them, and Hawkeye, who is also just an agent, but happens to be really good with a bow, so he also gets to hang out with the Avengers.
I cannot express in words just how impressed I am that each character gets enough screen time to satisfy both the needs to see them and to have them grow in complexity. Somehow, over the course of its two hour run time it manages to do justice to each of its characters simultaneously by bouncing their personalities off one another.
The action is plentiful and awesome. The first half to three quarters of the film the heroes are fighting one another as their confliction agendas bring them to trade blows, and that is entertaining. We get to see Hulk fight Thor, Thor fight Iron Man, Black Widow fight Hawkeye, Black Widow running in terror from Hulk, etc. This is all unbelievably good fun, and they all get to show off the full brunt of their powers because the other heroes are tough enough to take it. When they finally do make peace with one another and get down to fighting the bad guys there as an endless wave of faceless aliens for them to tear in two/smash/electrocute/explode/shoot/whatever without you caring about the deaths that come as a result.
Now for the bad parts, and there were a couple. The opening action sequence when Loki destroys the underground S.H.I.E.L.D. base is too long and too boring. Also, Loki gives these weird speeches throughout the movie about how freedom is stifling, or something, and they didn't make sense given his character. He doesn't need more motivation than wanting to be a king to be doing what he's doing, and at the very least they could have done a better job explaining his feelings about 'freedom.' I think I figured it out anyways, but I'll leave the interpretation to each audience member. Also, there is a great scene where Thor is defending Loki's honor in the face of the understandable accusations coming from his teammates, only to insist that Loki's only his adopted brother two seconds later for the sake of a gag. It bothered me A LOT because it was really interesting to see him still caring for his wayward family member despite his wrongdoings. And what was with that alien Loki was talking to? The one with the two thumbs. It looked, moved, spoke, and was filmed like something out of a bad sixties sci-fi movie. And I mean the really bad kind. In a movie filled with awesomeness, it stood out like a sore thumb. Or two sore thumbs, given its bizarre anatomy. SPOILER ALERT! SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE! At the end of the movie when Doctor Selvig announces that while under Loki's mind control he maintained enough presence of mind to install a failsafe kill switch into the portal generator, I couldn't help but feel that the screenwriters had taken the lazy way out. The fact that he did that makes all of their collective actions basically irrelevant, and it undermines both their superiority and their heroism in no small way. Essentially they won the war because some guy didn't mind control very well, and that's really lame. This was the weakest point in the film, and I feel very strongly that there's no particular reason that Hulk couldn't have just smashed his way through the unsmashable force field.
In the end, the movie is unbelievably good fun, and surprisingly satisfying given the wait. It homages the characters and the stories of all the movies that have come before, and it leads into whatever comes next very well. Oh, and stay after the credits. There's an awesome clip for anyone patient enough to wait. And I don't mean the one with the aliens. I mean after the longer credits.