I actually quite enjoyed this movie

Rating: 7/10 (5 May 2012)

Well, I actually quite enjoyed this film, but it is not exactly the type of film that one would go and watch to learn anything too deep. It is sort of one of those films that has been a long time coming and quite anticipated, and what is quite unusual for a film like this is that when I did get to see it I did actually quite enjoy it. The movie itself is quite long, and I must admit, dominated a bit too much by Robert Downey Jnr (who plays Iron Man), though the length of the movie didn't really put me off too much.
I am not too sure on the workings behind the scenes, but my understanding is that Marvel and Paramount have decided that they will become more consistent with their Marvel based movies so that there is some consistency between them. This is probably more important now in that they are bringing a number of superheroes from separate movies together, so I guess consistency is important. However, one thing that I have noticed is that it appears that they have rushed a number of movies together, such as Captain America and Thor, so that they can have some more background for the major characters in this movie. I do note though, that while Black Widow makes an appearance in Iron Man II, Hawkeye seems to be a new character for this particular film.
The Avengers pretty much takes off where Iron Man II, Captain America, and Thor leave off. Iron Man II introduce Nick Fury as a major character (who is the head of the Avengers initiative), Thor introduced Loki as an antagonist, and Captain America introduces the Tesserach, the alien device that ends up causing all of the problems for Earth, and in particular, bring Loki across so that he might cause his mischief. Now, I am not familiar with any of the comics, or how Loki is portrayed in the comics, but with Norse mythology, I did not necessarily consider that Loki was actually a bad guy, just an annoying trickster. However, this film is not based on Norse mythology, but rather upon a series of comics based upon Norse mythology.
I guess one of the big problems with trying to do a film like this is working with a number of actors and deciding who is going to take the title role. However I do note that the only real big name actors in this film would be RDJ, Scarlett Johanson, and Samual L Jackson. The others, while they have movies to their name, and do take the lead role in those movies, in my mind at least, do not have the huge name that the others do. However, I suspect it would not have been easy relegating RDJ to a supporting role.