Grade (A)
An onscreen collaboration of comic-book heroes unlike we have never seen with a result that was as greatly adventurous as one could hope for.
Synopsis
When Loki steals The Tesseract and aligns himself with an army from another universe he threatens the freedom of earth, and Nick Fury must unite the superheros together, hoping they will put their personalities and ego’s aside to stop Loki from his mission of destruction.
My Take
‘Phase One’ of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe culminated in the 2012 blockbuster “The Avengers”. The film was the biggest collaboration of super heroes we had ever seen and with so much hinging on its success the pressure was strong.
The film would bring in even more praise than expected grossing over $1.5 billion dollars world-wide. United for the film is all the heroes introduced from past film’s; Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), as well as S.H.I.E.L.D. member’s; Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). Also returning from his appearance in “Thor” is Tom Hiddleston as the evil god Loki and the awesome introduction of Mark Ruffalo as The Hulk.
“The Avengers” was without a doubt a spectacle for the eyes to see. The 3D quality was amazing and during the action-sequences the dimensional layering was deep and mixed with the cinematography to pull the most spectacle out of the scenes. The cinematography was amazing, the long uncut shots pull you into the middle of the chaos providing the best angles at all times. In addition the third-act climax was visually stunning and even after seeing this film a handful of times I was still sitting there with my chin dropped taking in the massive scope and ambition that went into creating the sequence.
For such a large collection of stars the story-line was able to balance everyone out. The characters were woven perfectly into the script, and during the over-the-top action as well. It was all a perfect blend to build close to perfect origins story for the blockbuster cast of heroes. The orchestration of the longer action-sequences is awesome to sit back and watch and it never feels choppy as the focus changes to each of the heroes for their moments of battle-filled splendor with a smooth flow.
The cast performances were great all around , Downey Jr. was his usual charming and charismatic self. Chris Evans was able to build on his role, and Johansson and Renner’s additional screen-time was enjoyable. The bright spot of the film for me was without question the addition of Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk. While the script was able to focus on assembling the group it was still able to give some time to Ruffalo to build his presence with the audience and he clearly delivered (in my opinion) a perfect Bruce Banner.
The script was well written and incorporated the multiple personalities of the cast very well. I really enjoyed how this story did not just slap the group together but eased around the uniting in a realistic manor that would be expected from a group of alphas who are all used to being the one in control. With much of the cast already familiar the story was able to jump right into their current actions, fitting them seamlessly into the story-line with simple scene introductions that kept from giving the story a choppy feel and it went to this character and that to fit them in. It was also fun to see how portions of the past films fit into this story-line to give this movie the true gusto of a closing act of a much broader plot.
I would have enjoyed a little more from the side of the antagonist and while Loki was solid, and brought a great energetic performance, his presence in the film was still rather been there done that. I know he was a small piece of a larger story being told on the side of the villain, but the presence of his army from space seemed to have the quantity, and the look, but in the end were relatively harmless to the members of the Avengers.
While the film would have liked to made you think otherwise there was never a real tension of ‘will the good guys win’ in this one. However, with as excellently shot as the action was, it was still amazing to sit back and watch the heroes blast their way through hordes of enemies and the Hulk taking on massive robots with ferocity and all the resulting devastation you could ask for.
Overall this was an amazing film, and with the run of entries Marvel has been building since 2008, this turned out to be all the adventure that was promised from the build-up of ‘Phase One’. It delivered all the spectacle and cinema-magic you would want from this comic-book world, and was only a few elements away from perfection. I have seen this film a handful of times and it is still attention grabbing, and will in my mind goes down as one of the best comic-book films of all time.