Assembly Required: Marvel’s The Avengers Movie Review

Update, 5/7/2012: Our spoiler-laden and much more in-depth Avengers podcast is now available.

Editor’s Note: This review contains no spoilers. As such, it feels very sketchy and incomplete. For more in-depth analysis of the movie and drunken incoherent ranting about specific things about the movie that were awesome, we will be producing a podcast in the coming days.

Marvel Studios’ The Avengers (Or as it’s known in England, Avengers Assemble, and as I presume it’s known in Pakistan, Imperialist Great Satans With Devil Powers) is finally in theaters in the United States. And you should go see it. Because it is good. Damn good. Seriously fucking good. Arguably the best superhero movie of all time (Granted, for me personally it is knocking M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable out of the peak spot, so take that into account as you read my opinion. Your mileage may vary, is all I’m saying).

Part of what made team comic books cool when I was a kid was that you got a bunch of superheroes for the price of one book, and The Avengers works on the same level. Director Joss Whedon has done what even Bryan Singer was unable to do with X-Men, and has made what amounts to a perfectly good Iron Man movie… and a Thor movie… and a Captain America movie… you get the idea (By contrast, the first X-Men flick was a Wolverine / Rogue movie with some other superdudes hanging around).

Whedon gives full balance and characterization to each of the main characters, including second stringer Black Widow. If anyone gets the short end of the stick, it’s Hawkeye, but realistically, his background in the Marvel Movie Universe (The 616-DVD? 24FPS? Please God, someone come up with a number that isn’t 69, because my willpower’s for shit) is almost the same as the Widow’s, and the parallels are clearly delineated so he feels realized without having to waste a lot of screen time on the same story as Widow’s only with a wang.

And while one might argue that it’s a waste of Jeremy Renner and that Hawkeye is historically a bigger Marvel star that should have gotten more attention, keep in mind this is a Joss Whedon project; he’s about nothing if he’s not about writing and directing stories about strong, independent women. That must get him so much pussy. But I digress.

This story hits all the major notes that a successful team comic hits: the heroes meet and immediately start fighting before realizing they have a common goal and teaming up? That’s covered, in a couple of different sequences that cover all the permutations that anyone could possibly every care about (Although with God as my witness, in Avengers 2 I demand to see Black Widow take on Pepper Potts. Slowly. In a rainstorm). Bickering between team members? Considering a major plot point is Loki trying to drive a wedge between team members, hell yes, with some downright nasty sniping going on. Battle tactics that involve one hero using his / her powers in conjunction with another hero’s (Think Colossus’s / Wolverine’s Fastball Special)? There’s plenty of that as well.

If there’s a breakout star of the movie, it’s gotta be The Hulk. Mark Ruffalo plays Bruce Banner in a way that utterly works for the character: controlled, somewhat morose and measured. He plays it in a way that I can’t imagine Edward Norton, had he carried over from The Incredible Hulk, have done it, and it almost gives Banner an air of menace. Whedon also takes pains to accentuate the danger that The Hulk presents in showing how other characters react to even the potential that they might have to face Hulk: seeing Scarlett Johansson play the Widow early in the movie as becoming nearly unmanned when she only thinks she might be seeing Banner transform speaks volumes, and makes Hulk seem dangerous in a way that neither recent Hulk flick has totally been able to carry off.

It’s hard to write a review of a movie like this, partly because I’m no movie critic (and frankly plenty of people argue that I’m not much of a comic book critic either), and partly because I desperately don’t want to spoil it. I watched it for the first time yesterday, without Amanda, and spent the evening trying to talk about everything that excited me about it without ruining anything. Like the sucker punch. Or the scene with Loki and Hulk. Or Iron Man’s entrance in Germany. We saw it together today, and I think the biggest endorsement I, someone with an HD TiVo and a Blu-Ray player and streaming Netflix and an HD TV who therefore almost never goes to a movie, can offer is that I am planning to see it a third time tomorrow.

If you are a superhero comics enthusiast, particularly a Marvel Comics enthusiast, you are going to like this movie and you should go. Why are you still reading this? Quit fucking around and go see the best pure adaptation of a comic book that you’ve ever seen.