The Avengers 2012
It seems like there have been a lot of superhero movies coming out in the last few years. While I really enjoyed Iron Man, some of the others like Thor or Captain America never seemed so interesting that I needed to see them, even while they were doing a couple of different versions of The Incredible Hulk. This movie brings all of those characters together plus a few more. The cast includes some real standouts, not just Robert Downey as Iron Man, but Samuel Jackson has a bigger role here, along with Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, and Jeremy Renner. Gwyneth Paltrow and Stellan Skarsgard get little more than cameos, and that is all that Harry Dean Stanton gets. There are some lesser known actors as well, for example Thor (a dane demi-god with beautiful hair played by an Australian trying to do a Shakesperean accent?) and his brother, the evil Loki, as well as the guy who plays Captain America.
There is a lot of action in the movie, almost all of it big, giant CGI, but a fair amount of character development to try to weave together this big cast. Even though I hadn’t seen most of the earlier movies, you get an idea of what each of these superheroes can do, though the arrow-shooting Renner as Hawkeye seems a little weak. Scarlett Johansson gets a couple of nice scenes showcasing her character, but is mostly on the sidelines due to the fact that some superheroes are just a little less super than others (she can’t fly or even jump that far).
So there is a lot going on in the movie and most of the characters work very well. There are some decent subplots about arms dealing and a few conflicts between the different superheroes, which adds depth. But the main storyline revolves around Thor and his brother and an army of orks from outer space. They have to have something that brings together such a big group of superheroes, but it seemed kind of weak.
The Avengers is two and a half hours long, but it moves along very quickly. They probably could have made this much longer, but I think they got it about right in terms of balancing action and characters, and more would have just been exposition and technical details, when all we need to know is that there are good guys fighting bad guys.
Written: 20 Oct 2012
Owned on: Blu-ray, Digital