Avengers Assemble! Quickly Now, No Dallying!

"Oh Great One, I have sinned against you!"

The Avengers. They're all Marvel legends in their own right, titans of the comic book age. So when I heard that they were all coming to the big screen in one action packed outing, I naturally recoiled, burned, afraid. Here was the potential for disaster, the moment that the entire comic book film industry came crashing to the ground. A cluster fuck, if you will. Such fears were allayed slightly by the announcement of the venerable Joss Whedon helming the project, being a worshipper of his Buffy and Firefly universes, but still it seemed a tad like madness. Surely it would fail. So many title characters simply couldn't play nicely together, not without taking a serious personality clipping in the process, defeating the entire purpose of the movie. It could have become Iron Man 3 And Friends, or Captain America And Some Other Guys, but in a shock turn, it didn't. Suffice as to say I have had to say many a hail Mary to Whedon's alter for the past few hours. My devotion has been reaffirmed. But how has this been achieved I hear you wonder? Has our trusty reviewer taken a blow to the head, is he now living in a Lucas denial as following Star Wars Episode One? I must disabuse you of that notion. I am in fact of sound nerd mind and body. Whedon just did it. With a slick script and character balancing he has delivered a fine addition to the annals of the comic book movie. Let me tell you how.

Prepare for snarkiness.

Firstly, he made the Avengers a team. It sounds simple, perhaps nigh on "duh" territory, but it could easily just have been a group of superheroes sharing screen time. No links, no witty banter, just a bunch of overcharged egos beating the crap out of this or that. Whedon was a solid choice for this singular reason, all of his stories involve multiple characters who are all people in their own right. There are no hangers on. Just look at Firefly, I dare you to find a character you can't relate to. So while each of the Avengers has been around long before his ministrations, whether it be in movie or comic book form, they weren't necessarily going to work well together. That isn't to say there were no stand out performances, characters who seemed a little more prominent than the rest. For me, it was Iron Man, Mr. Tony Stark himself. I'm inclined to think this was more through the force of his personality than a conscious choice by Whedon himself, although I could be wrong. There is something irresistible about that billionaire, playboy philanthropist that I can't quite pin down. Watching him jest with Thor and Captain America near gave me a head rush, while his relationship with Bruce Banner is the stuff that fine cinema is made of. They're both similar in their own ways, loose cannons with varying degrees of control. This is all aided by the tightness of the script, with very few lines being wasted on asinine dialogue, much as was the case with that other film-freight-chain-franchise, Transformers. Time isn't wasted trying to make the characters funny, they just behave as they should and the humour feels natural. Even a slapstick moment involving Thor, The Hulk and his meaty green fist didn't feel forced, the entire theatre erupting into laughter.

There is one area in which the film seems to lag, although maybe necessarily, and that's in the story department. It draws heavily from the previous Thor outing and as such is a little confusing at the beginning, as we are bombarded with objects and places such as the Tesseract, Asgard, S.H.I.E.L.D and Loki. In fairness this all comes together pretty quickly, but it is a little off putting if you don't know the previous back story. It's all basic stuff when we get a little further in, Loki is leading an army of extremely angry aliens to conquer the earth and it's up to the Avengers to stop him. It ain't a head scratcher, but as I mentioned, perhaps there was no choice. With so many characters vying for development and screen time it was probably for the best that the story was kept to it's bear bones. The film would have ended up feeling slightly overloaded, instead dragging rather than entertaining us through it's two hours thirty of a runtime. Maybe we'll see something a little more intricate in the next installment, assuming that the many millions it has made already warrant a sequel.

Mark Ruffalo has left the building.

Of the assembled cast, Robert Downey Junior and Mark Ruffalo really steal the show. Banner enjoys a jittery quality that echoes Jekyll and Hyde as he tries to control the beast within. For as he says himself "I'm always angry." He surpasses Edward Norton's portrayal in the Incredible Hulk, although I admit that could just be down to personal preference, delivering a far more unstable character.  Meanwhile, Junior is his usual swaggering self, collectively aggravating every member of the team while displaying his textbook Tony Stark brilliance. Watching the sparks fly between him and Captain America was one of the highlights of the movie for me, one man standing for all that is good and pure, the other an arrogant, irresponsible playboy. In all the entire cast delivered, while not Oscar worthy performances, a knock above the rest, making sure that any potential silliness stays on the sidelines. Badly acted superheroes look all the more ridiculous when they come into contact with reality after all. No man in real life would wear a costume as bright and tight as Captain America's oh-so homo erotic get up.

Didn't give me goosebumps, good enough though.

Moving on, I am going to give a nod to the special effects, even if it is a little redundant. They're nothing we haven't seen before, but they're impressive. Manhattan burns in style, the explosions are top notch and the alien spacecraft pew pew to perfection. I may sound exceptionally jaded, but until they perfect holographic technology I'm not going to give them a thumbs up, especially given their obsession with the "3D experience." So to conclude, Avengers Assemble is a near perfect example of big budget blockbusters getting things right. Well developed characters, quick dialogue and explosions to boot are hallmarks of Whedon's directing and writing styles, as they should be throughout Hollywood. Without him, I honestly believe the premise would never have gotten off the ground. Comic books movies are scrupulously analysed by fans and have suffered their wrath on a number of occasions, remember The Fantastic Four and it's dire sequel? Handing the film to a sci-fi, geek veteran was really the only choice the studio had. So go and see Avengers Assemble, feed Marvels money machine and the corporate oligarchy, because at the end of the day, it's more than worth it.