The Avengers

"Have a care how you speak. Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard. And he is my brother."

"He killed eighty people in two days."

"He's adopted."

When I was a kid, like most kids, I had action figures of many of the Marvel characters. When I would play with them, I would come up with long, sweeping multi-part stories filled with one-liners and nonsensical plot twists. Some stories loosely followed their respective comics, but most did not (unless there was an Avengers / Ninja Turtles / Lego / Star Wars crossover I am unaware of). All of the stories boiled down the same basic structure: two characters have a melodramatic encounter, then fight, then two other characters throw one-liners at each other, then they fight, and so on. By the end, all of the characters had fought each other and resolved their differences and now had to band together to fight the ultimate source of evil (usually the Technodrome or some awesome Lego ship I had made). There was a final showdown, a lot of things exploded (were thrown across my bedroom) and the day was saved.

The Avengers film is the live-action film equivalent of a kid playing with his toys. In this case, the kid is Joss Whedon, an individual who is very much an imaginative child trapped in a grown man’s body. This is by no means a negative, as there is an amazing amount of creativity that shines in his projects (Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse). Avengers is only his second directorial credit (Serenity, the film sequel to Firefly, being the first), but after watching the film, you would swear he had been doing this for years.

Story wise, The Avengers is a sequel to Thor. After being booted out of Asgard, Thor’s adopted brother Loki has made new friends in the Chitauri alien race who promise him an army to take over the earth in exchange for retrieving the Tesseract, a powerful energy source they are interested in. Once Nick Fury (Sam Jackson) realizes the earth is in danger, he activates the “Avengers Initiative” to bring a bunch of superheroes together to help save the earth. The story is simple but interesting enough to drive the plot forward and come up with a reason for the superheroes to be in the same room at the same time.

The movie’s biggest accomplishment is balancing the various personalities of the characters. Tony Stark continues to be the egotistical narcissist from the Iron Man films, Captain America always wants to do the right thing, Thor doesn’t say much (though his super-proper way of speaking is hilarious), and Bruce Banner is quiet and thoughtful. Speaking of Bruce Banner, Mark Ruffalo does a great job here and brings some depth to the character that maybe would have helped the character in the other awful Hulk films. His struggle is more personal than the other characters and he makes a great addition to the franchise. Ruffalo is set to reprise the role in several planned Hulk films, so if they manage not to screw it up, they could have something really great on their hands. Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye) and Scarlett Johansson (Black Window) round out the cast, though they don’t do much, and it seems like they are almost setting up for a spinoff with just the two of them.

The script is surprisingly good and very funny; this is a movie that doesn't take itself seriously. The one-liners are bang on and I found myself laughing out loud more often than not. One exception is Black Widow; all of her dialogue is terrible for some reason, from “I’ve got red in my ledger” to “How is that a party?”  The film does a great job of balancing the science of Iron Man and the Hulk with the supernatural of Thor and making it not seem completely stupid. I will admit that when I saw the trailer footage of the giant flying alien snake smashing through buildings, I was very skeptical that this would just seem goofy. In the end it was goofy, but then again so is the whole film, so it fit perfectly.

If nothing else, The Avengers is a whole lot of fun. The story moves at breakneck speed, the one-liners are nonstop, and if you blink chances are you’ll miss something awesome. The special effects are fantastic and are the combined effort of every major special effects studio on the planet working together on the same project. There is little to complain about with this film; either you will appreciate its slapstick approach and huge explosions or you won’t. I certainly did.

With the exception of Iron Man (which very much stands on its own as a franchise), the other Avengers films have basically served as extended trailers to culminate in this film to bring them all together. All of them contained small scenes with Nick Fury that alluded an eventual full-on Avengers film. After seeing these scenes in the other films, I always thought attempting such a massive crossover would be a catastrophe. I am happy to say that I was wrong. Here’s hoping Avengers 2 is just as good.