Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is head of S.H.I.E.L.D. brings together a collection of the greatest Marvel superheroes, most of which have been put out to pasture due the danger they bring. There’s Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), The Incredible Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow Scarlett Johansson), for starters. Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) has been turned by evil demigod Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and his brother Thor (Chris Hemsworth) shows up to help defeat the evil Loki. Loki has stolen the device that allows him to open a portal and bring in his army of alien warriors, and only The Avengers with a little help from their friends have a chance to defeat them.

Let me first say, that I am not general a comic book hero fan in the least. But I truly think this is the best of this genre ever. It helps a lot if you have seen the previous movies, as this one ties it all together. From Thor to Hulk to Captain America, the First Avenger, to the Iron Man movies. These all tie the characters together and a pretty good at getting the facts straight, which is important to the true fans. It’s a real treat to see all these wonderful characters together. Rather than one hero which saves the world, each of these guys have to use their special talents together to survive. Plus they need a little help from the outside, and a lot of luck to get by. It could have been easy to feature the most popular and strongest heroes the most, but this film does a great job of giving every Avenger his time in the spotlight. Truly no one is really more important than the others. (That, of course, is open to a lot of debate I’m sure.) Dealing with these big ego’s gives Nick Fury fits.

One weird thing was using Robin Sherbatsky (Cobie Smulders) from How I Met Your Mother, as one of the key officers on Nick’s team. Every time I saw her, all I could think of is Robin.

But seriously, this is a great adventure movie that goes strong from the opening through the credits, and never gives you a chance to sit back and relax. At the same time it has a lot of heart, a great deal of humor, especially with the interactions of the Avengers themselves, and some epic battles, special effects, and some of the best damn explosions I have ever seen. Despite the fact that the box office is SO huge for this film, (It made back it budget in the first weekend), this is a film that you ought not miss in the theater. The shock and awe from the rest of the audience and the big screen and wonderful sound systems make it well worth the money. I saw it in 3D, and though it really didn’t add a great deal to the film itself, I’m glad I paid the extra $3.50 for 3D. It was a beautiful and breathtaking film. I loved it, and highly recommend it whether or not you’ve seen the prior films. It’s a great story within itself.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

==Written by Ed Goettman ==

==From: Ed's Review Dot Com (www.edsreview.com)==

Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is head of S.H.I.E.L.D. brings together a collection of the greatest Marvel superheroes, most of which have been put out to pasture due the danger they bring. There’s Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), The Incredible Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow Scarlett Johansson), for starters. Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) has been turned by evil demigod Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and his brother Thor (Chris Hemsworth) shows up to help defeat the evil Loki. Loki has stolen the device that allows him to open a portal and bring in his army of alien warriors, and only The Avengers with a little help from their friends have a chance to defeat them.

Let me first say, that I am not general a comic book hero fan in the least. But I truly think this is the best of this genre ever. It helps a lot if you have seen the previous movies, as this one ties it all together. From Thor to Hulk to Captain America, the First Avenger, to the Iron Man movies. These all tie the characters together and a pretty good at getting the facts straight, which is important to the true fans. It’s a real treat to see all these wonderful characters together. Rather than one hero which saves the world, each of these guys have to use their special talents together to survive. Plus they need a little help from the outside, and a lot of luck to get by. It could have been easy to feature the most popular and strongest heroes the most, but this film does a great job of giving every Avenger his time in the spotlight. Truly no one is really more important than the others. (That, of course, is open to a lot of debate I’m sure.) Dealing with these big ego’s gives Nick Fury fits.

One weird thing was using Robin Sherbatsky (Cobie Smulders) from How I Met Your Mother, as one of the key officers on Nick’s team. Every time I saw her, all I could think of is Robin.

But seriously, this is a great adventure movie that goes strong from the opening through the credits, and never gives you a chance to sit back and relax. At the same time it has a lot of heart, a great deal of humor, especially with the interactions of the Avengers themselves, and some epic battles, special effects, and some of the best damn explosions I have ever seen. Despite the fact that the box office is SO huge for this film, (It made back it budget in the first weekend), this is a film that you ought not miss in the theater. The shock and awe from the rest of the audience and the big screen and wonderful sound systems make it well worth the money. I saw it in 3D, and though it really didn’t add a great deal to the film itself, I’m glad I paid the extra $3.50 for 3D. It was a beautiful and breathtaking film. I loved it, and highly recommend it whether or not you’ve seen the prior films. It’s a great story within itself.

==Written by Ed Goettman ==

==From: Ed's Review Dot Com (www.edsreview.com)==

It’s been building to this for years now, ever since Tony Stark first suited up to be Iron Man. Since then, we’ve had asequel to that film, The Incredible Hulk,Thor and Captain America, each working as a set up to this moment, when all of them are brought together to form The Avengers. Expectations are high and if early reviews are to be believed, they’ll be met, but I have a sneaking suspicion that in retrospect, opinions of it won’t be nearly as good. The Avengers is no different than any other superhero movie, except there are six of them, which turns out to be too much for one film. Eye candy notwithstanding, The Avengers is tonally inconsistent and character growth is all but missing, making it one of the most disappointing and shallow experiences of the year.

The main villain of the film is Thor’s Loki (Tom Hiddleston). Using an artifact called the Tesseract, he has opened a portal through space and has arrived at the S.H.I.E.L.D. base where Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and his team of scientists are working. After causing a bit of destruction and forcing agent Clint Barton, better known as Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), to take his side, he sets off to start a war. Fearful of what could come, Fury forms a team of Earth’s greatest heroes to fend Loki off, which includes Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans), Bruce Banner/the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Loki’s brother, Thor (Chris Hemsworth).

The Avengers has a number of problems, but its biggest is that too much of the film’s enjoyment is supposed to come from the novelty of seeing all these heroes fight side by side against evil and even that proves to be too difficult a task to pull off. Although the finale is unquestionably fun to watch (particularly thanks to the Hulk), the film misses a clear opportunity to make this team a single unit. Aside from one instance where Iron Man bounces a projectile of Captain America’s shield, the powers of the heroes are never incorporated together. Instead, Iron Man is flying through the sky, the Hulk is jumping here and there off buildings, Thor is fighting his brother and Captain America is on the ground doing his own thing. They’re isolated so much it begins to feel more like little snippets of each hero’s movies have been cut together and less like the cohesive team experience we were promised.

When they are all together, they’re not fighting (unless it’s with each other), but these characters have been established differently in their own films and they don’t particularly mesh well. Iron Man, for instance, is the funny one, the one who always has a quip ready to spout out when confronted by someone else. In his own films, where the tone could be established as a singular trait, that’s totally fine, but when opposite the seriousness of Thor or Captain America, he doesn’t work, and vice versa. In one particular instance, Captain America is struggling with the idea that the he was frozen solid for 70+ years and everyone he knew, everyone he fought alongside with in the war, is now dead. He’s unfamiliar with the modern world and is finding his predicament difficult to handle. The movie then directly transitions to Stark in his playboy pad bouncing jokes off left and right. There’s an uncomfortable flow in The Avengers—it doesn’t know whether it wants to be a serious, tense action film or a silly, self aware comic book movie—and it pervades the entire thing.

There’s also a distinct lack of character progression in The Avengers. While it could be argued that the other films addressed that issue by building them up to this point, it doesn’t excuse the thin writing here, which is surprising given how gifted writer/director Joss Whedon is with writing characters. They all end up pretty much where they were before (despite some poorly implemented middle ground where the characters struggle over the death of a character with whom they hardly had any interaction), which is precisely the problem. The story moves forward, so the characters must as well, but they don’t. Any minor progression is forced in arbitrarily and usually through quick lines of dialogue. Thor says at one point he used to court war, but now shuns it, as if that’s all you need for character growth.

Now, is The Avengers still worth seeing? Sure it is, but only for the most basic, visceral reasons. It’ll get your adrenaline pumping, but emotionally and narratively, there isn’t much going on. Never mind the useless, ugly and sometimes imperceptible 3D that dims the picture; when it gets to that final stretch of film, you’ll be won over, just as I was. Without it, the movie fails. That, of course, makes it a clear case of style over substance, which is what the public is calling for, so I guess in that regard it succeeds, but consider this. Both stylistically and narratively, The Avengers is most comparable to the recent Transformers films in that they both neglect the story and characters, hoping the slam bang finish will make the audience overlook its obvious deficiencies. That’s not a good thing. Once the excitement dies down and moviegoers have had repeat viewings, the veil will be lifted. The Avengers is nothing special.

The Avengers receives 2.5/5

==Written by Josh Hylton ==

==From: Josh Hylton Movies (www.joshhylton.com)==

First, the good news. "The Avengers” is generally a rousing piece of entertainment. It paints a bright, primary-colored picture of some beloved characters cobbled together from decades of comic mythology, and it's filled with congenial humor and expansive, lengthy action sequences. A lot of credit goes to the ingenious selection of TV and comic veteran Joss Whedon to write and direct. His skill with hyper-articulate outcasts and strong female characterizations (he nails Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, useless in her “Iron Man 2” debut) has found a nearly perfect outlet here, augmented by truly careful casting (across five previous films) on the part of the producers. This should never have worked at all, this wet-dream team-up that’s been speculated on and theorized about by geeks to no end, ready to pick it apart for the slightest deviation from their expectations. Everyone involved should be congratulated.

Now for the bad news. Despite all that praise, “The Avengers” is merely 'good enough.' Its narrative is clunky, expository and formulaic. Whedon’s skills as a writer are sabotaged by his background as a director of television; it looks cheap, like a network pilot, taking place mostly on generic soundstages when it’s not trying to eek a bit of scope out of the same two Cleveland city blocks (standing in for Manhattan). Most egregiously, it’s an unconscionable 140 minutes. We’ve had five entire movies of setup for this monster—in no universe should there have to be nearly an hour of exposition and shoe leather bringing our heroic team together. Whedon handles many of the individual beats with aplomb, having located his assets (a game cast, a broad palette of memorable characters and the strain of adolescent melancholy inherent in Marvel’s DNA) and maximizes their value, but he’s forced to shortchange a narrative that at best seems like the barest of excuses to put these characters in a room together. It’s hard to criticize a 200 million dollar piece of 'content' for placing character above empty spectacle, but “The Avengers” fails to provide its icons with any stakes, instead choosing to play-out a minor recurring character’s unexpected death as a means of catalyzing some team unity (Whedon loves this trick but to his credit usually deploys it with much more beloved or important cast members).

And what’s more, the spectacle, while invigorating, is rather empty. It’s great to see our favorite heroes in action, but aside from verbally sparring with goofy, insufferable loudmouth mastermind Loki (Tom Hiddleston, reprising his role from the miserable “Thor”), the Avengers spend most of their time waiting around for an invasion by Generic Alien Horde #47. These purple lizard dudes or whatever, they’re just excruciatingly bland, popping out of an interdimensional hole in the sky as if Loki ordered them from Amazon, rocket sleds included. Still, it’s hard to ignore the visceral thrill of the long, climactic CG-assisted take of a finale: the camera swoops through skyscrapers and down streets as each team-member gets a splash-page ass-kicking pose. You’d have to be heartless not to crack a smile. And so if the team’s secret weapon is the Incredible Hulk (a perfectly cast Mark Ruffalo and the film’s standout character), than the movie’s linchpin is simple charm. “The Avengers” is not dissimilar to the now decade-old 'X2' (we all loved it then, but it hasn’t aged well); it seems we’re happiest with these comic adaptations when handled with obvious care if not the seemingly-effortless skill you’d hope for.

==Written by Matt Lynch==

==From: In Review Online (www.inreviewonline.com)==

based on the sophisticated, quirky british secret-agent television series of the 1960s. a scientist who develops the means to control large-scale weather changes uses his discovery to wreak evil. emma peele and john steed must stop the villian for person