The Avengers

If you ever had any doubts about The Avengers, cast them aside immediately. Nearly 50 years in the making, the Avengers fulfills the hopes of fans on every level. Loki, Thor’s brother, has arrived on Earth with plans to subjugate humanity and it’s up to Captain America, Iron Man, The Hulk, Thor, Black Widow, and Hawkeye to stop him.

The great thing about The Avengers is it’s way of making the viewer feel like a child again. It’s hard not to nerd out and become giddy with excitement at points in the film. It doesn’t try to compete with The Dark Knight by being gritty and moody. It instead makes its own identity by having the perfect mixture of humor and action. Rarely are movies so purely fun and entertaining to watch.

One of the best parts about this film is the interaction between characters. The back and forth banter between action segments was delightful to watch and watching these heroes learn to work as a team by the end of the film is incredibly engaging.

I really love how Joss Whedon(writer/director) and Mark Ruffalo(actor)managed to finally pull off The Hulk. Rather than trying to take the hilarious idea of a giant, green, steroid man seriously, Whedon decided to make The Hulk a little more comical, and it worked beautifully!  After two pretty terrible films, it was great to see that The Hulk could actually be done right on the big screen. The other characters worked great as well, but The Hulk gets the award for most improved.

The only minor problem I could really point out is character development of certain characters. If you haven’t seen the five films preceding The Avengers, it might be a little more difficult to settle into this one. Even so, it feels like Hawkeye got the short end of the stick as far as development. He only had a short appearance in Thor and there’s not much interaction with him in this movie until the latter half of the film.

Aside from that minor nitpick, I can’t really complain about this movie. The Avengers is the best film of 2012 so far and it’s been a long time since a movie going experience has left me so satisfied. The Avengers is a must see.

Overall score: 9.8/10