The Avengers

My Grade:  B+

How else can you describe The Avengers other than “epic”?  Maybe “expensive” would work.  From the opening scene, you can see the film burning through its MASSIVE 220 million dollar budget with huge sets, tons of explosions, an inordinate amount of extras, glorious special effects, and (of course) the expensive cast.  That phrase “you get what you pay for” works with feature films, too, because those 220 million dollars paid for a very exciting film.

Almost all 142 minutes of the film are action packed.  There are some scenes that involve a good bit of exposition, but the majority of the film is spent in epic battles.  And the story is pretty strong.  An evil demi-god gets control of the most powerful item in the world and plans to use it to bring his army to Earth in order to enslave the entire planet.  Oh yea, AND he is Thor’s brother (adding some emotional issues).  The Avengers have to come together and overcome their personal demons and petty differences in order to save humanity.

The hard part of writing this film is that there are so many “main” characters.  Thor, The Hulk, Iron Man, and Captain America have all had their own films, but they are mashed up into an ensemble cast in this one along with other heavy-hitters:  Hawkeye, Black Widow, and Nick Fury.  With this many leading characters, the struggle is giving each of them enough of a spotlight while keeping an ensemble feel.  And Joss Whedon does that wonderfully.  We get to know each character and get enough of them to care about them but not too much to take the focus off of the team.

Since we are talking about the ensemble cast, I have to discuss my biggest fear for this film before I saw it.  I was worried that the actors would not “play well with others” as Iron Man says in the film.  Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, and Samuel L. Jackson are all leading actors and only a few of them have been members of an ensemble cast (but not recently).  I figured egos would collide during filming, the film would be wrought with production problems, and the film would collapse... I was wrong.  They all work very well together and make for a superbly strong cast.  Of them all, though, Mark Ruffalo shined the brightest with his portrayal of The Hulk/Bruce Banner’s inner struggle.

The problems I have with this film are the same problems I have with a lot of superhero films.  First, there are some ridiculously cheesy one-liners.  It seems like you can’t really escape from them in superhero films, but some of them are glaringly cheesy and not as funny as they are supposed to be.  The other problem I have is that The Hulk and Thor don’t seem to have any weaknesses.  Even though Bruce Banner is one of the most interesting characters because of his inner struggle, once he “hulks out” he is practically invincible which makes the stakes lower.

I know I just knocked some of the cheesy one-liner jokes, but the comedy that is sprinkled throughout this film is a very welcome addition.  The funniest moments, though, are not the lines the characters say; they are small physical things.  The moment that got the most laughs at my screening was when The Hulk punches Thor out of the blue.  Also, when a soldier asks why they should take orders from Captain America, he fights off a handful of dangerous enemies in a very flashy, epic fight scene... which serves as an answer to the soldier’s question.

Overall the film is a lot of fun and keeps your attention, but it’s a little too over-the-top for my tastes.  It stands head and shoulders above many of the other superhero films I have seen recently (except Christopher Nolan’s Batman films), but I don’t think I will be listing it in my favorite films of 2012 list.

As a sidenote, Loki’s outfit is ridiculous... in a not-so-good, kind of silly way... just sayin’.