Holy shit! This was a marvellous film! I had such an incredible time watching this movie. Joss Whedon really did a fantastic job here. This movie was great across the board and I had a hard time coming up with anything even remotely negative about this movie.

Anyway, I’m going to assume that you have all seen the relevant movies (i.e. Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger. In that order, mind you) so I won’t delve into too much details.

The basic plot here isn’t anything special. Basically, Loki is still alive after the events in Thor and has allied himself with an alien race called the Chitauri. He steals the Tesseract from S.H.I.E.L.D and is trying to take over the world. S.H.I.E.L.D has to gather a team of superheroes to battle Loki’s alien army and save the planet.

It’s a very straightforward good-versus-evil storyline but that is not a bad thing to have here at all. Simple as it may, Joss Whedon manages to pull it off well. A movie like this doesn’t need to have a very complex plot. It’s not Inception or Memento after all.

This movie’s main hook is the gathering of a team of remarkable individuals and that was, thankfully, the main focus of the movie. Whedon did a great job getting this aspect of the film across. The gradual and very organic transformation of the relationships between the heroes was utterly compelling. An overly complicated story filled with twists and turns would distract audiences from the already fascinating characters on display.

However, Whedon doesn’t leave any room at all for any backstory. If you go into this movie without having seen the previous Marvel movies, you are going to be lost. To be fair, the movie does try to have a sentence here and there which reference events from the previous movies but there isn’t much to go on. This is kind of a two-sided point that I’m raising because this movie shouldn’t need to have any backstory on the characters because they already explored those backgrounds in depth in those individual movies. On the other hand, I do feel that they could have spent just a small amount of time on that. The movie’s already two and a half hours long; what’s another half hour?

They did a great job here. I have to say that the characters were well cast.

Chris Evans looks and feels like Captain America;

Chris Hemsworth has the physical presence of Thor;

Robert Downey Jr is perfect as the billionaire playboy Iron Man;

Mark Ruffalo did an interesting take on Bruce Banner and did a great job providing motion capture for the Hulk;

Scarlett Johansson may not look exactly like Black Widow but I give her a pass because she manages to pull off wearing that outfit;

Jeremy Renner was badass as Hawkeye. Jeremy Renner is badass in most of his roles to though;

Tom Hiddleston manages to present a Loki that invokes both hate and pity;

and Samuel L. Jackson is Nick Fury.

Each and every one of these characters is likable and they all have great chemistry on screen. You really end up caring for them. A huge part of the movie consists of them arguing or joking with each other and trying to create equilibrium within the team. Instead of becoming grating and annoying, that chemistry between the characters transforms every argument, jibe, joke and insult into cinematic gold.

I would also like to mention a worry of mine prior to watching this. I was very worried that some of the characters would get side-lined to make way for greater screen time for the four main Avengers (Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America). I am glad to say that none of the characters were side-lined and everyone had sufficient screen time. This wasn’t Iron Man 3 or Thor 2, this was The Avengers.

This was a really well shot film by the way. With so much going on, it would be so easy for shots to get messy but every shot in this film was framed really well. You never had scenes being shot too close or too far and you could see everything that was going on. The lighting was great too. Scenes that take place at night, while dark and depressing to watch in other movies, was bright enough here such that the audience could clearly see every detail. Scenes in the day were bright and there were some really impressive CGI in this movie.

That said, the set pieces for this movie were absolutely incredible. There were plenty of them throughout and each one made my jaw drop. I can’t go into too much detail without spoiling them but it’s safe to say that this movie has some of the best CGI I’ve seen.  

The action sequences were excellently choreographed as well. Here you have six different individuals with six very different abilities and naturally, each of them would fight an invading alien army differently. There is a scene where the Avengers are finally working as a team and the camera pans to each of them during the fight instead of cutting to them. It’s so well shot that I was very aware of the big goofy grin plastered on my face throughout.

This is a masterpiece of a film. I thoroughly enjoyed watching this movie and I plan to watch it again as soon as I am able to. This movie spent years in the making and was well worth the wait. The Avengers is one of the best comic book movies I have seen and I am confident to say that it matches The Dark Knight, one of my favourite movies of all time, in quality and competence of adaptation.

Incredible

Absolutely Incredible

This is, without a doubt, a 10 out of 10 movie.

10/10 – Watch it! And after you’re done, watch it again!