Well, after four years of waiting, five movies to help prepare the fans, and seven heroes for fans to be even more excited, The Avengers has finally been released with raving reviews and now receiving the status of the ultimate comic book. And in many ways, it does deserve most of the praise it’s receiving. The Avengers is the movie that Marvel fans all over the world have been waiting for and is definitely worth all of the four years of hype.

  The Avengers does a lot of things that many fans had hoped for with The Avengers finally being released. It’s the basic team up of The Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and despite not having their own movies, Hawkeye and Black Widow to form the team that every Marvel fan boy knows and love, well, The Avengers. In this case, they have to stop Loki from taking over the world with help of a race of aliens that Loki had hired. The plot is at its core very basic compared to many of other comic book movies through-out the years, however, it’s not necessarily a bad thing considering that having an incredible deep and dramatic plot is not what this movie is trying to do. Instead, what this and even a few of the other movies did do right is creating a universe that is connects other movie franchises together into one big movie and possibly movie series. And at the same time, none of the characters changed from how they originally were from their first movie. One of the biggest strengths of The Avengers is the fact that all of the characters are exact characters you know and loved from the other movies. When Captain America is on screen, you still see the good hearted soul that you saw from the Captain America movie. When Tony Stark/Iron Man is on screen, you still the hilarious egotistical playboy that you know and loved from the two Iron Man movies. And even with The Hulk himself, despite being played by a different actor, you see the angry beast within, probably even bigger than you’ve ever seen him before.

  Speaking of characters, what’s even better than seeing the real Iron Man on screen, seeing the real Iron Man interacting with the real Captain America and Thor. Not only is that a great sight in itself, but the nearly all of the interaction with all of the characters is written better than you would ever expect. The interactions with all the heroes whether they’re working together or even bickering with each other feels very true to all of their characters. You believe that when these characters have an argument or two with each other, you truly believe something like an argument with Thor and Captain America would actually turned out exactly how it turned out in the movie. This also works well because of some of the humor written for these characters. Joss Whedon definitely knows how to write an argument with superheroes as funny as it could be, and really shows how funny these characters can be also, which is one of the many joys of watching The Avengers. Another plus for the Avengers when it comes to character is the fact that nearly every character gets the perfect amount of screen time. There’s never a moment where it feels like there’s too much focus on one character, each and every superhero in this film has their moments to shine and just enough time for each one to really show how awesome they really are. The only characters that should have probably had more screen time than they did were The Hulk and more particularly Hawkeye. You don’t really get to see too much of Hawkeye in the first two acts of the film which is a shame considering that the only thing he had before then was a brief cameo in Thor. While with Hulk, you don’t even get to see Bruce Banner turn into the Hulk until near the end of the second act. However, the third act of the film does manage to make up for this with having Hawkeye and especially Hulk  having some moments that are truly kick-ass for these characters.

 If there are any downfalls to the Avengers besides from the two characters mentioned earlier getting slightly less screen time than everyone else is that it does take a while to build up. The first two acts, while incredibly enjoyable and fun, do feel a little slow at first. Not ridiculously slow, but slow enough to where you would hope to see these characters actually do more and just sharing dialogue with one another, which isn’t a bad thing considering that most of it is well written, but you would expect to see more exciting things with these character rather than just great bantering with one another. However, this is also made up with the final act of this movie. Much like another film slightly earlier from this year written by Joss Whedon, Cabin in the Woods, the first two acts manage to be really enjoyable and fun, but not necessarily anything truly amazing, until the third act. Whedon shows once again that he is probably the best at writing a final act for a movie, because both Cabin in the Woods and The Avengers have probably one of the greatest final acts of any film of the genre they are representing. The last forty five minutes or so of The Avengers is one of the most exciting acts ever put on film. It’s where you get to see the most action and more importantly, you get to see your favorite characters do some of the most bad-ass things you will probably ever seen them do on film, and it is absolutely awesome to say the least.

  Over-all, The Avengers has been receiving the claim for being “The best comic book/Superhero movie ever made”, and at least in this reviewer’s opinion is not true. It’s not nearly as good as The Dark Knight or Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, because it doesn’t change comic book movies to the point where it feels like true film making like The Dark Knight did, or make something so unique and artistic that it becomes something more than a fun comic book movie like Scott Pilgrim did. However, with that being said, it is up there with X-men First Class and the first Iron Man as being Marvel’s best film. Mainly because Marvel’s best films and nearly all of their good films are basically summer blockbusters done right. They’re not the deepest or intellectual superhero movies out there, but at the same time, it’s not like they’re trying to be. They’re here to have fun and be as entertaining as a summer blockbuster should be. The Avengers is a summer blockbuster done right in terms of a typical summer blockbuster. Granted, by the time July 20^th comes around when The Dark Knight Rises manage to exceed expectations, or maybe even earlier if Prometheus is as good as we hope it will be, The Avengers might not compared to the true summer films that will hopefully and probably be even better. Though for now, The Avengers is a film that is so good, it would be impossible not to at least see it once or two during a summer that will possibly be an excellent summer movie season.

Rating: 9/10