Marvel Month - Mini Review - The Avengers/Avengers Assemble

Next up in Marvel Month, it’s Time for Avengers assemble

I’ve already done a review of that, and a lot of my complaints still stand is it goes into *sigh* its 4^th season, that said I have seen improvements. But this time we’re looking at the other Avengers Assemble

Known as The Avengers in the US, the title was changed to not be mistaken for the British The Avengers, the Nostalgia Critic did his review on that and I have no unique perspective to cover it as I’ve never seen it, it’s a little before my time.

But Avengers Assemble was a massive gamble for Marvel, with a hefty $220m budget, a large cast and the pressure of being that movie everything was all building up to, this movie blew everyone away, meeting their expectations and of course, for Disney, who had recently acquired Marvel, made over $1bn at the box office, $1.5bn to be more precise. This is also the first Marvel movie I ever watched, at the cinema with my soon-to-be uni housemates.

But 2012 was a way away, does it still hold up, let’s take a closer look.

So, Loki returns from wherever it is he was after Thor to steal the Tesseract, the mcguffin from Captain America that was also in the post credits scene in Thor. Knowing this is an urgent situation, Nick Fury summons the greatest heroes he knows. Iron Man – who’s just finished work on his new Tower; Captain America – you’ve already seen this scene in his solo movie; Bruce Banner (totally not the Hulk though) – played by Mark Ruffalo now, he can control his rage somehow and… no, that’s actually it. I mean Thor does come into this story, hardly a surprise when Loki’s involved bur Nick Fury doesn’t call him in and Black Widow is already an agent. Kinda under-powered team without him though, isn’t it?

Anyway, Loki has some super-secret plan to… rule the Earth? Involving bargaining the Tesseract with an alien race called the Chitauri, a race created for the movie that now shows up everywhere because of reasons. But first he must use the tesseract to create a giant portal in the sky… Yes, one of those, before it became that big of a cliché. In return the Chitauri, who we find out work for Thanos for some reason, want the Tesseract.

Despite a lot of the ground work for the movie being established through the respective solo movies, there is a surprising amount of setup required. This movie really didn’t need to be a 140-minute movie. Simplify the plot a bit and it could’ve been done in the regular 2 hours a Marvel Movie seems to be. This is not necessarily a criticism because the setup we got was well handled but I can understand those that feel 45 minutes of set up required for this plot to work could become a little boring.

The good news is the dynamic between the heroes is good, because Hawkeye really has nothing for anyone to go on in terms of personality (he had a 5 minutes cameo in Thor) he’s left on the side-lines to focus on other characters. And it’s not just the main members of the Avengers, there’s Coulson, it makes perfect sense that he’s a bit of a fanboy and it helps add weight to his ultimate sacrifice (which is undone thanks to Kree blood and TAHITI.)

New to the band is Maria Hill and… *sigh* yeah, she’s not that interesting a character. She’s kinda boring and does whatever Nick Fury wants… I can’t say much for the comics since in that reality her morality has completely warped in recent years but in Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes she proved an interesting counterpoint to Nick Fury. Whilst Nick Fury had tricks up his sleeve but was slow to anger, Maria was confrontational and very outward in her opinions, feels like they could’ve used a character like this, hell there was a deleted scene where she did express some level of disapproval of the Avengers.

Loki continues to be extremely entertaining as a villain, both in his motivations and his conversations with Thor, Iron Man and surprisingly Black Widow. The movie has the advantage of the solo movies and doesn’t have to worry explicitly about character arcs, that’s not to say they’re non-existent, there’s the ‘I’ve got red on my ledger’ arc for Black Widow, Banner’s continued control issues and the confrontational dynamic between Cap and Iron Man, not to mention their reaction to Nick Fury and finding out what he was trying to do with the tesseract.

For that matter, why is it taking so long for S.H.I.E.L.D. to make weapons with the Tesseract? Surely they recovered some of the HYDRA weapons in WW2, plus they have access to some of the smartest people on the planet. Maybe it’s because phase 2 was only originated after Thor but they’ve done nothing with it, which is a surprise to me given how ‘easy’ it was for the Red Skull and Arnim Zola, who was on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s payroll for some time.

But there’s really only thing to say about the climax. PURE AWESOMENESS. This doesn’t shy away from the fact that people died like Man of Steel did, but also, and this is important, people, shows our heroes doing whatever they can to protect people, whether getting police to evacuate buildings, or going in yourself (OK, this was mostly Cap’s doing but still) it showcases everyone doing their best and even manages a few funny moments, such as the Hulk vs Loki. You wanted him, you got him

Avengers Assemble is a great movie, whilst not a major character or think peace it provides the action and spectacle you want from a movie like this. The characters remain in character and their dynamics provide some good humour as well as fuel some good drama and Loki remains the best villain of the MCU.

Rating 80/100

We’re skipping over Iron Man 3 since I already reviewed that, next up is Thor: The Dark World