Well, true believers, the time has FINALLY come upon us. After 4 years since Marvel Studios kicked off its interconnected Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2008 with Iron Man, Marvel's The Avengers, the movie that all the other Marvel Studios films up until this point have been leading up to, is about to be released in a few weeks. However, one question still remains: does this movie live up to the massive amount of hype that has built up over the years like, or is this movie another huge misfire from Marvel like with X-Men: The Last Stand and the Fantastic Four films? Fortunately, I was one of the few people lucky enough to attend a special fan screening in New York City last weekend, so I can now give you the answer that you all seek.
Before I dive into my thoughts on the movie, a brief summary of the plot, which has been accurately depicted by the trailers without spoiling too much of the good stuff for once. It starts off with Loki (Tom Hiddleston) arriving on Earth via portal sometime after the events of Thor and stealing the Tesseract seen in Captain America: The First Avenger (better known to most geeks as the Cosmic Cube in the regular Marvel continuity) from a S.H.I.E.L.D. science outpost. Without spoiling any of the interesting twists in this scene, this act and it's consequences force S.H.I.E.L.D. head-honcho Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) to reign in Tony Stark, aka Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr), the newly-thawed Captain America himself, Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), Natasha Romanov aka Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and Dr. Bruce Banner aka the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo, replacing Edward Norton from 2008's The Incredible Hulk) in order to get The Avengers Initiative up and running. When Thor (Chris Hemsworth), the God of Thunder and Loki's stepbrother, joins the fray shortly thereafter, the team must learn to put aside their differences and work together as a team in order to stop Loki's nefarious plot to use the Tesseract to summon a deadly alien army called the Chitauri, whom Loki formed an alliance with in-between films.
Now that the plot's out of the way, I'm just gonna go ahead an say it: Marvel's The Avengers is NOT ONLY the best superhero film ever made, it's also the most perfect superhero movie I've EVER seen! Yes, you heard me, ladies and gentlemen. This movie is even better than The Dark Knight. I know that'll be hard for you guys to accept this at first, but once you've seen the movie in full, you'll see why I say this. There was not a single moment in this entire film that felt contrived, no dialogue that felt forced, or anything that felt out of place, silly, or even unnecessary. Instead, everything in the film not only felt right, but there's also plenty of awesome moments that'll make your fanboy dreams come true, more so than any other superhero or genre film ever made. That's what I mean by "perfect". The action was not only intense, but it was occasionally mixed in with some really well-written humor. Even the big geek-out moments that, while I won't spoil them here, were genuine enough that they never felt like there were there solely to try and make the fanboys squeal, a sin that Iron Man 2 is guilty of.
Now for the 2 big questions: how was Mark Ruffalo as Dr. Banner and were Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Black Widow even necessary for this movie? In regards to Ruffalo, as much as I enjoyed Ed Norton's performance in TIH, I felt that Ruffalo was more natural and actually looked more like an actual scientist. He's probably my favorite Bruce Banner out of all the actors to ever portray him on-screen (Eric Bana being the worst, but that's more to be blamed on Ang Lee not knowing what he was doing than Bana's actually decent acting). He gets a lot of good moments with other characters, especially as the Hulk, where he gets into some of the best fight scenes I've ever seen. As for Hawkeye and Black Widow, without spoiling anything, their brother-sister-esque relationship plays a major role in regards to their individual character development and especially in regards to the events that occur in the first 2 acts of the film. Despite Iron Man 2's attempt at making Black Widow feel forced and unnecessary to this entire crossover, writer and director Joss Whedon does everything in his power to show the audience why she and Hawkeye are the bad-asses we remember from the comics and he succeeds 100% at doing so!
I know that I'm avoiding talking about my favorite moments in the movie, but since this isn't out for another week or so, I REALLY don't wanna spoil any of them for you because they really stand out as some of the many memorable moments in the film. Also, I saw this in IMAX 3D, and I thought the post-convertd 3D was just as good as it was in Captain America: The First Avenger. I know some of the early critics are saying the 3D's not that good, but I just wanna say this right here and now: do NOT let the 3-D issue affect your opinion on the movie in general, regardless if you like 3D or not. That aside, Marvel's The Avengers is, as I said before, both THE perfect superhero film and THE best superhero movie I've ever seen. Joss Whedon should be given an Oscar for pulling off such a difficult feat with such phenomenal results! All I have to left to say is Christopher Nolan better be bringing his A-game come July, because The Dark Knight Rises will have to do something extraordinary as a film if it's gonna beat out this movie.
Marvel has thrown down the ultimate gauntlet, DC. Your move!
My Rating:
10 out of 10