IMDb plot summary: Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. brings together a team of super humans to form The Avengers to help save the Earth from Loki and his army.
Directed by Joss Whedon. Starring Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner and Tom Hiddleston.
...Meh.
I liked almost all the original movies with these characters. I loved Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor. I was pretty iffy about both The Incredible Hulk, but that wasn't Ruffalo's Bruce Banner so I'm not sure if that counts or not. But, in the end, I didn't end up liking The Avengers as much as any of those.
The reason for that is simple: It felt like it was telling five or six separate stories.
Part of the reason team superhero movies and comics are fun is that it lets them all work together. It's a group of individuals acting as a team, and the main character is the team rather than any one person. Sure, it may switch the focus to a person here and a person there, but overall, the team itself is the central character.
Not here. I understand that it's an origin story, but 90% of the time, the Avengers weren't even in the same room as each other. We spend most of our time following individual members of the team off doing their own thing, and it's only in the last scene that we get any sense of oneness.
As a result, it's scattered. The big action scenes are split between like five different things that are all happening at once. The movie keeps trying to reestablish different things as the central storyline, but in the end, it's just five, possibly six different superhero movies that kind of sort of connect and then mush into one movie at the end. Fairly satisfying ending, and none of these five or six stories are *bad* ones, but because of its scatteredness, I just can't love it. Disappointing, because I really hoped I would. 3 stars.
Flickchart: #872 out of 1931, below Gypsy and above Videodrome.
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