Avengers make strong landing

After five years of summer blockbusters leading up to it, “The Avengers” finally landed. Marvel and their melting pot of super heroes deliver a movie that hits all marks and was worth the wait.

Director Joss Whedon (Serenity) took the helm of this feature despite his lack of movie directing experience.  Whedon’s TV experience with shows such as “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Angel,” and “Firefly” contrubuted to him creating a movie that equally featured all of the great talents in it and presented effects that were fluid.

Viewers that might not have seen any of the movies leading up to “The Avengers,” might not understand a few things.  Regardless, the movie will still be entertaining and some intuition might fill in the gaps.

The plot is the typical super hero style.  The world, as we know it, is at risk of ending and somebody is trying to save the day.  “The Avengers” pits Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and S.H.I.E.L.D. (Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Renner) against Thor’s brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) from taking over the world and destroying freedom.

At the end of Thor, Loki was thrust into the abyss of space.  In the beginning of “The Avengers,” Loki is talking to a mysterious dark underworld leader of some sort.  This leader wants the ever powerful Tesseract (energy cube from the movie “Captain America”) and lends Loki his army to take over Earth and return the Tesseract to him. 

The beginning of the movie will catch people up on what the superheroes have been doing since their last film.  It was a little slow, but it was necessary to bring them all together and help build them up a bit for the viewer who has not seen the previous films leading up to this.  Whedon was successful in interweaving all of the heroes’ different plotlines and producing a cohesive plot for “The Avengers.”

Marvel had already hit the mark with the perfect casting of “Iron Man,” “Thor,” and “Captain America.” However, Mark Ruffalo is new to the Hulk character.  Previous Hulk’s were Eric Bana and Edward Norton and the success of those films was less to be desired.  Ruffalo is by far better than Bana, Norton and the original TV Hulk, Lou Ferrigno.  It was nice to see them get his character on point with where he should have been all along.  The Hulk character was also filmed using motion capture technology, so finally the Hulk resembles the actor playing him.

One of the best characters in the film, besides the Hulk, was Black Widow (Johansson).  She has a fairly big role in the film considering it is not focused on her.  It could appear that they might be gearing up to do a feature film on the Widow herself.  Her action scenes were exciting and her dialogue was stimulating.

The final battle scene in the movie is the best final battle scene in a Marvel film to date.  This is where the great special effects can be seen.  It is also where you see that the superheroes have evolved throughout the film and are ready to take Loki out of the equation for good, or not for good depending on how you see it.  The battle rages a never ending stream of villains against the heroes in a fight that goes on and on, in a good way.

In regards to the movie in 3D, it is better watched in 2D. Watching in 3D did not enhance the movie at all. It is actually a little distracting and the quality of the picture is decreased a bit by the rendering.

The movie definitely left open the opportunity for each hero to continue their films, and if you stay in your seat until after the credits, there is a little stinger that might be the best scene in the movie.

“The Avengers” does a great job of putting Marvels superheroes together in a movie that is really entertaining and leaves the viewer wanting more.  A must see for any comic book fan as well as everybody else looking for a great movie to watch.