Assembly Required (An Avengers review)

Well, it was all leading up to this, wasn't it? If you need a refresher, I've compiled a page leading to all my previous reviews here.

Poster by Matt Ferguson. Check out his deviantArt page here.

This is it. The big one. The one Marvel was building up to all this time, one that's taken five years, five films and about $1bn to pull together. Just the preparation for this has been something new for filmmaking - characters from different films interacting together in the same universe. We got glimpses of it in a few Tarantino-related projects (Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction is the brother of Mr Blonde from Reservoir Dogs), but nothing on this scale, a world where a science fiction franchise, a monster movie, a swords-and-sorcery epic and a WWII-era pulp actioner exist comfortably side-by-side.

For the flagship title of this universe, and Marvel's only dog in the fight for best summer blockbuster, Avengers needed careful guiding. After all, otherwise you've spent five films leading up to a dud, and nobody wants that - not audiences, not executives, not the studios and certainly not the fans. Marvel scored a coup by getting nerd god Joss Whedon to both write and direct, but since Whedon has only one film credit to his name, and no experience with directing big-budget blockbusters, this was still a risk. A script is only as good as its direction, and while nobody was really doubting Avengers would provide high-octane action, the Marvel Studios films had a reputation for providing good plot and characters. That's quite a juggling act, and one that couldn't afford failure.

I've no doubt that Avengers is going to kill at the box office and make enough money that Disney could potentially give all its employees a vacation for a week. But has all that time been worth it? Find out after the jump.

S.H.I.E.L.D. have managed to get their hands on the Tesseract, a cube-like device capable of providing an unlimited supply of sustainable energy, but during a routine test, it creates an interdimensional gateway, through which erstwhile trickster god Loki (Tom Hiddleston) emerges and steals the cube. Loki is leading a larger army, an alien race known as the Chitauri, who plan on subjugating and controlling Earth and all its inhabitants. With options looking limited, S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) assembles a team of superhuman operatives: time-displaced super soldier Steve Rogers, better known as Captain America (Chris Evans); mechanised billionaire Tony Stark, aka Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr); alien thunder god Thor (Chris Hemsworth); and exiled scientist with a very angry genie in a bottle Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), along with two of his own agents, Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), the spy popularly dubbed the "Black Widow", and expert marksman Clint "Hawkeye" Barton (Jeremy Renner).

Now if he could just get them all to stop fighting each other.

Three IS the magic number.

A simple enough framework - create a scenario that can bring the Avengers together, then just let 'em loose and let them do what they do best. That is, bicker, argue, then band together to beat up gods and take their lunch money. It's a system used frequently not just for the Avengers, but for superhero team-ups in general, and Whedon often seems in a hurry to get the main players together. Their backstories are briefly alluded to - Cap gets a quick twenty-second montage summarising the events of his film, Thor and the Hulk get about two lines each on their histories, and Iron Man...actually, I don't think Iron Man does get that. People just see him pimp-walk out of the suit into a lavish building and already know the score. It does feel a bit slapdash, but each character gets a nice little moment that establishes their personalities so that this isn't really an issue.

Even better is how well Avengers manages to balance all these characters in such a way that it doesn't feel like one of them is the main attraction - they seem like a team. There aren't any individual character arcs as such, as their development is rooted in them trying to all get along. Cap and Iron Man, for example, rile each other up right away - Steve Rogers is a proud soldier and is focused on the objective at all times, whereas Tony has never been a team player and takes delight in subverting orders and doing his own thing. Conversely, Cap and Thor - both noble warriors - compliment each other well, and Tony and Banner get along like a house on fire; they're both scientists, why shouldn't they? It's weird how Whedon and writer Zak Penn bring up something new that comic fans haven't normally considered, but I really like that.

Whoops, wrong hawk-eye.

On the S.H.I.E.L.D. side, the two mainstays - Nick Fury and Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) - benefit from this as well, albeit more limited given the focus is on the colourful costumed folks. Coulson is revealed to be a huge Captain America fanboy, owning vintage trading cards that he hopes Cap will sign, and awkwardly referring to "watching over you (Cap) while you were sleeping...I meant I was with you while you were unconscious". It's really endearing, and continues to prove why Coulson is such a fan favourite. As Fury, Jackson doesn't quite justify his nine-picture deal with Marvel Studios, but he cuts an interesting figure both as a shadowy Machiavellian spymaster who, surprisingly, seems to genuinely believe in superheroes as much as Coulson does.

Even the Black Widow gets some nice little character development, but if you're at all familiar with Whedon's work, this shouldn't be too much of a surprise. In Iron Man 2, she was little more than a piece of eye-candy whose personality extended to "can take down an entire platoon and look smokin' hot while doing so", but here, we get to see more of Natasha - there's hints of a dark past, of her participating in pretty ruthless acts (enough that she's been hunted by S.H.I.E.L.D. before she was recruited), but also of her relationship with Hawkeye. There's not a full arc, but I like the effort put into making her more than Badass Action Girl, and giving her layers.

The villains are...well, they're present. Hiddleston as Loki is delightful as ever, and comes across as more physically intimidating with his shark-like grin and his improved fight choreography, but he seems like an odd choice. Part of this has to be rooted in the performance, as Hiddleston's charisma and role as Loki in Thor was one of the standouts in that particularly film, but his motivation seems a bit weak. "You were made to be ruled", he crows to a captive audience, and he frequently talks about the tyranny of freedom, which is a bit ironic considering he may or may not be a lackey for the Chitauri, but it seems so typical of a supervillain. Loki worked in Thor because he was sympathetic, and this feels like a bit of a regression. Then again, he seems to pick Earth to conquer specifically to annoy Thor, which fits his trickster god persona and his relationship with his adopted brother. The Chitauri have unique biomechanical designs going on, like if H. R. Giger weaponised his Aliens, but they don't seem to match up to their comic counterparts so they're really just a generic invading army.

There's always a bigger fish...

Avengers's plot is roughly divided into two halves - the titular superheroes meeting up and arguing, and the showdown with the Chitauri in New York. Part of Loki's plan involves sowing discord amongst the Avengers, and one argument in particular leads to a fight/attack on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s floating base that forces the team to get along. It's a smart decision, as a team is defined by how they interact with each other as much as by how much they get done, if not more so. The resultant setpiece following the Avengers big argument is wonderfully constructed, with the base slowly falling into ruin and the team working together to save it. I especially like how Cap challenges Tony to "put on the suit" so they can fight it out, then when the alarm sounds, Cap repeats the order, but with a hurried tone. That's the core of the Avengers: they argue and fight, and heaven forbid you're in the middle of a superhuman quarrel, but when it comes down to the wire, they become a well-oiled unit.

This also leads me neatly to the action, which has never exactly been a strong point for the Marvel Studios films. For someone who's never directed this sort of high-octane big-budget action before, Whedon shows a real eye for it, because the action sequences are superb. Hell, I'm prepared to call the climax in New York as the best of the year so far. You see, action is defined by geography as much as it is the stunts or the special effects or the martial arts; the audience should know where it's taking place and what's at stake. A lot of big-budget actioners let themselves down towards the end because they loose that sense of place; take the climax of Transformers: Dark of the Moon. The hour-long siege on Chicago lacked impact because the location varied whenever the plot demanded. You go from by the river to sliding down a skyscraper to some...other location, to the city centre, to the tops of buildings, and finally to the bridge. It's difficult to feel invested because the action just seems to be happening wherever, and everywhere looks identical.

Ride the lightning.

Not so with Avengers. The big showdown takes place mostly within one block in New York, the immediate environment around Stark Tower. It's limited, but it's focused, and it lets the director get creative with the action beats. Rather than cut between each fight as it happens, Whedon queues them up; Iron Man teams with Hulk for one problem, problem gets dealt with, move swiftly to Cap teaming up with Black Widow. The fights are allowed to flow and reach their natural conclusion, and the teams are moving all over the place, so it never feels static or disjointed. All of the Avengers get their moments to shine, but the Hulk in particular gets some of the best. The motion-capture and CGI used to create everyone's favourite angry green giant have never looked better, as the Hulk tussles with the live-action actors seamlessly, but more than that, we see Hulk actually act like a superhero. In his solo films, he's posited as the unstoppable force, which gets repetitive after a while; while Banner keeps a lone profile to avoid letting "the other guy" out, Avengers demonstrates that the Hulk is at his best when he's a team player.

It probably goes without saying at this point, as you've probably already decided to go see it, but trust me - Avengers definitely justifies the hype. It doesn't sacrifice character for spectacle, having them both compliment each other, and both elements are top-notch. The main players have settled into their roles pretty well, having had a film or two to get comfortable - Evans continues to portray the perfect idealistic hero, Downey and Hemsworth get some great lines - and even the newcomers benefit from this as well. Above all else, it's a blast - confident, self-assured and with a real sense of fun and excitement most other modern blockbusters lack.

So has it been worth the wait? Oh, hell yes.

Don't stay after the end credits, though. The CGI credits, fine, but not the big roll of text.
Trust me.