Review No.78: Avengers Assemble

So it's time to review the film that everybody had seen apart from myself and the friend who accompanied to an early afternoon screening of Avengers Assemble. That's at least what I thought however the screen wasn't as empty as I thought it would be as there was a smattering of patrons already sitting down when we got there though I got the impression that many of them had already seen this at least once. I really don't know how much plot detail I should go into here as I feel the majority of readers will at least have a small knowledge of what the film is about namely the assembly of all the of the Marvel superheroes who have appeared in their own films over the past couple of years. So we have Captain America, Thor and Iron Man combining with The Hulk who is now played by Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson plays Black Widow who she has previously portrayed in the Iron Man franchise and Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye who had a brief cameo in the Thor movie. The plot itself revolves around Samuel L Jackson's Nick Fury, the link between all of these Marvel movies, who has to gather together these various heroes after Thor's step-brother Loki steals the Tesseract in order to open up some sort of space portal to get an alien race known as the Chitauri to invade. The essential struccture of The Avengers is collecting all the various characters, get them together, getting them to argue, separate them, reunite them and then get them to save New York by vanquishing all the aliens. Along the way everybody gets their time to shine and do their party piece whether it be Thor with his hammer, Captain America with his shield, The Hulk generally destroying things or Iron Man being generally witty they get their five minutes of fame. If you haven't seen it don't read the rest of this paragraph but essentially The Avengers prevent another 9/11 from happening only this time they fend off aliens rather than terrorists afterwards we are given a collection of news footage criticising The Avengers' tactics which I found very reminiscent of Team America. There was also a final scene in which Loki's failed atempts are punished by the head of the Chitauri which essentially set up either a sequel to this film or to Thor or perhaps both.

People who know me will know that I'm not a big fan of Hollywood action films however I did enjoy both Thor and Captain America for different reasons while I also thought the first Iron Man film was fantastic. As I previously mentioned all of the superhero get to do the thing they're best known for and I would best surmise Avengers Assemble as sort of being a Greatest Hits Mixtape which should've had the tagline - you liked what they did before, then see them all do it at the same time. This is a benefit in some cases as I don't think there was much more that could be done with the character of Captain America given Chris Evans' limited range while Thor made me giggle more than anything else as did Hemsworth's lines here though saying that Hiddleston's egocentric Loki provided a good villain who, like any good baddie, was set on world domination. I am looking forward to the third Iron Man film if only to see more of the bickering between Gwyneth Paltrow and Robert Downey Jr. which again was a highlight of this film however the latter's quick-talking was a bonus in this film and did provide some of the stand-out moments of the script. I would've liked to have seen more of Mark Ruffalo's Hulk as most of the plot surrounding him seemed to be waiting until he turned green and started smashing everything around him. I am aware that there have been two previous Hulk films but I would've like to have seen another one with the excellent Ruffalo in the lead role as his brief appearances as Bruce Banner were very well done. Renner and Johansson were also ill-served by their screen time which hinted at a past relationship between the two and I do hope that he at least does get his own prequel film to flesh out the character before a second Avengers film. There is a lot of wit in the script and when I have heard friends discuss the film it is the one-liners that they best remember which again I quite enjoyed and found myself laughing several times throughout. There was though a fair bit of exposition throughout with most of it being delivered by Jackson as he walked and talked with Robin from How I Met your Mother explaining various plot points to her. The final battle scene is about 45 minutes long but is extremely well-produced and visually stunning allowing each Avenger to demonstrate why they've been recruited in the first place however towards the end I did feel this battle had become slightly repetitive. It did take me a while to decide what I actually thought of Avengers Assemble however it was at the end of the day a Greatest Hits, or Greatest Smashes in the case of The Hulk, highlight reel where everybody got to do what they're known for which was both the best and worst thing about the film as it was entertaining but left little room for character development.

Verdict: A Greatest Hits Mixtape where everybody gets their chance to shine but characters don't really develop though overall it was fairly entertaining and kept my interest throughout so therefore I will award it a 7.5/10