The Avengers, Assemble?

I finally saw The Avengers today. It is one of the best action movies I have saw in a long time. Gladly, it is not one of those action movies who tries to have some deep message or character development for most part forgetting about the action part. The part most people wanted to see. It have some great combats and is very well done in the special effects department.

The movie doesn't try to explain all of its cast origins, relationships and purposes. Which is good. With such big cast. if they spent 10 minutes to explain why everyone is there and how they started, half of the movie would be lost. Therefore, if you have no idea who the Avengers are, even if from previous movies, cartoons and/or comics, you may get lost trying to figure out who each character is.

That is also the biggest fault of the movie, specially with Hawkeye, the archer. If you didn't know he is an important character in the Marvel universe, his presence would feel unnecessary. But it is not. His presence is important for the plot. But in a movie with too many famous characters, like X-Men, it is hard to give it one a proper time on screen.

I will not spoil the movie, but the story is well done, Loki is a very good villain and everyone fits their role very well. Robert Downey jr. steals the spot basically every scene he speak, and you will be laughing hard. Mark Ruffalo makes a brilliant Bruce Banner, and in the final scenes we finally understand way better his portrayal. Chris Evans is good, but his character seems to not help (and the new uniform is ugly. The one from his own movie is way cooler than this one). While he do well on portraying Captain America as someone out of his time, there is not much about him. The Black Widow (which is not just there for eye candy, since she hardly show some skin) and Hawkeye all fits in their roles as spies and assassins, and they don't feel unneeded in the middle of the super powered team. Thor is pretty much like Capt. America, while his actor do a good portrait, he don't have much going for him on screen, even considering that the main villain is his adoptive brother.

The Avengers may not have the best story ever wrote nor the most compelling characters ever to grace the screen, but that is in fact some of their strong points. Many super hero movies tries to hard to 'humanize' the hero, trying to put some petty drama or romance in his/her life while the world is at stake. This movie doesn't do it. There is conflict in there, but everyone put that aside when they have the world to protect.

It is an action movie, made to take our breath away (and make some funny jokes). It doesn't try to give something to everyone (if anyone hopes to see some love story in the middle, forget it) nor tries to be a award winning movie. It tries to be fun, and in this role, The Avengers is one of the best movies ever made.