The Avengers (2012)

The Avengers, or Avengers Assemble, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (2012)

Release Date: May 4, 2012

Here we are. The big one. Marvel’s plan of slowly building up their world and introducing the characters individually has advanced to the point where it’s finally time to bring everyone together for the big finale of Phase 1. As someone who had not seen The Avengers prior to this (An exclusive group consisting of myself and Kevin Robinson from school) I’m quite looking forward.

SHIELD is in possession of the Tesseract, previously seen in Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger, and experiments are being run on it by Nick Fury and Dr Erik Selvig. However, Loki arrives, as he has finally found his way back to Earth after falling from the Bifrost Bridge. His adventure took in the Moons of Nibia, the Antares Maelstrom, Perdition's flames, the Phantom Zone, Pink Elephants on Parade and the opening credits of Doctor Who, so he’s had his mind expanded and been driven to madness. More importantly, he also met the Chitauri, an army of aliens who aim to take over Earth, and need the Tesseract to open a portal between Earth and their world. With that in mind, Loki takes the Tesseract, brainwashes Dr Selvig and Hawkeye to join him and destroys the SHIELD base.

Nick Fury brings Iron Man, Captain America and Bruce Banner together to find the Tesseract and get it back. The group, along with Black Widow, go to Stuttgart, having worked out that Loki will be there, and manage to defeat him, but the Tesseract isn’t there. On the way back home, their plane is attacked by Thor, who tries to break Loki out and take him home to Asgard. That doesn’t pan out, and Thor fights Captain America and Iron Man, though he is eventually convinced to let SHIELD take custody of Loki. This works to Loki’s advantage, as he tries to turn the Avengers against one another, which doesn’t prove particularly difficult between Bruce’s anger management issues, Iron Man and Captain America’s clashing personalities and Captain America finding out SHIELD wants the Tesseract so that they can upgrade HYDRA’s laser cannons from World War II. This culminates in an attack on the SHIELD Helicarrier by Loki’s minions that springs him free, (although Black Widow is able to defeat Hawkeye and remove his brainwashing), Bruce turning into Hulk and attacking Black Widow and Thor, Hulk and Thor falling from the Helicarrier, and Loki shanking Agent Coulson.

No sad music this time, because Coulson got better and got his own spin-off. Have happy music instead, since this is the happiest day of Loki’s life.

Dr Selvig builds a machine at the top of Stark Tower and uses the Tesseract to open a portal for the Chitauri to come through and invade. The Avengers, soon rejoined by Thor and Hulk, and with Hawkeye back among their ranks, valiantly hold off the hordes of aliens, but there are too many of them, and they keep on coming out of the goddamn walls. Hulk smashes Loki, and Black Widow breaks Loki’s control over Dr Selvig, who reveals that Loki’s sceptre can close the portal. In a display that gives the Elder Gods a run for their money in terms of mysterious councils who spend a long time doing nothing before pulling a dick move, SHIELD’s board of directors decide that New York is compromised and elect to nuke the site from orbit, despite Nick Fury’s protests. It’s the only way to be sure, after all. Iron Man is able to intercept the nuke and flies through the portal, using the nuke to set the Chitauri mothership up the bomb. Iron Man comes back through the portal just as Black Widow closes it, and the nuke blows up the mothership. Conveniently enough, the aliens all die because they have no chance of survive make your time. Later, the leader of the Chitauri discusses their failure with his boss, Thanos.

 Artist’s impression of my reaction toThanos. Not pictured: Dong Expanded to Feature Length.

We all love a good crossover. There’s just something irresistible about the idea of a group of characters we’ve previously seen separately come together for an adventure, seeing how they would get along with each other and what they would do together. It’s arguably part of why the likes of Super Smash Bros and Kingdom Hearts are so popular. In the end, we’re all just kids bashing our action figures together. While we had seen the occasional crossover in film prior to this such as Freddy vs Jason or Alien vs Predator, The Avengers is definitely the most ambitious in scope. We hadn’t seen anything like this before, and if the number of competing shared universe films going into production is anything to go by, Marvel struck gold. In my opinion, the key to that success was Marvel introducing the characters slowly and individually, letting audiences get to know them and want them to be brought together. After all, why bring everyone together if nobody cares? Also, the characters having already been introduced in their separate films lets it skip straight to the fun crossover interaction stuff. Another smart choice was to include supporting characters such as Dr Selvig and Pepper Potts, as it helps further the idea of all the characters living in the same universe, not just the major players being taken out of context to go on an adventure together.

The action is very fast-paced, which adds to the feeling of fun, as there is never a dull moment. According to the back of the DVD case, the film is 137 minutes, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it. Since there’s so much going on, the time simply flies by. In fact, Thor doesn’t appear until 40 minutes in, and Bruce Banner first transforms into Hulk at the 75 minute mark, yet neither of these waits feel significant, instead serving to heighten the excitement when they finally arrive. In the case of Hulk, that’s quite a difference from his first film, where the 45 minute wait for Hulk felt longer, prompting much looking at watches and thinking about pressing fast forward.

The film is also surprisingly successful in managing to juggle so many major characters. Everyone gets to contribute something and gets a decent amount of screen time. Even Black Widow puts in a good showing, considering how easy it would have been to shaft her given that she has no super powers and didn’t get her own film, instead appearing as a supporting character in Iron Man 2. Admittedly, Hawkeye spends a lot of the film brainwashed as Loki’s minion, but he makes up for it somewhat in the big final battle, and he’s also been promised a bigger role in the sequel, so there’s that.

The star of the show this time is Loki. Tom Hiddleston puts in a great performance which makes Loki seem quite a bit more unhinged than in Thor, due to his intergalactic journey taking him off the deep end. There are times, such as the Mewling Quim scene, in which Loki comes off as genuinely scary, which is quite a surprise for a film like this. The new Loki is threatening enough that getting a group of heroes together, even though Thor defeated him alone before, is plausible. He isn’t even diminished by the end of the film revealing that he was working for someone even bigger and badder.

To summarise, The Avengers is an absolute blast, a big ol’ sugar rush of a film. It’s almost a shame that it has to end. Thank goodness there’s Phase 2 to look forward to. As the only person remaining who has not seen The Avengers, it sucks to be you, Kevin Robinson. Maybe I’ll lend you the DVD if you stop showing everyone my Deviant Art account.

Stan Lee Spotter: Stan Lee appears in the news montage at the end of the film. He’s sceptical of there being superheroes and aliens, or he’s annoyed at the newspeople distracting him from his chess game and is just saying anything to make them go away.

Next Time: Marvel’s most iconic hero swings into action.

…

Wait a minute. I’ve already used that clue. It seems I’ve been doing this long enough to need to recycle clues. Amazing, huh?

Bonus: The title was changed to Avengers Assemble for the UK release, in order to avoid confusion with 60s spy TV show, The Avengers. To be honest, I don't know how much overlap there is between fans of the two.