The Wolverine (2013)

The Wolverine (2013)

Release Date: July 24, 2013

The disastrous X-Men Origins Wolverine somehow didn’t put Fox off the idea of giving Wolverine his own solo adventure, but they did wait a few years before trying again. Fortunately, The Wolverine is a significant improvement on the previous film.

Plot Summary / Riffing

Spoiler Warning for those who haven’t seen the film yet. The twist here isn’t one everyone knows, so I mean it this time!

Enough time has passed since the controversial X-Men: The Last Stand that we’re finally getting a new X-Men film set following its events. Wolverine has left the X-Men out of guilt and is now living in a cave without a box of scraps when he is visited by a young woman named Yuriko. She explains that Wolverine saved the life of her grandfather Yashida by protecting him from the nuclear bomb at Nagasaki. He is now dying of old age and wants Wolverine to visit him in Japan. Wolverine goes since it’s nice to have a holiday at someone else’s expense once in a while, and he was trying to come up with a way of procrastinating from putting up that shelf in his cave anyway.

Yashida tells Wolverine that he has come up with a way to take Wolverine’s healing factor away and give it to Yashida because he wants to live, but Wolverine says no because he’s afraid of needles after that Weapon X business, and Yashida dies that night, which honestly raises questions as to whether he would have survived long enough to undertake the transfer process anyway. Before dying, he throws a hissy fit and decides that if he can’t have Wolverine’s healing factor, Wolverine can’t have it either, and Yashida’s doctor Viper puts a squid inside Wolverine that takes away his healing factor. This is Wolverine though, so he’s still a double hard bastard.

Yashida’s will states that his entire fortune goes to his other grand-daughter Mariko, which is a decision her father Shingen and fiancée Noburo are not okay with, so they put a Yakuza hit on her, but Wolverine and Mariko are able to escape thanks to Japanese Hawkeye being a team-killing fucktard. Viper punishes Japanese Hawkeye for his incompetence by using Reptile’s acid spit fatality on him, though he survives. The Yakuza eventually capture Mariko, prompting Wolverine to do his best impression of Liam Neeson in Taken, throwing Noburo off a balcony (he was lucky enough to land in a swimming pool that appeared beneath him to keep the film at a 12A) and awarding Shingen the title of Worst Dad Ever, with his prize being getting stabbed in the throat. Wolverine also finds the time to get the squid out and get his healing factor back, which means that the battle to see who’s more OP between him and Alice from the Resident Evil movies is back on.

While Wolverine was busy with that, Mariko suffers kidnapception when Japanese Hawkeye kidnaps her under orders from Viper, to be used as bait for Wolverine. Wolverine takes the bait and is turned into a pincushion for his troubles, which is strange since the arrows have ropes attached and he doesn’t try to cut the ropes. When Wolverine comes to, Viper has him strapped to an operating table and plans to have the Silver Samurai, a giant samurai robot made of adamantium that looks like Shredder, cut Wolverine’s claws off. Mariko is able to get Wolverine free and Japanese Hawkeye switches sides, only to die almost immediately afterwards. Meanwhile, Viper sheds her skin, and Yuriko is unimpressed by such a lame evil transformation, so she chokes Viper, then cuts a rope to hang her and she bangs her head on the elevator going in the opposite direction, because there’s no kill like overkill. Wolverine cuts Shredderbot’s head off, only to find that it’s a mech suit operated by Yashida, who isn’t dead after all (The guy who died was a struggling British actor named Trevor Slattery.) Yashida cuts Wolverine’s claws off and absorbing the adamantium from his body, but Mariko interrupts the process, allowing Wolverine to grow new bone claws and throw Yashida off a cliff to his seeming death. Even if he did survive, he’s not getting back up that cliff in that big Steel Samurai suit. He’s no Heihachi Mishima after all.

This film is quite a departure tonally from the previous X-Men films, which the film commits to admirably. Unlike X-Men Origins Wolverine, which felt like an X-Men film that had Wolverine alone in it because of reasons, this one does do something new and different for the series. This feeling is aided by the new Japanese setting and cast of characters, and the only returning characters, besides post-credits cameos, being Wolverine and the ghost of Jean Grey. The shift towards “When suddenly ninjas!” is handled much better here than in Elektra, as despite the changes, the film still feels like it belongs in the same universe as the previous X-Men films. The smaller, more intimate scale allows the film to better explore Wolverine as a character than the last spin-off did, which limited most of the character development to the opening credits. There’s a world-weariness to the character that was merely hinted at occasionally before, but is brought to the forefront here. Taking away Wolverine’s healing factor for most of the film is a great idea too, as it aids the exploration of Wolverine’s mortality. It’s easier to care about Wolverine’s character development when he isn’t an indestructible juggernaut who could probably survive being shot into the sun, like in The Last Stand or X-Men Origins Wolverine, and the idea that for all his death seeking tendencies, Wolverine starts having second thoughts when confronted with the possibility of death is rather ironic. The nerf also works on a practical level, since most of the antagonists in this film aren’t mutants.

The darker feel of the film helps the plot and character development, but unfortunately, it doesn’t have as much success with the action scenes. Because they’re more brutal and less fantastical, due to Wolverine hacking up people with swords and guns, the editing is from the we wanted a 12A school of spastic editing and camera angles that make it difficult to see what’s going on and leaves a lot of it out of shot for the sake of getting a lower rating. Also, Wolverine is the only character capable of bleeding. This is rather annoying since the franchise hasn’t done this before, and hopefully it won’t become a trend. At its heart, the film can’t get away from its status as a superhero movie. Many of the action scenes are fine despite this, with the train scene being the standout, but the climax is more like a scene from Iron Man, and is at odds with the tone the rest of the film had had up to that point.

I dare you to watch the bit on the train when Wolverine does his Superman impression without saying “Hugh Jackman away!”

The biggest issue with the film is one that hurts the film in retrospect. The Wolverine was followed a year later by X-Men: Days of Future Past, which rebooted the film series so that only X-Men: First Class remained canon. The knowledge that this film is ultimately pointless hangs over it now, more so than the first three, because they were around for a while. The Wolverine was irrelevant within a year of its release. The filmmakers had to have done some work on Days of Future Past and known what would happen while The Wolverine was in production, which makes it even more of a shaggy dog story. Surely they would have been better off holding back this film for a year or two and releasing it after Days of Future Past, so that they could avoid making the whole thing a pointless endeavour, and in particular having this film’s new developments of Wolverine’s bone claws, getting over killing Jean Grey and Yukio tagging along with Wolverine amount to nothing?

While the timing of the film’s release is unfortunate for that reason, I can’t hold it against the film too much because it isn’t to blame for something out of its control. What I can say however is that The Wolverine proves that Wolverine can carry his own film without the result being a disaster.

Bonus: If you want fun times, synch up the train scene in this film with the audio of the train scene from Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers. Hilarity ensues!

Next Time: This film, it is good. Another!

Iron Man 3 (2013)

Iron Man 3 (2013)

Release Date: May 3, 2013

The success of The Avengers put Marvel in a prime position for Phase 2, which kicks off with the return of Tony Stark. Iron Man 3 makes the decision to go darker and edgier, with a more personal story arc, an interesting decision after the escapist fun of The Avengers.

Quick note before I progress to the plot summary / riffing. We’re coming up to the most recent films now, with these ones being less than two years old, so from now on, I’ll put a little spoiler warning, just in case readers haven’t seen these films yet, but intend to. Granted, it may not be necessary with this film, since the big twist has joined the ranks of “Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father” and “Bruce Willis is a ghost” among plot twists that everyone knows, but it’s good to get into the habit anyway. Veteran readers likely know how I do this by now, but the warning is there for the sake of any new readers who may start reading here.

Seriously Bender, that was uncalled for.

We last saw Tony Stark at the end of The Avengers where he flew into space with a nuke and set the Chitauri mothership up the bomb before going to get some shawarma. As it turns out, this has resulted in Tony developing PTSD and having nightmares and panic attacks, which have prompted him to build a whole load of new Iron Man suits to keep himself occupied, since not even Pepper moving in is enough to keep him sane. Happy Hogan, now working as Head of Security of Stark Industries, is suspicious of AIM leader Aldrich Killian, who suggests working with Stark Industries and puts the moves on Pepper, so he follows Killian’s bodyguard and is caught in a suicide bombing caused by the Mandarin, leader of the League of Shad- oh wait, wrong movie. Tony is hit hard by this, and has the bright idea of challenging the Mandarin to 1v1 him if he thinks he’s hard enough, giving Mandarin his address while he’s at it. This goes about as well as you’d expect, as Mandarin doesn’t play fair and sends helicopters to blow Tony’s mansion into the sea.

Tony is able to survive the attack on his mansion thanks to Jarvis sending him to Tennessee. There, Tony gets a young boy to be his sidekick and investigates the suicide bombings, discovering that they are caused by Extremis, a drug given to veterans who’ve lost limbs to regenerate them, in addition to gaining super strength and speed, and fire powers. The catch is that Extremis doesn’t always get along with the user, and if the body rejects it, they go boom. Extremis was created by an ex-girlfriend of Tony’s, who only intended the regeneration part, not the exploding or fire parts. Aldrich Killian worked with her, but didn’t iron out the exploding glitch, since he’s in the market for suicide bombers. Killian captures Tony and Pepper separately, gives Pepper Extremis, then kills the ex when she’s about to switch sides. Killian then explains he turned to the dark side after Tony snubbed him at a new year’s party.

I don't know about you, but this sounds familiar.

After escaping captivity, Tony teams up with Rhodey, who had been hunting for Mandarin himself on behalf of the government using his snazzy new Iron Patriot suit, but got captured and taken to the same place, with his suit being stolen by Killian’s lead henchman and used to kidnap the President. They find that Mandarin is there too, but he’s just a puppet whose strings are being pulled by Killian. Mandarin is revealed to be a struggling British actor named Trevor Slattery, acting the role of a terrorist leader to scare the citizens of the USA.

Tony and Rhodey find out where Pepper and the President are, but they’re heavily guarded by Killian and a small army of Extremis enhanced soldiers. Tony initiates the House Party Protocol and sics all his suits on the bad guys at once, while Rhodey proves himself to be a bad enough dude to rescue the president. Tony fails to rescue Pepper and she seemingly falls to her death, which drives him over the edge, sealing Killian in a suit and ordering Jarvis to self-destruct it. Killian survives because he’s actually a Terminator, but Pepper also survived because of the Extremis, and uses her newly gained superpowers to do her best Sarah Connor impression and destroy the K-800. Tony then detonates all of his suits since he didn’t have any fireworks on hand, and they all lived happily ever after. Even Mandarin gets a happy ending, since although he is sent to prison, his acting talent finally gets him recognised on the world stage by adoring fans. It’s amazing how quickly acts of terrorism are forgiven when you’re the toast of Croydon.

Before we go any further, the first thing that must be addressed is Mandarin. His film portrayal is very different from the comics, and has proven to be a source of controversy. In the comics, Mandarin is a real terrorist leader, as opposed to a fake like in the film. This change to the character is a big risk, but I think it works. A comic faithful portrayal wouldn’t have been accepted since comic Mandarin is a yellow peril, Fu Manchu type, so they would have needed to do something different anyway. In that case, well done to Marvel for going crazy with it, and for keeping the twist a secret until the film came out. The fact that nobody saw it coming, and it’s not the sort of thing anyone could guess, made it all the more hilarious when it finally hit. Trevor Slattery being the funniest character in the film when he’s out of character certainly helps.

 I liked movie Mandarin. #DealWithIt

 

As I mentioned earlier, this film has a darker tone to it than the first two Iron Man films. This is because the stakes are more personal this time, and Tony Stark is really made to suffer. This time around, he loses almost everything: his friends, his suits, and his mental health. The mansion attack in particular is terrifying, especially when Tony gets dragged underwater with a cable around his neck. Considering how cocky and relaxed Tony Stark normally is, seeing him of all people have panic attacks is actually surprisingly upsetting. Credit to Robert Downey Jr for making the attacks so convincing. It’s a relief that he gets two of the things listed above back at the end. The tone is comparable to The Dark Knight Rises, in terms of the emotional journey the protagonist goes through, before retiring from their destiny and starting a new life at the end. Feel free to make jokes about The Iron Man Rises or The Stark Knight Rises.

In this comparison, Mandarin is Bane because they both have silly accents and everything they say is quotable.

While the darker tone works for the character development, I’m not sure if it was as successful elsewhere. While this film does want to be something more than the previous popcorn entertainment, and that is to be applauded, I think maybe having the villains be suicide bombers was too big a step to take at once. We see that sort of thing constantly in the news, and I’m not sure Marvel is quite ready to tackle a topic that heavy just yet. These scenes, combined with Mandarin hijacking the airwaves to announce his next target, hit a little too close to home, given the climate of fear the world is currently in, and the fact that these things can and do happen, besides the fire powers of course. The first Iron Man film also had terrorists as the antagonists, but there was a lightness of touch there that helped detach it from reality just enough to avoid being disturbing, yet still pose a threat.

Though Tony Stark will continue to play a major part in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Iron Man 3 seems to be the end of his solo adventures, at least for now. Though it doesn’t beat the original, it does at least improve on Iron Man 2, since it tells its own story, as opposed to setting up the rest of the Avengers.

Stan Lee spotter: Stan Lee appears as a judge at a beauty pageant. Dirty old man, he is, judging the looks of a woman young enough to be his grand-daughter!

Next Time: Konichiwa, Hugh Jackman-san!

Bonus: We may not have seen the last of the Mandarin in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The short film All Hail the King reveals that there is a real Mandarin, and he is pissed at Trevor Slattery for impersonating him. Iron Man 4 for Phase 4, anyone?

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

Release Date: July 3, 2012

With Spider-Man 3 not faring as well as the first two did, Spider-Man 4 falling apart, and Marvel making waves with their own films while taking back the rights to characters like Daredevil, Punisher and Hulk they had previously been licensing out, Sony were left in a tight spot if they wanted to keep the film rights to Spider-Man, one of their key money makers. The solution was to press the big red reboot button and start over with a younger, trendier Spidey.

Peter Parker lives with his Aunt May and Uncle Ben, after his parents disappeared while doing mystery stuff that is mysterious relating to Oscorp. Peter is going through a phase of teenage acting out, but his heart is still in the right place, and he wins the affection of his classmate, Gwen Stacey. Peter finds out that his parents were doing mystery Oscorp stuff with Oscorp scientist, Dr Curt Connors, who works as Gwen Stacey’s boss. Peter helps Connors with his experiment to regenerate lost limbs, then sneaks off to a room with genetically modified spiders that give him spider powers after one of them bites him. Peter goes mad with power, and he starts acting out further now that he’s able to enact the revenge of the illogically cool and handsome nerd. Following Peter’s suspension from school after performing the Chaos Dunk (luckily, he doesn’t outlaw basketball or turn Michael Jordan towards the dark side) and leaving Aunt May to walk home alone at night, Uncle Ben calls Peter out on his recent douchiness, causing Peter to storm off in a strop and buy some milk. Bad news, he doesn’t have enough money to buy milk. Good news, the milk is given to Peter by the nicest mugger ever. Very bad news, the nicest mugger ever shoots Uncle Ben outside the shop.

Peter blames himself for Uncle Ben’s murder, and decides to get revenge by tracking down the nicest mugger ever and beating him up. Unfortunately, Peter doesn’t find him because every criminal in New York looks alike, since they’re all members of the Inexplicably Identical Individuals Gang, a clone army created by Oscorp in case HYDRA ever tries to muscle in on their territory. Police officer Captain Stacey, Gwen’s dad, is annoyed at Spider-Man for beating up thugs, and fills the J Jonah Jameson role of saying “Spider-Man’s a menace!” Meanwhile, Dr Connors turns into a lizard man after using lizard DNA in an experiment to regrow his lost arm. He also goes insane and makes a gas that will turn everyone in New York into giant lizards. (Couldn’t he at least wait a few months? They haven’t finished rebuilding New York after the Chitauri yet.) After being caught sneaking into Dr Connors’ office and finding a Lizard-Rat in there, Peter figures out that Dr Connors is the Lizard, and gets Gwen to make an antidote to stop the lizard gas. Spider-Man then weakens the lizard enough to give him the antidote and turn Connors back to normal, but not before the Lizard runs Captain Stacey through. Dammit man, he was only three days away from leaving the force!

After getting medical attention from being tossed around and such, Peter ignores Captain Stacey’s dying wish for him to stop seeing Gwen because neither of them are happy with it. Boy is that a decision he’s going to regret come the sequel… Meanwhile, Dr Connors is sent to prison because, as it turns out, the argument that you turned into a giant lizard doesn’t fly in court when charged with killing a man and attempting a terrorist plot. In his cell, he meets a mystery Oscorp man with a bowler hat.

Seriously? Never thought this guy would be in a Spider-Man movie. Couldn’t they have used Maleficent or Jafar or Captain Hook?

The big thing with this film is that it feels unnecessary. There were only ten years between the original Spider-Man and this reboot, and only five since Spider-Man 3, so the older series was still relatively fresh in the public consciousness, which makes this one seem rather cynical. Even then, Spider-Man has one of the iconic superhero origins, alongside Batman and Superman. Everyone knows Spider-Man’s origin, so did we really need to see it again? The first hour or so of the film is prone to give viewers déjà vu.. The most significant alteration to the origin is the mystery Oscorp stuff with Peter’s parents, which I wasn’t big on, to be honest. The main reason for that is that seemingly everything ties into Oscorp somehow, and it quickly goes into easy-to-mock tinfoil hat conspiracy theory territory. The bit about Oscorp’s clone army of identical criminals earlier on was a joke, but given all the other shady stuff relating to them, it almost seems worryingly plausible.

If in doubt...

Sadly, Uncle Ben’s death doesn’t work as well this time. The death happens immediately after Peter refuses to stop the nicest mugger ever, which was probably done to make him see his mistake sooner, but it backfires, as the scene is moved onto a busy street. It’s harder to blame Peter because there were plenty of other people on the street, and none of them tried to stop the mugger either. In the older films, Peter wasn’t there when the burglar shot Uncle Ben, there wasn’t anyone else around during the shooting, and there was some amount of time before then that Peter alone could have stopped the burglar without anyone else being there, so it falls a little flat in that respect.

For this film, Peter Parker gets a makeover. This time around, he’s significantly more trendy and very handsome. It’s hard to believe that he’s an unpopular nerd at school, since he skateboards in the corridors and everything. Cool kids do that, right? He’s also quite a jerk in this film, which is a surprise after the meek Tobey Maguire, who wasn’t half as much of a jerk, even with a jerkishness-enhancing black suit. Fortunately, the obnoxious behaviour is toned down later, as he grows as a character, but early on, he gives unwelcome reminders of Dante from the Devil May Cry reboot. To be fair though, he is more convincing as a teenager than Tobey Maguire was, which may be why he graduated from high school half way through his first film.

Nothing personnel, kid! #2Edgy4Me

Fortunately, there is something here that is better than in the original films. Specifically, the romance subplot. Peter and Gwen are a cute couple together, and her presence brings out the best in Peter, so he stops being a douche for a bit. It is clear that they both like each other, (then again, that could be because Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are a couple in real life, meaning that they probably weren’t acting in those scenes,) whereas in the earlier films, the love between Peter and Mary Jane sometimes came off as one-sided on Peter’s part, even when they were together. In addition, Gwen isn’t a damsel in distress, unlike Mary Jane who was frequently targeted by the various villains, and she even has a major role in the climax by going into Oscorp to make the antidote to the Lizard Gas, which is a lot more than Mary Jane ever got. Hooray!

Though the tone of the review may come off as overly harsh, The Amazing Spider-Man is an improvement on the disappointing Spider-Man 3, but it pales in comparison to most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Had it been released in the mid 2000s, maybe I wouldn’t be as harsh towards it, but the bar has been raised now. It’s not bad, but after The Avengers, not bad just doesn’t cut it any more.

Stan Lee Spotter: Stan Lee appears as a librarian during Spider-Man and Lizard’s fight at the school. It’s probably for the best that he doesn’t notice the chaos going on behind him.

Next Time: Phase 2 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe begins.

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.