Movie Review: "The Avengers"
Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and The Hulk team up to save the planet earth in the new Marvel comic book movie "The Avengers." YNN's Neil Rosen filed the following review.
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It's finally here. The Marvel comic book movie "The Avengers" now teams several superheroes from some of their other big-franchise films.
At the end of both "Captain America" and "Thor" there were clues that something big was coming your way movie-wise. The result is the eagerly anticipated "Avengers," where the aforementioned superheroes join forces with Iron Man and The Hulk to defend the earth.
Who are they battling? Well it's Thor's evil stepbrother, Loki, who's bent on ruling our planet. It's up to the Avengers, led by Nick Fury, played by Samuel L. Jackson, to stop them.
Also in the mix here doing battle are Scarlett Johansson, who plays the Black Widow, and Jeremy Renner as archery expert Hawkeye.
There were a lot of high expectations for this film and on many levels it delivers, while on few others it disappoints.
Since writer-director Joss Whedon was dealing with so many big-name stars, like Robert Downey Jr., who reprises his role as Iron Man, Gwenyth Paltrow as Pepper Potts and Mark Ruffalo, who takes over the role of Dr. Bruce Banner a.k.a. the Hulk, there's just not enough screen time to fit everyone adequately in.
I got the feeling that while making this film, Whedon sat around saying, "We have to give Downey more screen time," or, "We're paying a lot for Scarlett Johansson, I have to write more dialogue for her," instead of thinking about the primary concern, the story.
But that aside, the real star here are the special effects and the expert use of 3-D. The battle sequence where they rip apart New York City is an awesome visual spectacle that's well worth the price admission.
Combine that with some nice doses of humor sprinkled throughout and you have a movie that will satisfy both comic book fans and general audiences. It's not brilliant like the first two "X-Men" films, it's too long and it lags a bit in spots, but overall there is still a lot of fun to be had here.