Avengers Assemble

12A

2012

Director Joss Whedon

A Shakespearean-toned Demigod, a corn-lovin’ and rage-fuelled green behemoth, a lantern-jawed and steroid-filled super soldier, a sci-fi Robin Hood, a girl who fell out of Alias, a one-eyed Samuel L. Jackson, and Robert Downey, Jr. in his Buzz Lightyear Halloween costumed: who wins in a fight? Surely that’s what is running through your head whilst experiencing the comic book smorgasbord that is writer and director Joss Whedon’s ridiculously titled (for us stupid Brits anyway) Avengers Assemble.

Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Thor’s (Chris Hemsworth) Machiavellian stepbrother finds his way to earth along with the mysterious and destructive Tesseract. Now aligned with the sinister alien race the Chitauri, Loki’s designs on our planet force S. H. I. E. L. D. director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) to recruit many of the planet’s most formidable heroes - Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlet Johansson), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Thor - to put a stop to the evil Asgardian’s schemes.

The Avengers (let’s forget that other title, shall we?) is extremely loud. The Avengers is full of eyeball popping, teenage boy delighting special effects, including enough gear-whirring explosions to make even Michael Bay spoil his underpants. But guess what? Remove the sight of Nick Fury’s colossal flying aircraft carrier plummeting to earth or Thor and Hulk soaring across the New York skyline to double-team an oncoming extra-terrestrial beast, The Avengers would arguably be even more fun.

Any time the ‘Big Four’ (Hulk, Cap, Thor and Downey, Jr. Man) are on screen together, the film soars, only this time in the metaphorical sense. The chemistry of, for example, the reserved yet obviously troubled Bruce Banner and the enormous swaggering cock that is Downey, Jr.’s Tony Stark, easily incites a greater thrill than watching these costumed colossi effortlessly battering the endless horde of boring alien invaders that create less peril than an army of blind hamsters. And Whedon knows this. The master of ensemble fantasy, the genius scribe behind television triumphs such as Firefly, Dollhouse, Angel and the peerless Buffy the Vampire Slayer provides enough sizzling dialogue and interplay to satisfy the curious itch that we have been harbouring at just how these superpowered bucks would coexist.

The film’s highlights include a three-way SmackDown between Thor, Cap and Downey, Jr. Man in a darkened forest somewhere over who exactly has jurisdiction over Loki. As one would hope after their previous outings, Downey, Jr. (verbal diarrhoea), Evans (a square) and Hemsworth (uh, buff) are all tip-top as their respective titans, but are all outshone by Ruffalo in his very first outing as the Hulk. Admittedly Banner is the most interesting character of the group, but Ruffalo manages to inject almost as much personality into the role in a reduced screen time as Eric Bana achieved in 2003’s unfairly maligned Hulk, and a great deal more than Edward Norton from the forgettable smash ‘em up The Incredible Hulk (2008). His first monstrous transformation, as Loki reeks havoc aboard the airship, and subsequent thrilling collision with Thor is the other sequence that really stands out from the herd of brightly coloured and costumed shenanigans.

Unfortunately, Johansson and Renner are wasted in their rather underwhelming roles. Whedon’s feminist leanings naturally leads to an increased and unnecessary focus on Black Widow, which makes the prospect of a stand-alone vehicle for the character all the more worrying. Tom Hiddleston doesn’t even stop to pick his teeth as he munches his way through the scenery. His Loki is less malicious but much more of a showman than in last year’s Thor. His interaction with not only his brother, but all of The Avengers was another narrative highlight that Whedon resurrected from his Buffy and Angel days, when his villains were often some of the most fascinating and talkative characters on the show.

The Avengers is by no means the superhero perfection it has been lauded as. It is, after all, low on plot and high on big explosions and very, very loud noises. Where it excels, though, sticking its well-muscled neck above the parapet lined by its ancestral loins of Iron Man, Captain America, Thor etc., is the characters. How often is a comic book film more entertaining when the characters are simply talking? Christopher Nolan pulled in off in a VERY different way with his recent Batman offerings, but now Whedon has instilled the same engaging, witty and loveable discourse into Marvel’s more colourful universe, and it works a treat.

*** ¾ / *****