Today came a day like no other, a day when I saw a film I never expected to see in the cinema, my most anticipated film of the year, Marvel's Avengers Assemble. The culmination of Marvel's ambitious scheme to weave comic book style continuity into film, so how does this scheme pay off. Put it this way, Avengers Assemble is easily one of the best superhero films ever made and is the best out of all of the Marvel Studio's films.
I feel that I have to start off with the cast of the film who are all excellent. Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Clark Gregg and Samuel L Jackson all slip back into their roles with great ease and they all play off each other excellently. Downey in particular has a lot of fun playing Tony Stark again and he really gets the Joss Whedon dialogue at play in the film. Evans plays the man from the 40's in a modern world really well and the chemistry he shares with Gregg (who essentially plays the obsessed fanboy whenever the two of them are on screen together) is incredible. Hemsworth plays a God in the world of humans as if he's in Shakespeare and of the new additions Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye (yes I know he was in Thor but he didn't do anything so I class this as his first film) is pretty good overall and Cobie Smulders is okay but doesn't really get much to do. Of all the cast though, the best by far are Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner and Tom Hiddleston as Loki. Ruffalo puts real depth into Banner as the man struggling to contain his inner beast and trying to do good in the world to atone for his previous actions and it was also great that he played not just Bruce Banner but the Hulk as well through motion capture technology, allowing Ruffalo to become fully absorbed in every aspect of his character. Hiddleston on the other hand makes Loki a real boo-hiss baddie who you just love to hate, with him putting a bit of a Terrence Stamp in Superman 2 vibe during one key scene in the film (you'll know it when you see it) but he also comes across as genuinely threatening, especially in a scene halfway through the film with Johansson. The cast is excellent overall and they all have great chemistry with each other which is part of what makes this film such good fun to watch.
Then there's the script by Joss Whedon and Zak Penn which is incredible. Whedon and Penn put a lot of wit and humour into the film and there are some laugh out loud moments in the film, in fact there were 2 moments near the end of the film when everyone at the showing I was in exploded with laughter and with good reason. Whedon and Penn know that you cannot take this type of film too seriously and as such they have a lot of fun with the entire concept of the film. There are also points in which the film does take itself seriously and the dialogue here is great as well, this time more due to the threatening nature of the dialogue. The interactions between all of the characters is great as well. For this type of film, if the dialogue scenes between the characters aren't handled well then the film would fall apart, here though the dialogue is excellent and you really understand the different relations and conflicts the characters have with each other with the initially formation of the team being a war of words between all the characters and Whedon nails the antagonism all the characters have towards each other. Now I won't talk about the plot because I don't want to spoil the film. Rest assured it gets all the characters together in a very clever way and the Tesseract makes a great object for everyone to fight over.
The action scenes and the effects are also incredible. When I saw the heli-carrier for the first time, I came close to cheering just for seeing the heli-carrier on screen and the effects for the heli-carrier are brilliant and seamless. The action scenes are also incredible and some of the biggest crowd pleasing moments come in these action scenes when you see all the different characters fighting with/against each other and all the action scenes are thrilling and intense. Now I won't spoil any of the big action but some of the action shots in this film are some of the best action scenes put into film recently. It also helps that Whedon knows how to direct action. He doesn't fall into the Michael Bay shakey-cam nonsense that plagues other action films and instead shoots the action far back in long takes which allow the audience to see everything that is going on and provides a much more epic scope throughout the action as you can see all the different fights the Avengers get involved in in great detail, you know who is fighting who and you never get confused throughout the action scenes, which is more than can be said for the films of Michael Bay. I honestly think that all other superhero films in the future will struggle to match Avengers Assemble in terms of the quality of its action.
In conclusion, Avengers Assemble is incredible. When I walked out of the screening I was speechless over just how good this film was. It is easily one of the best superhero films ever made and shows that this grand scheme of Marvel's is paying off greatly. I highly recommend that you watch this film as soon as you possibly can.
My Rating: 5/5
P.S. Make sure you stay through the credits, there's a brief teaser for what is going to happen next in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and it is jaw dropping.
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