Search - Marvel's The Avengers on DVD

Daniel W. from LANSING, MI
Reviewed on 1/19/2013...

I wanted to wait until I got to watch this at home before I reviewed it. I saw it at the theatre and sometimes with big crowds on opening weekend, you can get duped into thinking something is better than what it really is.(Im looking at you Matrix Reloaded) Well, the good news is I wasnt wrong, or tricked. This is a very good movie. Not the Be all, end all some have said but very good none the less. First the good news. 1) The Hulk- Yes he is all that and a bag of chips in this movie. Like alot of the fanboys have wrote they finally got him right. I was very worried about what Mark Ruffalo would bring since I was ( and am) a big fan of what Ed Norton did with the character. Ruffalo is even better. He added that underlying sense of danger that Norton never could quite capture. 2)Joss Wheldon- Biggest ups go to this guy. When I saw all the movies leading up to this I wondered how he was going to be able to make all this work. All the characters,try to weave some kind of storyline into all of it, and deliver all the action people are expecting. He did all this PLUS added some truly funny lines to keep it light. Great, great, great job. 3)Captain America- I was truly surprised with the role he got in this movie. I figured he would be relegated to the background, and instead he was brought into the limelight. Most actual screen time of all of them , plus he is the moral center of the movie, the guy who is the "team" player. Great job by Chris Evans. Now the bad news.....1) Iron Man- I can feel peoples eyes bugging out saying "Is this guy crazy?" Maybe its just me, but the self absorbed, quick talking schtick is wearing thin. Of course there are some cool "updates" to the Iron Man suit, and also some, dare I say, signs of maturity in the Tony Stark character towards the end of the movie. I feel its time for the Tony Stark character to grow more. It will be interesting to see how Iron Man 3 is handled. 2)Hawkeye/Black Widow- They are not awful by any stretch but you never learn what makes them tick. Maybe they are saving that for their respective "origin" movies, although Scarlett Johansson has a great scene with the films bad guy Loki half way through the movie. Which brings me to.... 3)Loki- I know, I know. We all knew that he had no chance before this even started, but the character never felt very threatening, much less that he would prevail. Once again, its probably just me, although I have no problem with the performance of Tom Hiddleston, nice job. Incomplete...1) Thor- He got the shaft I was expecting Captain America to get screen time wise. Plus we see no character development at all. Not Chris Hemsworths fault. He did good with the lines he was given. After having said all that, the movie is very enjoyable, although a bit too long. Trim about 20 minutes and it would be darn close to perfect.

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