The Avengers (2012)

Paramount Pictures

This is the movie that the world has been waiting for! It’s the mother of all action movies; the grand daddy of comic book movies; the ultimate team-up of superheroes. Now the X-Men films did feature a team of heroes but that was a group of heroes that have always existed as a unit. The Avengers is the first of its kind, where heroes across several movies have come together into one movie to save the world. It’s almost comparable to The Expendables, except not with 80’s action heroes; these heroes in The Avengers are larger than life! Thor is the God of Thunder; Captain America is a soldier with incredible strength; Iron Man has his suit of iron that’s equipped with a dozen or more weapons; The Incredible Hulk is a giant, angry, green monster!

Not only is this movie loaded with amazing battles, there’s a lot of character work here, too. If you paid attention to the previous movies, then once the heroes start talking to each other, there are so many fun moments between them. Captain America chats with Tony Stark about his father, Tony Stark and Bruce Banner bond over science, and that’s just barely scratching the surface. Besides the references, each character gets his or her own time in the spotlight, whether they’re a hero or villain. I especially liked Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/The Incredible Hulk. He’s the third Hulk in just as many movies, yet he is by far the best version yet. I really hope Mark Ruffalo gets his own Hulk movie because his performance as Banner is very unstated. He’s calm and very soft-spoken, which is the way he should be, since he doesn’t want to awaken the beast inside of him. Yet there’s more to like about the Hulk than just Bruce Banner. I’d say that once he transforms, he steals the whole show. Not only that, there is tension between our heroes. The movie actually brings up their flaws and points them out, adding even more depth to these larger than life characters. As always, there’s a small flaw or two with the movie, but with something like Avengers…who cares!

The special effects in The Avengers are the most amazing display of movie effects ever done on screen. It’s convincing and even easy to follow along with as all of the heroes battle their enemies, split up to battle on their own, and then team-up again at the end. It’s just an unbelievable adrenaline rush of a movie that has to be seen to be believed. As a kid, I’d play with my action figures, but I could never quite have battles like that. I only have two hands, so that meant I’d always have a good guy fighting a bad guy, and then used my imagination to fill in the rest. This movie made me feel like that little kid again who always dream of gigantic superhero battles, yet The Avengers is far beyond my wildest dreams.