Daylynn DeSouza, our comic book geek, brings us his special knowledge of the universe to review The Avengers movie

Directed by Joss Whedon. Starring Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Samuel L Jackson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston.

After a build up of four years and five prequels (which you should watch before this one) that include Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers has finally made it to the big screen. It’s called Avengers Assemble in the UK because there was a 1960s spy-fi British TV series by the same name and the Hindi dubbed version is called Angaare Bane Sholay, which doesn’t make any sense! But, this is one movie that transcends almost all cultural and linguistic barriers.

Loki (Tom Hiddleston, the sniveling antagonist from Thor) is revealed to be alive and plotting to take over Earth by using the Tesseract (the Cosmic Cube from Captain America: The First Avenger) to lead an invading army of aliens and conquer it. And, it’s up to The Avengers to band together (that process is as interesting as when they do join forces) and stop him.

I’m going to dive right into the Pros and Cons as I saw them.

The Cons:
> The movie does take a little time to build up steam.

> The entire ‘aliens invading our planet from another dimension’ thing has been done to death including but not limited to Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

> While the bonus clip after the end credits is probably the equivalent of watching the Moon Landing or the discovery of fire for comic book fans, the general public will honestly not have a clue as to what it signifies. I myself can’t believe that Marvel is actually capable of pulling off what they hint at in the clip with their reveal of a new villain. Okay, so this could be a Pro too!

Now for my favourite part, The Pros:
> Once the movie picks up steam, it just doesn’t stop. There wasn’t a dull moment after the first 10 minutes. And, I have to say that this is the first ever truly comic book super hero movie that’s been made. 300, V for Vendetta, etc. were all graphic novel adaptations and Scott Pilgrim was NOT a super hero comic so save me your hate mail.

> Marvel and Joss Whedon (Speed, Toy Story, Alien Resurrection, Buffy The Vampire Slayer) have been able to accurately and satisfactorily capture the essence of the comic books and transfer them onto the big screen.

> Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) have never seemed so much like their comic book counterparts than they do in The Avengers. And they got The Hulk right this time! Yay!

The movie also has a lot of comedy, just like in the comics. Each character has been given their fair share of screen time glory and awesomeness along with their own moments of witty banter and/or slapstick humour. The moments with Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man and Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk are especially funny.

Another surprising aspect was how well the movie portrayed the team dynamics while retaining the integrity and identity of each individual hero.

There are plenty of tiny leg-pullers that Marvel has thrown in for comic book fans, and my personal favourite was an incident that hinted at a certain someone (or should I some thing?) trying to pick up Thor’s hammer but not being able to. And there are lots of ‘woo-hoo’ moments when the audience cheers as one ‘sizeable’ super hero in particular comes to the rescue.

The Avengers art poster

The Bonus After End Credits Clip… SPOILER ALERT:

The obscure-to-non-comic-book-fans villain for the sequel is revealed to be none other than Thanos (The Mad Titan) himself. The big daddy of all super villains in the Marvel Universe. He’s so powerful that it usually takes a battalion of superheroes to take him down. Since his objective in the movie was to obtain the Cosmic Cube (a.k.a. the Tesseract), if Marvel intends to somewhat stick to his storyline the next thing he’ll be after is The Infinity Gauntlet: It lets him literally destroy galaxies with the snap of a finger. Either way, his appearance has shown us that Marvel has huge plans for their upcoming movies and the possibilities are limitless. We may even get to see live action adaptations of famous Marvel story arcs like Civil War and World War Hulk.

So, skip work, school, and college and sell your family if you have to, but watch this movie. Preferably in 2D, because honestly 3D is just a gimmick used to sell movies with an inferior plot and rarely adds anything to the viewing experience. DC has lost the super hero race and as amazing as The Dark Knight franchise is, it’s a movie that focuses on just one hero. Unless DC brings out The Justice League, I’m afraid they lose.

If you disagree with any of the views expressed in this review feel free to e-mail me at getalife@no1cares.theinternet.com

(Watch our The Avengers Trailer Review here)