The Avengers (2012)

Director: Joss Whedon

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson

Earth’s mightiest heroes must come together and learn to fight as a team if they are going to stop the mischievous Loki and his alien army from enslaving humanity.

The movie was such a huge box office success that I tried really hard to like it. I just couldn’t. Just to be certain, I gave it a second viewing, and disliked it just as much the second time around.

Firstly, if you haven’t seen Thor, Iron Man, Captain America or The Incredible Hulk, you’ll have no idea who the characters are and what they’re all about. There haven’t been films about Black Widow or Hawkeye, so they don’t really matter anyway. The film played like a medley of all of these super hero movies and didn’t really offer anything we  haven’t seen in these movies. Also, due to way too many protagonists for one film, none of them were given the opportunity to develop. In fact, I found all the characters incredibly shallow, and didn’t like any of them. My favorite character in the film is probably Hulk.

Everything about this film was so overblown and overdone to the level where nothing was believable – within the context of the genre, off course. ‘The Avengers’ was so CGI heavy that it was difficult to have fun with it. The film also had so many plot flaws and credibility issues. Everything was simply done for effect at the disposal of an interesting plot. Iron Man is just as annoying as in his own franchise (although he is the deepest character of all). So, a mere mortal in a suit Tony Stark (Iron Man) can actually outwit a god like Thor??? Wow, not much hope for gods… The same goes for the powerful god Loki, who is outwitted and outsmarted so easily.

The action in ‘Dragon Wars’ and ‘Transformers’ was a lot more realistic and more enjoyable than this. I’ve seen it twice and that’s more than enough, thanks.