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| Image from Wikipedia |
The Avengers is the finest movie yet from Marvel Studios, the best superhero movie since The Dark Knight (at least) and the best of all possible kickoffs to the summer 2012 movie season (The Hunger Games was too early, regardless of what I might have said previously).Now I won't pretend that the film is perfect, because it's not. There were a few continuity things (why doesn't Thor want to go make sure Jane is safe for himself? For a movie like this, the lows could be cellar-floor low, the highs could be astronomically high. Neither were. The team getting torn apart was nice, but never quite seemed as dire as it should have been. The final battle (while extremely entertaining) never really felt out of hand for the team of superheroes, making the outcome not as grand as it could have. But so what? I never felt cheated from these shortfalls. In fact, I was thrilled.
The strength of the movie are the characters. And to me, the strength of the Marvel movies leading up to this was that they were largely character driven; I was delighted to find The Avengers to be the same thing. The egos of the characters, the new relationships being formed, this is what drove the film. To a certain extent, this is also what stood between the final product and absolute greatness, but I'm willing to sacrifice a bit.
To sum it all up, this was exactly the movie I was hoping for when I really started getting into this whole genre. It had all the moments I was looking for, and some that surprised me. The plot felt familiar, but the film felt fresh. Sure, it wasn't perfect, but it was pretty damn close.
Good luck with The Avengers 2, Marvel/Disney. It's going to be tough to top this one.
