On the couch

For all its bells and whistles. For all it’s mega-watt cast and the years of planning and anticipation that have gone into Avengers Assemble it is, at its heart, a pleasingly old-fashioned movie.
The Joss Whedon-directed flick about a squad of six disparate superheroes who have to learn to trust each other in order to defend the earth against a Norse god and an army of aliens hell-bent on eradicating our species could have been awful. Like properly career-endingly, hackneyed, “what the hell is going on here? I want my money back” awful.
Instead what it boils down to is not that different to an early Bond movie or even (and this might be just a bit of a stretch) an old Errol Flynn or Douglas Fairbanks film.
It is thrilling heroics combined with some clever, funny banter and a plot that requires more than one sentence to describe, but fewer than ten. It’s Flash Gordon, The Shadow or Dick Tracey with fancier special effects.
It’s also one of the best damn summer blockbusters you’re likely to see this decade and it managed to exceed expectations despite the weight of five years of movie build-up and nearly 50 years of comics bearing down on it.
(As an aside, Avengers Assemble is a stupid name for a film given only to differentiate from the adventures of John Steed and Emma Peel. from here on out, however, The Avengers refers to the superhero flick, not the classic British tv show. Keep up.)
One of the most anticipated flicks of all time, the road to The Avengers started in ’08 when Robert Downey Jnr strapped on his metal dancing shoes and Errol Flynn-y beard for Iron Man and showed that Marvel Studios could appease not just the most ardent of comic book purists but also the popcorn munching masses.
Since then, five of the six heroes that make up the Avengers have appeared in five films (one a sequel) and a number of post-credit scenes. It’s been fodder for fanboys and girls to froth at the mouth over, as well as an excellent way for Marvel to capitalise on the crowds the X-Men series of movies brought to comic book movies.
By playing the long game, Avi Arad, Fevin Feige et al managed to create not only a sense of wanton anticipation but also a much wider market for the their product than just the fans of the funny books.
The Avengers places the glowing blue box, the Tesseract, that occupied a chunk of both Thor’s and Captain America’s stories, once more at the centre of proceedings with the world once again under threat from Thor’s (Chris Hemsworth) brother, Loki (Tom Hiddleston). While this may sound like a retread, it really isn’t. If you’ve seen the earlier movies it follows on quite nicely from where they left off. If not, never mind, The Avengers plot makes perfect sense without them.
Offering a source of unlimited power, Loki nicks the Tesseract and turns it into a bargaining chip in a game of “Who Wants to Kick the Snot Out of Earth?” hence the alliance of the alien Chitauri and the God of Tricks.
After wafting around in the background for five movies Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) finally gets more than three lines and establishes that he wants to put together a super squad to protect Earth from little problems like mad gods and alien invaders.
He finds, however, that billionaire smart-ass Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr), recently defrosted super-soldier Captain America (Chris Evans), the tantrum-prone Dr Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), Thor, Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and the previously seen but not introduced Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) are all far from enthused with the prospect of working together and spend not a small amount of time beating the tar out of each other before turning their attention to more extra-terrestrial enemies.
An expert at handling action and ensemble casts, Joss Whedon really shows his worth here by introducing a whole heap of characters – goodies, baddies and some ambiguous “grey” types that may be showing up in sequels – and recapping chunks of the previous films without ever sacrificing The Avengers’ pace. In fact some of the character moments are so well written and laugh-out-loud funny you might find yourself hoping for a breather just to see what the heroes and villains get up to when not busy saving/destroying things.
While the action is the obvious focus of the piece, the real star of the film is the script. Whedon’s style of writing – brilliantly idiosyncratic in Buffy and Firefly – is more measured for a wider audience but this only serves to make his humour more accessible without taking any of its sharpness.
The script is well served by the cast, all of whom have proven their tights-filling credentials in previous flicks, as they all hit their comic and dramatic beats perfectly.
While the final battle – a mammoth clash in New York – might run a little long, any sense of boredom is quickly assuaged by the long-awaited arrival of The Hulk (played brilliantly by Mark Ruffalo, the third, and best, actor to play the big fella).
The gamma radiation-enraged giant gets some of the film’s best moments and has some of its best lines directed at him and the prospect of a solo film with Ruffalo in the role is a tantalising one.
You’ll be hard pressed to find something to actively dislike about The Avengers. It’s fun, funny and honestly entertaining. And best of all, it stands up to repeated re-watching.
Just be sure and stay around for the two post credits scenes!