The Avengers was easily one of the most ambitious tasks being made by Marvel back in the early 2000s. Since they started off their film franchise with Iron Man back in 2008 and it was hinted that they were going to create their own multi-movie ginormous connected universe, people weren’t as excited as would be expected, most likely because comic book movies, especially Marvel comic book movies, weren’t very successful at the time. However, as each new movie came out and the hints kept coming, not only did people start to really believe that this shared universe was actually gonna happen, but they were also excited for it. When the movie was finally released in 2012, it’s fair to say that the fans clearly got what they wanted. After the God of Mischief, Loki (played by Tom Hiddleston) steals away the tesseract, an object capable of galactic level destruction, Nick Fury (played by Samuel L Jackson) decides to put together his Avengers plan into action by creating a team of special people that have the ability to save the world from extra difficult threats. Some come along easy, like Iron Man (played by Robert Downey Junior), Captain America (played by Chris Evans) and Black Widow (played by Scarlett Johansson), while the remaining members are harder to come by; Thor (played by Chris Hemsworth), who only sticks around to get his brother Loki back, Bruce Banner (played by Mark Ruffalo) who has repressed the Hulk enough to keep him from causing havoc, and Hawkeye (played by Jeremy Renner) who is current under the mind control of Loki. Though the team all have their own faults with the other, Loki’s plan starts to slowly come into play, resulting in the city being in danger from an alien invasion. This will be the first test to see how the Avengers were going to last in the long haul and thankfully, it did not disappoint its fans in the least, being a huge success both critically and for audiences. Now that the hype for the original Avengers has died down after the final instalment, Endgame, was released in 2019, the faults of the original films become a bit more apparent, leaving the film as a light-hearted, well-acted, fun action movie, but with little else holding it together.

This film was rooting upon its fan base being supportive of this concept in order for it to succeed; creating an entire film based around the cultivation of other super heroes created in other movies was an unknown thing back in the early stages of comic book movies, at least in an instance where it worked. Beginning to work on this film before many of heroes’ origin films were created, this was an incredibly risky move that was taken by the team, and it seemed like they knew what they were doing for the most part. Getting Firefly director Joss Whedon for the role of director allowed the film to not feel too overly serious about itself and to crowd people with too much information right away. The strength of the film is also its biggest weakness; a majority of the film is just these recognisable superheroes talking to each other for almost two hours. On the one hand, this works surprisingly well; since most of the characters have been set up in other films, there isn’t need for exposition to slow the film done and instead gives the fans what they would want to see out of this type of film; watching them interact with each other and see how they would work with each other. Therein lies the problem however, when the main driving force for the film is in its characters and its action, it leaves the film’s plot not only feeling confused and minimal, but also incredibly shallow. There is no sense of character development, driving force or even much motivation given towards the audience or the characters as to why the film should leave an impact. Even fans upon its release understood the film’s weakness was its story and how it made little sense, featured a pretty ridiculous plan, and relied so heavily on its characters that it spend a laborious amount of time in a single location doing nothing but talk. With that said, the climax to the film is where the film shines the most; the action is pretty new for the time and featured a lot of great cool moments, giving each character a purpose and time to shine and it left the audience off on a good note.

The characters, most of them already being set up in their films previously, would have to be the guiding post for the film as the plot was paper-thin and lacking any sense of progression that would leave an impact otherwise. While the film came out after only five films, the characters were mostly simple enough that they would hopefully be able to work off each other nicely. On a comedic level, every actor in this film does a great job with timing and delivery, which helps to make the long dialogue sequences less noticeably painful. Characters like Iron Man and Captain America are set up well enough in the film, while most of the other characters require a bit more time in the franchise to grown into their own; Thor is portrayed very well by Chris Hemsworth and is charming enough but is written pretty blandly, Mark Ruffalo’s portrayal of Bruce Banner is interesting and the scenes with the hulk are pretty cool but the character is still pretty boring. Black Widow and Hawkeye are two characters that have very little personality and character to work off in this film, which leaves most of their scenes not hitting the correct marks as the audience barely knows them. Loki, at the time, was the only really good Marvel villain; even though the plan is pretty ridiculous, he still has a charming element and a threatening element as well, along with a simple but understandable motivation, a personality to work with, and even an element of relatability that people connected with.

The writing for the film is very heavy upon the humor as it is the true leading element for the film since any moment that tries to tell an actual story or be serious do not work very well. The writing is prominent enough to give the film its light-hearted identity but still avoiding going overboard and being too heavy to the point of being annoying. It was widespread enough among the cast that every character had something unique to offer against the other, which lead to some fun comedic back and forths. The dramatic back and forths have such rushed motivations and emotions that the entire conflicts feel inorganic, phoney, and forced, which really sours the entire plot when this conflict is supposed to be obvious. The action during the final act is given plenty of built up until it reaches that point, but thankfully it does not disappoint as it offers up a climax that feels pretty unique for most comic book movies at the time. The speed of which the action is taking place from various areas from different characters doing different things, it kept a relatively long fight from feeling boring and the bright lighting and colorful visuals always kept the spirits up throughout the entire fight. The music by Alan Silvestri has now become infamous as the main theme for the franchise and it does a wonderful job at feeling old-fashioned and hopeful as well as important and grand. It is a simple theme that leaves a long mark on the franchise as well as on its listeners.

The Avengers is not one of the greatest comic book movies ever made despite how many people will claim that it is; it’s a film that blew people away right away for being a once thought impossible task that was brought to the big screen without failing or making it un-entertaining. It is still an entertaining movie with a great cast and a really enjoyable climax. Its just when the handling of the film’s story come into focus where the really problems of the movie rise up; if the film didn’t feature a likeable cast of characters that people wanted to see interact, it wouldn’t succeed in anything due to how much the story doesn’t make sense, how the film impacts very little character wise and would normal go on unnoticed if not for the set-up, how the overall threat outside of the main villain is largely unimpressive, how the scheme to break the Avengers apart doesn’t feel authentic at all and the first two thirds of the film are spent doing nothing but talking. It is a timewaster movie that works great on thrills and entertaining, just not on the qualities of an interesting movie. Its pointless to think that everybody hasn’t already seen this movie, but it should be fine enough to re-check it out and remember how a legacy was born from this film.