Marvel’s The Avengers

The result of several films worth of buildup, Marvel’s The Avengers follows a number of larger-than-life heroes, including Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark/Iron Man, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers/Captain America, and Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, as they reluctantly combine forces after a vicious supervillain (Tom Hiddleston’s Loki) launches an attack against Earth. There’s little doubt that Marvel’s The Avengers establishes itself as a fairly underwhelming endeavor right from the get-go, as filmmaker Joss Whedon kicks things off with an overlong and surprisingly tedious Loki-centric prologue – with this stretch’s failure due mostly to Hiddleston’s hopeless inability to transform his character into a palpably fearsome figure (ie Loki is just bland, for the most part). The film’s subsequent transformation into a disappointingly conventional, let’s-assemble-a-ragtag-team sort of blockbuster doesn’t help matters, with the less-than-engrossing atmosphere compounded by an incongruously sluggish pace and a pervasive lack of standout sequences (ie there’s plenty of action here, certainly, but very little of it is actually thrilling or exciting). It’s ultimately clear that Marvel’s The Avengers fares best in its quieter, comparatively subdued moments, as Whedon generally does an effective job of eliciting strong performances from the admittedly eclectic cast – with, for example, the heart-to-heart between Tony Stark and Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner standing out as a rare respite from the otherwise erratic and overblown midsection. (It’s likewise impossible not to get a kick out of an appreciative yet entirely head-scratching cameo by Harry Dean Stanton.) By the time the utterly routine (and decidedly endless) finale rolls around, Marvel’s The Avengers has unquestionably squandered the potential of its premise and its cast – which is a shame, obviously, given the plethora of talented folks on both sides of the camera.

** out of ****