 ***PLEASE NOTE: A Blu-ray 3D disc is only compatible with 3D Blu-ray players.*** Nick Fury is director of S.H.I.E.L.D, an international peace keeping agency. The agency is a who's who of Marvel Super Heroes, with Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Widow. When global security is threatened by Loki and his cohorts, Nick Fury and his team will need all their powers to save the world from disaster. Storyline: Nick Fury is director of S.H.I.E.L.D, an international peace keeping agency. The agency is a who's who of Marvel Super Heroes, with Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Widow. When global security is threatened by Loki and his cohorts, Nick Fury and his team will need all their powers to save the world from disaster. Written by WellardRockard Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman on September 20, 2012 -- To paraphrase a quote by the redoubtable Mark Twain, reports of the death of the superhero film franchise are greatly exaggerated. Every time a superhero film arrives that doesn't instantaneously leap tall buildings in a single bound (Green Lantern, anyone?), the press goes into hyperdrive proclaiming the end of a genre that has been a staple of film at least since the early days of Superman and Batman serials in the mid-twentieth century. While those manning adaptations of DC Comics could pretend to ignore disappointments like Green Lantern due to their stellar run with the Christopher Nolan Batman reboot (aside from the horrendous tragedy in Colorado earlier this year), they've had a tougher row to hoe with their proposed reboot of the Superman franchise (with the long gestating Man of Steel). That property is facing serious problems due to several lawsuits involving heirs to the estates of Superman's creators, a tangle of litigation which may prevent any adaptation from moving forward, at least for the foreseeable future. Marvel, once the scrappy also-ran in the comic book wars, has had a much better time of it, despite the occasional misfire along the way. While Marvel may have stumbled at least a little bit with its two lackluster Hulk attempts, and with second tier fare like the Ghost Rider franchise, the past several years have seen a number of high profile superhero films culled from Marvel comics that have met both with serious critical acclaim as well as humongous boxoffice receipts. Several of these Marvel adaptations have featured huge casts aggregating several superheroes in properties including The Fantastic Four and X-Men. Still, nothing quite as immense as The Avengers had ever been tried before, and Marvel took the rather unusual step of rolling out what is set to be a major tentpole for the next several years over the course of at least a couple of other films, with co-star Samuel L. Jackson providing cameos in single superhero offerings like Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger, in a blatant if very smart attempt to whet viewers' appetites for what was obviously going to be a major mashup of Marvel legends. So was all that appetite whetting in service of a decent main course? Absolutely. One of the first things that even casual appreciators of The Avengers may notice is how brilliantly the little seeds that were planted in the last few Marvel superhero outings blossom in this new film. What's even more remarkable, however, is that while it can't be denied that having seen the last few films (especially Thor) helps to set the stage for The Avengers' major plot points, it isn't absolutely necessary. Rarely has a new franchise built upon the veritable shoulders of several other films so intelligently furthered those individual elements while at the same time working just as well independently of them. The sibling rivalry at the heart of Thor is the prime motivator for much of what transpires in The Avengers. Black sheep Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is in cahoots with a bunch of nasty aliens called the Chitauri, with whom he has struck a deal involving the glowing blue cube of pure energy known as the Tesseract (as a Madeleine L'Engle A Wrinkle in Time fan, may I just interject that that term will forever be linked in my mind to L'Engle's books). Loki's goal is to steal the Tesseract, deliver it to the Chitauri, at which point a large horde of Chitauri will aid Loki in enslaving Mankind. In the meantime, super-secret spy agency S.H.I.E.L.D. (an acronym which has had any number of definitions through the years in the Marvel universe) and its spymaster Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) have been employing the services of scientist Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård) and agent Clint Barton, AKA Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) to run experiments on the Tesseract. Those experiments go seriously awry when Loki utilizes them to open a portal and enter our little corner of the universe, whereupon he uses his glowing blue spear to hypnotize both Selvig and Hawkeye, making off with them and the Tesseract. That in turn leads Fury to recruit all the members of what S.H.I.E.L.D. has been referring to as the "Avengers Initiative". Aside from Captain America (Chris Evans) and Tony Stark AKA Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.), Fury and his aide Coulson (Clark Gregg) reach out to Natasha Romanoff AKA Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), asking her in turn to track down Dr. Bruce Banner AKA The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), since Banner's longstanding research into Gamma Rays evidently equips him to track down the missing Tesseract. Into this motley group flies Thor (Chris Hemsworth), descending from the heavens to track down his errant adopted brother. Whedon threads this multi-pronged needle with incredible facility, managing to sum up characters in a just a beat or two before moving on to the more important kind of beat, the beat down. The whole central section of The Avengers actually sees a number of fantastic and often funny battles between the superheroes themselves, before they turn their collective sights on Loki and the Chitauri. Rather interestingly, these bombastic sequences actually help to develop the characters rather than just act as adrenaline pumping instruments, and it's also here that Whedon's fantastic sense of humor comes to the fore and elevates the film above the often turgid and self-important superhero ambience. Without spoiling any punchlines, suffice it to say that (to give just two examples) Stark's snarkiness and Captain America's earnestness each deliver some classic one liners which are not just laugh out loud hilarious but actually help to develop the interrelationships between the various characters. The Avengers is a breathless and mostly elegantly structured entertainment that manages to let each of the superheroes (and their merely mortal helpers) have their moment in the sun while at the same time providing some fantastic set pieces. Truth be told, virtually the entire final hour of the film is one huge set piece as Loki's shenanigans allow the Chitauri to start teleporting into a suitably distraught Manhattan. All of this said, is this a perfect superhero film? Probably not. That same final battle might last a little too long and I for one just couldn't warm to Ruffalo as Banner (one assumes that's not him as The Hulk). But these are very minor quibbles in what has to be one of the most rousing action films of at least the past decade. Whedon expresses some surprise (consternation, really) that he was handed this property without having a large film oeuvre already under his belt, but The Avengers proves that he was an incredibly smart choice to man an incredibly entertaining film. The Avengers is a near-perfect "summer blockbuster", a film which weaves together a glut of previously introduced characters (and storylines) about as effortlessly as possible, while bringing a new face or two into the mix. Rousing without ever seeming manic, and wonderfully funny a lot of the time, The Avengers easily establishes Whedon as one of the most formidable writing-directing talents of his generation. The film has a couple of niggling issues, but its self-awareness helps to overcome them without any false irony. The first half of the film is awfully dark, making some of the action too hard to see, but once the final battle erupts during the final hour or so, The Avengers is just a nonstop assault of visual and aural treats. The 3D version offers consistent depth, though due to the film's darkness in its first half, some of that depth is only hinted at, mostly by objects in the foreground which are more easily discerned. Though a couple of minor issues of crosstalk which may crop up for some viewers depending on their display and/or glasses, this is overall a nice looking 3D offering which never seems artificial and in fact tends to err on the side of restraint, which actually helps augment the visual immersion, since it isn't constantly "in your face". This Blu-ray offers excellent 3D video and reference quality audio, as well as an appealing package of supplements. Highly recommended. (Based on Comic Book) Cast Notes: Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark / Iron Man), Chris Evans (Steve Rogers / Captain America), Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner / The Hulk), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Scarlett Johansson (Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow), Jeremy Renner (Clint Barton / Hawkeye), Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Clark Gregg (Agent Phil Coulson), Cobie Smulders (Agent Maria Hill), Stellan Skarsgård (Selvig), Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Gwyneth Paltrow (Pepper Potts), Paul Bettany (Jarvis [voice]), Alexis Denisof (The Other), Tina Benko (NASA Scientist). IMDb Rating (10/27/12): 8.4/10 from 386,537 users Top 250: #117 IMDb Rating (06/04/12): 8.6/10 from 224,853 users Top 250: #39 IMDb Rating (05/30/12): 8.7/10 from 213,127 users Top 250: #37
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