This past Friday night I went to the movie theater to see "The Avengers." No, I'm not a tween boy, I'm a 28-year-old woman and I am not ashamed to admit that I was psyched. I made sure to see all of the superhero movies with characters that would be pulled in as Avengers. This entailed sitting through numerous end credits with horrible soundtrack music blaring, waiting for that one "secret" clip of Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, collecting heroes for S.H.E.I.L.D. Before you see this movie, make sure to see "Thor," "Iron Man" (the sequel unfortunately, which is not nearly as good as the first), "Captain America," and "The Hulk" (the newer one with Mark Ruffalo, not the weird one with Edward Norton).
The main plot of this movie is that Loki (angry from feeling less feared, beloved and blonde than his brother Thor), comes through this gateway/portal to rob humanity of its freedom of choice. The gateway thing is made from this glowing cube and is a little weird. At this point in the movie, I was really hoping the whole two hours was going to be this farfetched. Upon arrival, Loki steals the cube and brainwashes people into helping him. One of the people he stripped of will was "Hawkeye," played by Jeremy Renner. I haven't read an actual comic book in probably 15-20 years, so I had no idea who Hawkeye was and they didn't expand much on his background. This seemed like a missed opportunity to add another layer of depth to the characters, especially with the underlying tension with the Black Widow. Fury (Jackson) then assembles the rest of the Avengers, which consists of Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Widow (Scarlett Johannson) and Captain America (Chris Evans). Thor ends up coming back to Earth about halfway through once he learns about his brother's plight. Unfortunately, this does not mean a cameo by Natalie Portman, who was actually pretty good in "Thor." Gwyneth Paltrow does make a cameo as Pepper, Paul Bettany comes back as the voice of Jarvis and Stellan Skarsgard from "Thor" continues to be the main scientist in this field. And of course keep an eye out for the usual Stan Lee cameo. Also, it drove me nuts almost the whole movie, so to save others from this, Fury's assistant is played by Cobie Smulders, who's Robin from "How I Met Your Mother."
Downey as Iron Man was by far my favorite part of this movie. The brilliantly written character, mixed with Downey's natural quirky personality, infused humor into the movie without being cheesy. While I really liked this movie, I will admit there were quite a few cheesy one-liners that did miss the mark, although not enough to achieve the awesomely bad status. There is a secret clip at the end of the credits in this one as well. It didn't make any sense to me and apparently it signifies something that will be tied in to upcoming Marvel Comic films. I saw this in 3D, and yes, I know a lot of people are not enthused with the 3D movie movement but this one was pretty awesome. It's not a movie that was made only for 3D and I think it will translate fine to 2D. There's just enough action in this one to make it worth the couple extra bucks to spring for the 3D tickets and wear uncomfortable plastic glasses for two hours. I say, go see it in theaters if you ever liked one comic books or superheros at one point in your life.
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