AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!

I just went to see Avengers Assemble and it was pretty awesome! The film is fairly predictable - you know the good guys will beat the bad guys - but I don't want to ruin it for anyone so please watch it before you read this. It does contain spoilers.

Firstly I need to point out that I know nothing about the comics (many people nearly stabbed themselves in the face when they found out I did not know the difference between Marvel and DC) so I had little in the way of preconceived ideas for the film to meet. There had been so much hype though that I expected it wouldn't meet this but I thoroughly enjoyed it and came away exhilarated rather than feeling cheated.  

There was a winning line up of cast who all made the characters entirely their own and no one's acting got on my nerves. I even liked the characterisation of Black Widow who managed to be more than the token female like I had feared. As for the leading men, the amount of testosterone shown, followed by the amount of bromance, was tons of fun.

It didn't take itself too seriously and there was some laugh out loud moments but it had bits that gave it enough depth to make it bearable. Plenty of things blew up and crashed into buildings, so I believe it had pretty good special effects, but I have more interest in the story, which was not too 2D and made reasonable sense.

Something I found fairly funny was the really obvious moments of reversal in the battles. You inevitably find in battle movies, the moment when the fight goes the way of the enemy and everything looks bleak for the hero - then there is the epic moment of reversal and the good guy wins. In this though, possibly because of the sheer number of heroes, it was so much more obvious. It was amusing to watch the battle go badly simultaneously for Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, and Hulk, and then watch the triumph of Thor, Iron Man, Captain America and Hulk. I'm not really complaining. Worse tropes can occur in films.

It was highly predictable and nothing happened to actually surprise me. Even the fairly main character death, although well done and touching, was something you could kind of see coming, especially when so much emphasis was put on the fact that guy had a first name that wasn't just 'Agent'. Iron Man's moment of almost-epic-sacrifice was predicted from the moment he was told he fought for himself not others and always had a way out. I would have been terribly disappointed if he hadn't proved himself like that.

Sometimes predictability is exactly what you want and I thought The Avengers did exactly what it said on the tin. It neither disappointed nor shocked me but it did make me laugh and want to cheer a little bit. I definitely liked it. Now I just hope they don't ruin it by making 25 sequels...