The Avengers User Reviews

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The Chitauri soldiers were about as threatening and competent as the Stormtroopers from Star Wars, which is to say... not very. They're kinda pathetic. You're just watching the Avengers mowing them down ten at a time, and the threat feels somewhat marginalized.

The Chitauri are actually in Mark Millar's The Ultimates storyline, from which The Avengers borrows heavily from, yet they were much, much better realized in that comic. In the movie, they're just mindless, throwaway alien henchmen with very little backstory or characterization. But in the comic, they were actually the sinister aliens helping the Nazis during WW2, which Cap fought before getting frozen. That was a nice way to tie Cap's origin story from the past back to the present, when they show up again and fight the Avengers. You cared about them because of the way the story tied the two eras together with Cap as the link.

The scene where Captain America gained the respect of those NYC cops was, in my opinion... cheesy and lame. I can see what they were going for, with Cap turning into the inspiration they need, but the actual scene just came out feeling silly and overblown and really pulled me out of the movie. There aren't really any other scenes in the film that felt as weak and poorly executed as this one.

Well actually, I should take that back. There's one other scene that did not work for me. When Loki orders all the Germans to kneel and then that one old, Holocaust survivor stands up. Again... very cheesy and bizarre and off-putting. With such a light and fun action movie, sticking something like that in there just doesn't work and actually made me feel kinda repulsed.

Captain America in general seemed a little underwhelming in the action finale. He's just bashing the aliens with his shield and you're wondering if a national guardsman with an M16 might be more effective.

Hawkeye and Thor probably get the least amount of attention in the movie. With Thor, it's probably okay, because he's got his own movies to cover up for that, but I wished there was more Hawkeye. Unfortunately, he spends half the movie as a mind-controlled drone. And speaking of that, it also felt very strange that evil Hawkeye seemed to lose any sort of marksmanship when it came time to fight SHIELD. He's supposed to be the most accurate sharpshooter in the world, but I didn't see him headshot anybody on that helicarrier. He just fires explosive arrows into computers and rotors. When he gets into the control center, you're worried for Nick Fury and Maria Hill because he could easily put arrows between the whites of their eyes. And yet... nothing happens.

The death of Agent Coulson worked really well, IMO. You hated to see him go, because he's become such a fixture in this movie universe, but he was right... they did need something to avenge. That always felt very strange in the comic books, when they created this superhero group and named it the Avengers. I was always wondering what they were supposed to be avenging? With the JLA, you could kinda see Superman and his fellow heroes coming up with something noble-sounding like that. With the Avengers, it never really made any sense to me. But here, Whedon gave a reason that made sense and felt organic.

The power of Thor really seemed to fluctuate and wasn't quite as grand as I was hoping for. This guy is about as powerful as Superman, but sometimes Whedon would put him in situations where it didn't feel like it. There's a great scene in the final act where he flies up to the Chrystler Building and summons the lightning to wipe out a huge chunk of the Chitauri fleet. That felt true to Thor's power and looked awesome. But then later, he just flies down and is fighting alongside Cap, swinging Mjolnir and taking out Chitauri soldiers about as quickly as Cap. That just felt like a severe depowering out of nowhere.

With the Hulk, there seemed to be a change in his behavior that was unexplained. When he first hulks out in the Helicarrier, he's completely berzerk and rampaging around destroying everything, as he should. Yet when the big action finale arrives, he hulks out again, but now seems to recognize that he should only be fighting the Chitauri and not to harm anyone else? Suddenly he was set to no-friendly-fire mode (Well, except for that one sucker punch)? Where did this new self-control come from? Did I miss something? In the Ultimates, they manage to direct Hulk towards the Chitauri by telling him the Chitauri have been making fun of him. It's kinda like redirecting a tornado, you're taking a risky gamble. In the movie, Hulk just seems to be acting good for no discernible reason. Kinda reminds me of some Godzilla movies where Godzilla suddenly turns from uncontrollable force of nature to Hero-Protector of the Planet Earth.

Maria Hill. I think Maria Hill is a great, grade-A bitch in the comics. That's her character, and you just accept it or you don't. While Cobie Smulders is incredibly attractive, I never got that sense of bitchiness from her portrayal. She just seemed to be Nick Fury's good-looking yeoman. I sensed that she was loyal and competent, which is all accurate, but the bitch was missing from the equation. I don't think it's a failing on Smulders as an actress either, I just get the sense that Marvel watered down her character to appeal to a mainstream audience. Alas.

Ohhhhhhhhh, so that's what happened to that little girl from Growing Pains!