Thoughts on Avengers Assemble

Marvel's Avengers Assemble: Joss Whedon attempts to write and direct a film which combines the screen presence of six or seven different superheroes - not an easy task to overcome, but does he pull it off?

 Yes, to an extent, but that's about the only thing he gets right. Most of the characters, be it Thor, Captain America or Iron Man, have previously been made into feature films that have all been (with the exception of Iron Man) largely unexciting, so apparently Marvel think it a good idea to combine them all into an unstoppable alien-fighting, costume-wearing, egotistical super-team. Granted it did exceptionally well on its opening week; yes, Joss Whedon is behind it (writer of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and The Cabin in the Woods), but a lot of it just doesn't work.

 It was unoriginal and a lot of the time uninteresting. Whedon is known for his genre-bending screen writing (see The Cabin in the Woods) and his sometimes overly complicated plots, but with Avengers, he seems to have ignored this reputation and created something mind-numbingly basic, centered around a small glowing cube called the Tesseract which essentially acts as an unlimited source of energy. Disappointingly, it's as if Whedon has just simplified his abilities to attract a wider audience, maximising fighting scenes and downplaying his creative genius; half way through the film, all that had been achieved was that the Avengers had fought Loki on a boat. That is all.

 One of the other main problems was the characters themselves. The best superhero films in my opinion are the Batman and Spiderman series and this is not just because of their 'darker sides', it's due to the fact that their true identities are kept secret; both Batman and Spiderman lead double lives and that's what makes them so interesting as characters. The same cannot be said for any of the Avengers, whose superhero identities are their lives - everyone knows who they are and what they can do and the film lacks this quality, especially with the characters of Loki and Thor, who, due to their statuses as gods, are left without any credibility at all.

 The film's redemptive features include Robert Downey Jr, whose role as Iron Man made it as funny as a film like this is allowed to be - constantly belittling his fellow Avengers and making jokes at inappropriate times. Also Tom Hiddleston as Loki, while unbelievable as a character, is definitely worth watching.

 Having said all this, I didn't expect any less. Throwing as many mediocre superhero movies as possible into one film didn't seem like a good idea in the first place, but at least Marvel have made a lot of money, right..?