With an ensemble film, this is obviously different considering that multiple protagonists are being presented to the audience. Do you try and pick one out of the bunch for the audience to root for? Or, do you try and equally share screen time for all of the multiple protagonists? It's a difficult ask to provide enough exposition on a character and their backstory without making it seem repetitive or have too much "down time" in the film (especially when the film is a big summer action "popcorn" film.)
Marvel's Avengers Assemble (or more simply, Marvel's The Avengers for everywhere else) brings together Marvel Comic's titans, Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) alongside sidekicks the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner). Their mission is to save the world (of course) from Thor's evil brother, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) who has stolen the Tesseract, a power source with the capability to destroy our world, and his army of the Chitauri, an alien race who have Galaxy domination in mind. And it just so happens that our world just happens to stand in their way of achieving this. However, the Avengers are hardly team players and once they are assembled, they must argue with each other about what's right, especially when it's revealed that Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) may be hiding something from them about the Tesseract, before they can even think about taking down Loki.
Now, Marvel's Avengers Assemble was another one of most most anticipated films on 2012 because... well, because I'm a bit of a comic book film fan. I did have my reservations though, especially with how the film will deal with bringing so many different superheroes together, and in some ways, my reservations were right. While the film wastes hardly any time with bringing the four superheroes together, it doesn't do very well with equally developing them. Iron Man seems to be brought to the forefront of the group, along with The Hulk, but even so, neither of them are really given much emotional depth to develop them as characters. Iron Man goes through the whole, "I don't work well in a team" to then leading the final sacrifice at the end to save New York City, but it doesn't really seem to change him as a character. Also, we learn that The Hulk has learned to harness his ability to transform because he is "always angry", but what is he always angry about?!
The biggest surprises however comes from Captain America and Thor. Both are really put to the background and are given little, if anything at all, to develop them as characters or make us care about them as the audience. Captain America has Chris Evan's moody pout to try and draw us into his inner turmoil, but what was his conflict?! It's hinted at that he is still stuck in the 1940s with short one liners ("The last time I was in Germany I met a man just like you, and we didn't see eye to eye either" - or something like that, I'm paraphrasing here!) but it's nothing that can really draw us in or that can be shown on screen very well.
And as for Thor... Well considering it was his own brother, Loki who was the main antagonist of the story, his character is given the least of all to deal with. There is a bit more of the brotherly conflict between the two, but nothing different at all than from what we saw in Thor. Loki is still angry at Thor for casting him out of his realm and Thor jokingly remarks that Loki is adopted, but there was nothing else for him to do except swing his hammer and try to look beautiful with his long golden locks...
Having said all of that, Marvel's Avengers Assemble is not all bad. It definitely delivers on the mindless action that we expect from summer blockbusters. While there is a little lull in the middle of the film between all of the action scenes, the near crash of the Helicarrier (a massive flying aircraft carrier) and the final battle in New York City more than make up for it.
However, there wasn't any tension in any of the battle scenes. With a lot of sequels already in Pre-Production for Iron Man, The Hulk, Captain America and Thor, you just know that Marvel would not kill off, or majorly wound, any of it's signature cash cows... sorry, I mean signature creations. Despite this, the action set pieces were really nice to look at and crafted together very well - particularly the shot that flies us across New York City in the midst of the battle between the Avengers and the Chitauri, showing how each of our heroes is fighting off the alien race.
A final shining star in the film was it's use of comedy. From a Helicarrier worker playing on space invaders when they should be working, to The Hulk "hulk smashing" Loki into oblivion before a big epic "final showdown" can take place, to Bruce Banner arriving calmly and neatly on a motorbike in the middle of the New York City destruction. Just me that found that last one amusing? OK then... They just provided welcome comedic relief in the middle of the death and destruction of New York City.
So, while Marvel's Avengers Assemble is not all bad, it definitely could have been a lot better. While it did a good job of bringing all the superheroes together, it then seemed to not know what to do with them once it did so.
**½ / *****
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