I met The Avengers movie with some trepidation as this would be a chance for several of my childhood loves to be destroyed at once. The X-Men had made it through movie transformation largely unscathed and I could only hope the same would happen here.

Notes:

• The entire second act seems unnecessary. Hawkeye shows that a single arrow can bring down the SHIELD heliship and Loki’s machinations to just release the Hulk seemed awfully contrived.
• The writers forgot that Captain America’s superpower is that he’s always right. This is commandment in comics up there with “when Batman, Superman, or Wonder Woman appears it means shit got serious”.
• The alien invaders seemed very… defeatable. Their alien jet skis seemed to go down to small arms fire to the point where a group of Montana militiamen could have stopped them.
• The movie was shot as a comic. Each scene was a cell and jump cuts were the norm.

I enjoyed the movie except for how contrived the middle third appeared to be. I wonder how Thanatos will make as an enemy. “What’s his MO?” “Wants to bang his sister, Death, and wants to impress her by killing all things.” Seems hard to make that family-friendly.