Film Review | Avengers Assemble

We tend to think of huge-budget blockbusters like Marvel's Avengers Assemble as 'mindless entertainment': quick and superficial cinematic mush to be enjoyed but never truly savoured, and usually forgotten by the time the end credits roll.

But on the rare occasions that a product of the cynical Hollywood machine produces a film that's both undeniably entertaining and well-judged in every way, the effect is truly heartening.

And judging by the audience reaction during Eden Cinemas's screening of Marvel's long-awaited superhero 'mashup' last Thursday, director Joss Whedon's ambitious project more than lives up to expectations, not to mention its 143-minute running time.

Picking up where Marvel Studios's The Incredible Hulk (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010), Captain America and Thor (both 2011) left off, Avengers Assemble starts with an ominous bang, as the vengeful trickster God Loki (Tom Hiddelston) transports back to our planet with plans to unleash an extraterrestrial army in a bid for global domination.

After he sabotages the defence agency SHIELD and steals its top scientist Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård) and assassin Clint 'Hawkeye' Barton (Jeremy Renner), Loki's plan seems depressingly close to becoming a reality. Until, that is, SHIELD's head honcho Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) decides to put a long-gestating plan into action.

Against the advice of his superiors, Fury sets about gathering an elite task force of 'special' individuals, including Tony Stark (Iron Man - Robert Downey Jr.), Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow - Scarlett Johansson), Steve Rodgers (Captain America - Chris Evans) and Bruce Banner (The Hulk - Mark Ruffalo).

It's enough of a challenge to get the volatile team to focus on the task at hand... but when Loki's brother Thor (Chris Hemsworth) joins the fray in an attempt to bring his brother to justice in their native celestial planet of Asgard, things begin to quickly spiral out of control.

To say that there was a lot of pressure on Whedon to get this right would be an understatement. Here's a film that's been teased at since 2008's Iron Man - when Sam Jackson snuck into the after-credits sequence to inform its titular hero about an idea he called "the Avengers initiative".

But it's not entirely surprising that Whedon pulls it off with panache - given his previous track record as something of a TV and cinema nerd guru, with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and the upcoming horror pastiche Cabin in the Woods also under his belt (not to mention countless comic book and online projects).

This experience is not negligible for a project of this kind. A familiarity - and, crucially a love of - the source material is what helps Whedon find the right balance between exciting action set pieces and genuinely spot-on humour that is informed by a shrewd understanding of the characters, who enjoy a rich comic book history dating back to the 1960s (and in Captain America's case, even earlier).

It would have been easy to allow the effects to overwhelm the experience (the film is, of course, being shown exclusively in 3D for the time being) and for the characters to become sidelined in a mad rush to get to the next explosion.

So it's to Whedon's credit that each hero gets a generous amount of time in the limelight.

It's expected for Downey Jr's Stark to once again charm us with his rakish demeanour and caustic wit, and we've seen Evans as the plucky but humble soldier out of time in his own solo film. But the relationship that slowly creeps out of the action - between Black Widow and Hawkeye - comes as a pleasant surprise, and hints at interesting developments for future instalments (of which you can be certain there will be many).

And if Thor is a bit of a let down this time around - he was fun as a fish-out-of-water in his own film, but here he's reduced to being a hammer-swinging 'good brother' mirror image to Loki - it's Ruffalo's Hulk who finally endows the problematic green giant with some soul.

Marvel have tried their hand at getting a Hulk franchise going twice. First it was with the well-intentioned but flawed 2003 Ang Lee film starring Eric Bana, as well as the more recent Edward Norton-starring The Incredible Hulk. If the previous films were missed opportunities, Ruffalo and co. seem to be doing something right.

Because every time the Hulk 'hulked out' during Thursday's screening, it was to raucous applause.

Here's the thing: a film doesn't have to have any overtly 'intellectual' content to be clever. And Whedon conducts this populist popcorn-symphony with remarkable intelligence. There's not a beat out of place, and the jokes - which are too good to spoil here - aren't just a pleasure in and of themselves: they lend a playful feel to the whole film, which helps you remain jacked into the over-the-top fantasy.

If the next instalment of Christopher Nolan's revived Batman franchise - The Dark Knight Rises - was set to be the hit of the summer, it just got some serious competition.