The real clue that The Avengers is a superhero movie in the hands of someone keenly aware of what's wrong with superhero movies comes in the inevitable last-act CGI splurge.
Buildings are destroyed, monsters run amok, aliens invade like swarms of flying ants through a dimensional portal, repulsor rays and other beams of destruction are unleashed. This is the point where, if you've seen enough of these films, what is supposed to amaze only dazes. It is the most uninvolving part of most action films.
But with The Avengers, which opens Thursday at midnight, director Joss Whedon, whose glibness is always close to the surface in this improbable assemblage of musclebound icons, recognizes as much, and breaks up the noisy, blinding monotony with a Bugs Bunny moment or two -- the most talked-about one involving a contretemps between the Asgardian villain Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and The Hulk. If you're going to break the laws of physics anyway (cue the exploding cars), you might as well go all in and get some laughs.
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But really The Avengers is a somewhat subversive piece of work, one that finds hilarity in fake catastrophes and in our very need to imagine the noisiest worst-case scenarios.
Beyond that, the script is structurally impressive for the equal time it gives the sometimes unwieldy cast. Mark Ruffalo is almost Zenlike as a Bruce Banner/Hulk who's had years to practice not getting angry (despite Tony Stark's perverse best efforts). Thor's imperiousness is just asking for a smack or two (which the movie obliges). Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow gets her emotive moments between kicking a--. Avengers do indeed assemble.
And amazingly, the parts all fit.
