Avengers Assem­ble

Well, here it is… Ever since Clark Gregg’s smooth, but­tery Phil Coul­son – agent of souped-up CIA sim­u­lacrum, SHIELD – rocked up at one of Tony Stark’s end­less round of self-con­grat­u­la­to­ry press con­fer­ences in 2008’s Iron Man, atten­tive audi­ences have been teased with the prospect of the var­i­ous fre­quen­cies of the Mar­vel Uni­verse band­ing togeth­er for a super­hero team-up smack­down in the form of Avengers Assemble.

Expec­ta­tions for the project have fluc­tu­at­ed since then, as have the for­tunes of its con­stituent mem­bers. Iron Man 2 was a clunk­er, while the seem­ing­ly incon­gru­ous super­nat­ur­al bag­gage that came with 2011’s Thor saw Avengers direc­tor-elect, Jon Favreau, shy away from the reins.

Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, also from last year, was a robust boy’s own romp, but gave lit­tle indi­ca­tion how its hero might fig­ure with­in a con­tem­po­rary tale. And those two pre­vi­ous Hulk films… well they were both cra­zier than shit­house rats, so no real clue there either. The even­tu­al appoint­ment of Joss Whe­don was, on this evi­dence, a mas­ter­stroke: a vet­er­an of TV, he knows his way around both action (Buffy, Angel) and sci-fi (Fire­fly, Seren­i­ty), digs overblown, declam­a­to­ry speechi­fy­ing and has a proven record of keep­ing a mul­ti­tude of nar­ra­tive plates spin­ning at once.

With Avengers Assem­ble (hereto­fore referred to as The Avengers), Whe­don has fired all his guns at once and come up with one of the most excit­ing, coher­ent and butt-crunch­ing action films in recent memory.

Those who haven’t been keep­ing up with the Cos­mic Cubes and Rain­bow Bridges of the Mar­vel Uni­verse might be scratch­ing their heads for a few min­utes dur­ing a rushed open­ing scene that estab­lish­es what pass­es for the plot of the film, but things are quick­ly and neat­ly explained. The Cos­mic Cube – an inter­stel­lar MacGuffin/​source of infi­nite pow­er that just hand­i­ly hap­pens to fit inside an attaché case – is being poked and prod­ded by SHIELD sci­en­tists under the beady eye of Sam Jackson’s Agent Nick Fury.

One incau­tious prod too many and the Cube springs to life, caus­ing a rift in space-time that allows malev­o­lent Asgar­dian demi-God, Loki (Tom Hid­dle­ston, in a con­tin­u­a­tion of his role in Thor), to pass through into Earth, nick the Cube, smash up the lab and cast archery mad SHIELD tough­nut, Hawk­eye (Jere­my Ren­ner), under his spell in order to make good his escape to – pure­ly for the sake of a lat­er Cap­tain Amer­i­ca quip about Nazis – Germany.

It is now up to Fury to assem­ble a diverse team of super-pow­ered good guys to pro­tect Earth from Loki’s rather sketchy plot to use the Cube to cre­ate a por­tal that will allow a race of scary space skele­tons to pass through and sub­ju­gate humanity.

This is where Avengers Assem­ble real­ly kicks into gear, scour­ing the globe to recruit its wary heroes. Slick tech-won­der Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr), buff boy-scout Cap­tain Amer­i­ca (Chris Evans) and bipo­lar sci­en­tist Bruce Ban­ner (Mark Ruf­fa­lo) all take con­vinc­ing, and Whedon’s script zings with crisp ban­ter and propul­sive action as the team – even­tu­al­ly abet­ted by Loki’s con­flict­ed broth­er, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) – wrin­kle out their dif­fer­ences and nee­dle each oth­ers ten­der spots, both lit­er­al and fig­u­ra­tive. Scar­lett Johansson’s lithe super­spy, Black Wid­ow, is in the mix too, but no-one seems entire­ly sure why.

From this whips­mart open­ing, Whe­don builds to a bru­tal sec­ond act that mer­ci­less­ly piles on the hurt, with each char­ac­ter – even Scar­lett – giv­en some real­ly bad busi­ness to deal with in an extend­ed mid-air action sequence of such sus­tained and wrung-out ten­sion that it has the unin­tend­ed effect of ren­der­ing the final show­down just a lit­tle limp by comparison.

There are a cou­ple of CGI shots that look a lit­tle pla­s­ticky, the director’s TV back­ground is notice­able in his occa­sion­al­ly mun­dane choice of cam­era angles and the action might be under­cut with humour a lit­tle too often, but these minor nig­gles are more than coun­tered with some first-rate fight dynam­ics, effort­less­ly pithy bad­i­nage and top-draw­er performances.

Downey Jr, for his part, has devel­oped into such an enjoy­ably watch­able per­former that we’re in dan­ger of becom­ing com­pla­cent towards his charms, but he brims with oily con­fi­dence as the Avengers’ de fac­to ring­leader. Chris Evans, mean­while, allows Cap­tain Amer­i­ca to grow into the mod­ern world with a cou­ple of choice one-lin­ers that are the pick of some of the very fun­ny and whol­ly believ­able char­ac­ter moments that are dot­ted through­out. The usu­al­ly reli­able Ren­ner, how­ev­er, sleep­walks – almost lit­er­al­ly – through the film, and makes an unper­sua­sive case for any pro­ject­ed Hawk­eye spin-off.

But the heart of the film lays with Ruffalo’s incar­na­tion of Banner/​Hulk. A new­com­er to the world of SHIELD, Ban­ner is our guide through the intri­ca­cies of the jar­gon and plot, and Ruffalo’s con­tained demeanour and ten­der approach to the role offers a wel­come calm amid the foun­tain of testos­terone splat­ter­ing against the screen. Well, calm that is until the Green Machine takes over to cre­ate as much car­nage as Eric Bana and Edward Norton’s olive-hued flip­sides put together.

Whe­don has not set out to rein­vent the wheel with Avengers Assem­ble, but rather buff the spokes and retread the tires with some twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry trac­tion. The result is bright, agile and momen­tous, and a mil­lion miles from the over­bear­ing rain-slick brood­ing to which much of the action genre has been held hostage in the wake of the recent Bat­man films.

Your move Mr Nolan…