Avenged: The Avengers Review

If you haven't seen The Avengers yet, you're living under a rock. Okay, maybe that's a little harsh, but the movie made over $200 million in its opening weekend, so there have been loads of fans clogging up the theaters. If you're not one of them, I feel sorry for you. This is a movie for action fans, nerds, and active moviegoers alike. As a girl, I guess it's a little bit surprising that I love comic books and the like so much, but if anything, that should show you how wide the appeal for The Avengers is. (Maybe my being a girl fan only has a little bit to do with Robert Downey Jr. Or a lot, I don't know.) I'm going to go ahead and say that this is a real spoiler. So if you haven't seen the movie and don't want to know every detail (about Robert Downey Jr.), you should find something else to read, pronto. Here we go!

The movie opens with the Tesseract, which is really similar in concept to the Allspark, the Transformers’ source of energy. At any rate, we see the cube for the first time inside a government facility, and we meet Nick Fury, Agent Natasha, and Hawkeye. Something's up, though. The cube is unstable. Its energy levels are fluctuating and can't be controlled. At which point a portal opens up and Loki, Thor's adopted evil brother, crashes the party. He brainwashes Hawkeye and the astrophysicist, and that's where the real actions begins. He steals the Tesseract and it's Transformers 3 all over again. Space portal, lunatic alien space army coming to dominate the Earth, you know. The usual.

But what the plot may lack in originality, it makes up for in action and, surprisingly, characterization. Most action movies don't focus on creating in-depth characters, but we see loads of little snippets that build relationships and personalities in this film. One thing that really stood out to me was when Captain America meets Thor for the first time. He says, "There's only one god in this world, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that." Here, this film isn't decrying religious beliefs; they're just showing that Captain America hails from a different time, one when being politically correct wasn't a big deal.

I also have to mention RDJ here (as well as everywhere else). The entire movie, his character is pretty solid. He’s a self-described "billionaire playboy philanthropist," and it's true: he's a ladies' man, a genius, and super hot. He's also attractive. But what really got to me was the final scene of the movie, in which Iron Man flies a nuclear bomb through the space portal by himself. And in that scene, as the bomb explodes, Iron Man watches the explosion, and you can see the red glare of it on his face, and you can tell he's at peace with what he's done, because he's proven himself a true hero. I love that scene so much, because it gives him a real personality behind the suit.

In the end, a group of disillusioned superheroes come together to defeat Loki, the ultimate example of evil. A potential sequel was teased with the Red Hulk's appearance in the very last scene of the movie. Here's to hoping more action movies are made like this one. And if you haven't seen it, go now, because Robert Downey Jr. is in it!