The Avengers

Everything that's happening, the things that are about to come to light, people might just need a little old fashioned. The Avengers (AKA: Avengers Assemble) is written and directed by Joss Whedon, with Zak Penn co-writing the story. It stars Robert Downey Junior, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddlestone, Clark Gregg, Samuel L. Jackson, Cobie Smulders and Stellan Skarsgard. Music is scored by Alan Silvestri and cinematography by Seamus McGarvey. Asgardian outcast Loki (Hiddlestone) has struck a deal with the Chitauri to exchange the Tesseract for an army with which he can attack Earth and thus control it. With the Earth in mortal danger, S.H.I.E.L.D director Nick Fury (Jackson) activates the Avengers Initiative; a collection of super heroes and deadly assassins who, if they can actually come together as one united force, hold the...

I give this 10 Stars based on it being not only better than the trailer and the hype made me thing it would be, but also that it was the first time anything the size and scope of the Marvel Cinematic universe was pulled off successfully. Having Joss direct this movie lives and dies on character interaction. This movie is on the definitive list in my opinion even just for that.

One of the few movies to actually make me feel like a kid again, Joss Whedon was the perfect filmmaker to do this film. Everyone gets their time to shine. The script juggles every plot point and character moment with clarity and ease. It's funny, smart, and visually jaw dropping. Definitely lived up to the five movie hype.

With a movie like this you wonder how all of the otherwise, main characters will work together and support the story. No problems here. While as might be expected, R. Downey Jr. comes across largely central, it is still a good mix and IMHO the best scenes in the movie involve the generated Hulk character. With that kind of successful melding of characters, Hollywood-scale egos and even computer generated characters; you have to give it up to the writers and director to make this the successful film that it is.