- UK release: April 2012 (as Avengers Assemble)
- Director: Joss Whedon · Writer: Joss Whedon (story by Zak Penn and Joss Whedon)
- Studio / distributor: Marvel Studios; Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
- Genre: Superhero ensemble action adventure · Runtime: 143 minutes (BBFC 12A)
- Main cast: Robert Downey Jr (Iron Man, Sherlock Holmes) as Tony Stark; Chris Evans (Captain America: The First Avenger) as Steve Rogers; Chris Hemsworth (Thor) as Thor; Scarlett Johansson (Lost in Translation) as Natasha Romanoff; Mark Ruffalo (Zodiac) as Bruce Banner; Tom Hiddleston (Thor) as Loki
- IMDb: 8.1 / 10 · Rotten Tomatoes: 91% critics / 91% audience · My rating: 8 / 10
For four years Marvel has been running an experiment that nobody in Hollywood had quite tried before: build a string of separate films, each with its own hero, and let a teasing post-credits sting promise that they will one day share a screen. Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America were each placing a bet that this moment would arrive and land. Avengers Assemble, retitled in the UK to keep clear of the old Steed-and-Peel television show, is where the bill comes due. The surprise is not that it works. It is that Joss Whedon, of all the people they could have handed it to, makes the juggling look effortless.
The setup
Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Thor’s exiled brother, arrives on Earth with a borrowed army and the Tesseract, an energy source that can punch a hole between worlds. Nick Fury, running the international agency S.H.I.E.L.D., responds by activating a contingency he has been quietly assembling: a roster of people too powerful, too damaged or too proud to take orders from anyone. Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, the Hulk, Black Widow and Hawkeye are pulled into the same room and asked to cooperate. The first enemy they have to beat is each other, and the film spends a satisfying amount of its running time on exactly that before the sky opens.
The cast
Whedon’s real achievement is that nobody gets crowded out. Robert Downey Jr brings the same quick, deflecting wit that carried Iron Man, and the script is smart enough to let his ego be a problem as well as a pleasure. Chris Evans plays Steve Rogers as a man slightly out of his own time, and gives the team a straight moral spine without turning dull. Chris Hemsworth’s Thor supplies the mythic register and a brother’s exhausted patience. The reintroduction that matters most is Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner: jittery, self-deprecating, a coiled spring playing at calm, and a more watchable Banner than either earlier attempt at the role. Scarlett Johansson, whose Natasha Romanoff was barely sketched before, turns Black Widow into the film’s sharpest operator, an interrogator who wins more fights with her head than her fists. And Hiddleston’s Loki is the glue the whole thing needs, a preening, wounded villain who actually seems to enjoy the trouble he causes.
The craft
The thing Whedon understands, from years of running television ensembles, is that an action film is mostly conversation with fights between. The early stretches are talk, and the talk is the best part: bristling, funny, the heroes sizing each other up. When the action does come, Seamus McGarvey’s camera keeps it legible, which is rarer than it should be in this kind of film. The long climactic battle through a torn-up Manhattan resolves into one sustained, roving sequence that hands each hero a moment and then snaps the team into a single working unit. Alan Silvestri’s score knows when to swell and when to stay out of the way. The film looks expensive without looking weightless, and at 143 minutes it never sags.
How it stacks up
The obvious comparisons are the films that fed into it. Avengers Assemble is funnier than Thor and more relaxed than Captain America: The First Avenger, and it inherits the loose, wisecracking charm of Iron Man and spreads it across six leads. The deeper comparison is to the crossover events that comic books have run for decades, the all-star team-ups that fans always suspected could not survive translation to film. The worry was always that a roster this size would collapse into noise, the way over-stuffed blockbusters usually do. It does not, and that restraint is what separates it. Whedon’s own Firefly and Buffy were exercises in exactly this: a crowded cast, each voice distinct, banter doing the heavy lifting. He has simply brought that craft to a far larger budget.
Critics versus the rest of us
For once critics and audiences are in near-total agreement, both parked around 91%, and the IMDb crowd backs them at 8.1. The praise is for the wit, the balance and a final act that sends people out grinning. The most common reservation is that the quieter, dialogue-heavy scenes can feel a touch like television, staged flat between the set pieces. There is something in that, and the plot itself, an invader and a glowing box that opens a portal, is the least inventive thing on offer. But it misjudges what the film is for. The pleasure here is watching these particular people share a room, and on that the film delivers completely.
Verdict
This is a confident, generous piece of popcorn cinema that does the hard thing and makes it look easy. The villain’s scheme is thin and the staging occasionally betrays its small-screen instincts, which is what keeps it just shy of the very top tier for me. But the dialogue is genuinely funny, the ensemble is balanced with real care, and the rewatch value is high: it is the sort of film you will happily drop into halfway through whenever it turns up. As proof that the shared-universe gamble was worth taking, it could hardly be more emphatic. 8⁄10.
Availability: On general release in UK cinemas now, in 2D and 3D. A DVD and Blu-ray release will follow later in the year.
Update
Added since this review first appeared: Avengers Assemble turned out to be the hinge of the whole enterprise, the film that confirmed the Marvel model and set off a decade of imitators. It was followed by Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), again under Whedon, and then the two-part Infinity War and Endgame (2018 to 2019), which pushed the ensemble to a scale this first outing only hinted at. Its reputation has held up as the moment the formula clicked. It now streams on Disney+ and is widely available on disc and digital.
BBFC content advice
Rated 12A by the BBFC for moderate fantasy violence. The notes below may contain spoilers.
Violence: There are intense action sequences in which characters fight and exchange crunchy blows, as well as sight of bloodless stabbings. At one point a blade is driven through a human character, although the stabbing is not shown, only the aftermath.
Threat and horror: There are intense battle sequences and fights in which multiple characters engage in combat.
Language: There is use of mild bad language, including ‘piss’ and ‘bastard’.
Sex: There is mild innuendo, such as jokes about a man having performance issues when he has trouble using his weapon.
Drugs: There are infrequent drug references, such as when a man is asked whether he has a huge ‘bag of weed’.
Injury detail: There are occasional moments of injury detail after violence, including sight of blood.
Suicide and self-harm: A superhero character makes a brief verbal reference to having attempted suicide but this failing because of his superpowers.
Alcohol and smoking: Adult characters drink alcohol.
Source: British Board of Film Classification (bbfc.co.uk).
