Maybe they won't save the world, but they'll definitely Avenge it! (Avengers Movie Project Part 5)

     This is the big one, folks. Everything that we've seen so far has led to this movie I'm talking about today. At this time, The Avengers was a monumental achievement, and the culmination of 4 years of standalone movies that could come together to be something greater. The incredible thing about the MCU though, is that it was really just getting started. Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America all had pretty impressive movies which were certainly smash hit blockbusters, but The Avengers put them all to shame, and raised the bar for the movies still to come. Obviously there were some issues and snags along the way, especially considering Edward Norton, who had starred in The Incredible Hulk in 2008 didn't want to return to reprise the role, so Mark Ruffalo jumps in as Bruce Banner here, and does a fantastic job overall. Let's get right to the meat and potatoes of the movie today, there are some serious threats that need to be addressed today, and the only people that can deal with them are The Avengers.

The Stars Align

    This movie begins with Loki, who we last saw falling from a rainbow bridge in Asgard, then apparently compelling Erik Selvig to work with Shield in Thor, receiving a task from an alien race. They give him a magic staff and send him through a portal which leads him to Shield Headquarters where they're experimenting on the Tesseract (the Blue Box from Captain America). Loki mind controls Hawkeye (that guy with the bow and arrows from Thor), Dr. Selvig, and several other shield agents, then shoots Nick Fury and escapes with the Tesseract, destroying the headquarters in his wake. This is all before the title card even drops, by the way. After this, we see Tony Stark (Iron Man) doing some final preparations on Stark Tower, a new clean energy building running off of arc reactor power when Phil Coulson comes to talk to him about the Avengers Initiative. Tony turns him down, but Pepper convinces him that he needs to work with a team if there's a threat where they need him. Tony says he'll think about it and we see a man living in a poor community in Budapest (I think?) who is acting as a doctor for the poor residents. A little girl rushes up to him and tells him that her dad is sick in a house on the outskirts of the town. The man goes with her to the house where the girl escapes through the back window and Black Widow is there to recruit the man who is actually Bruce Banner, who went into deep seclusion after the events of The Incredible Hulk. It's a tense negotiation, but finally Bruce agrees on the terms that they just want him for his expertise in Nuclear Radiation, instead of the Hulk. Finally we see Steve Rogers (Captain America) punching sandbags in his apartment when Nick Fury comes in and gives him a mission. He tells him that he's needed for an important task, one that they need all the help they can get. Steve agrees to the task and it's off to a mysterious undisclosed location. It's an aircraft carrier, but with a twist. This one flies and lifts into the air as Director Fury fills them in on the details of why he's brought them all here. "There was an idea... called the Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of of remarkable people to see if they could become something more. To see if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could." That quote is just so good I had to put it in, huge shout outs to Samuel L. Jackson as always.

    In the meantime, Loki is planning a big heist, and he has all of his mind controlled cronies to help him (by that, I mean mainly Hawkeye). Loki needs some material that they have in a bank and so he shows up while they're having a banquet or fundraising event of some sort, and reveals his godly form after stabbing a guard in the eye with a gadget that duplicates his eye (needed so Hawkeye can open the vault to get the thin). Captain America and Black Widow (who's flying a Quinjet) arrive to arrest Loki and save the people, Loki makes a speech about how humans are too weak to stand up to a god, and then... what's that in the sky? Is it a bird? A plane? It's Iron Man, here to help them save the day, and with his help they beat Loki and put him in cuffs pretty quickly. On the way flying back to the Helicarrier, however, Thor intercepts them, grabs Loki, and flies away, leaving Iron Man and Captain America to follow. Iron Man and Thor get into a fight, but then make up when Cap breaks it up.

    They all get Loki to the Helicarrier, but discuss how it was almost too easy to capture him, and eventually find out that his plan is to get the Hulk upset enough to wreak havoc on the ship, so they decide to keep him out of harm's way. The group as a whole has taken to bickering, especially Iron Man and Cap. Unfortunately this is about the time that Loki's brainwashed minions arrive on the scene and try to blast the airship out of the sky. The Hulk finally comes out and begins charging after Black Widow, and he fights Thor as well, while Iron Man and Cap begin trying to repair the rotors on the Helicarrier before the whole thing gets destroyed. Thor realizes that this is a diversion by his brother so he can make his escape, but is tricked into the confinement cell that Loki is being kept in and is dropped from the ship. Agent Coulson shows up with a big laser to blast Loki, but gets stabbed from behind and dies after getting one big shot off, and blasting Loki through a wall. Hulk is blasted off of the ship as well, and Loki escapes but leaves Hawkeye behind as he's been knocked unconscious. The team is all separated, Thor breaks out of the pod just before it crashes into the ground, Bruce is back, he wakes up in a crater that Hulk created when he landed in a warehouse, but we'll get back to him later. Iron Man and Cap are still on the Helicarrier for Fury to tell them that Coulson was killed, and he shows them his bloody Captain America trading cards that were in his pocket when he died (Or were they?). Black Widow talks to Hawkeye in a sweet moment where they both discuss how far out of their depth they are. They have a lot of chemistry right? It's almost like they should be romantically involved... but don't worry, they never will be. Iron Man and Cap realize what Loki wants to do, which is to open a portal with the Tesseract... but he would need a really tall building... a monument with his name on it... Oops... Tony built it for him, it's Stark Tower. So they all suit up and head back to New York for a final confrontation. 

    Tony faces off against Loki without his suit, hoping to negotiate with him, Loki tries to mind control him with the staff as well, but because of his Arc reactor on his chest, it doesn't work. Loki gets mad and sends Tony out of the window, but he's saved by another Iron Man suit which attaches to him as he falls. Thor arrives in New York a few minutes later as the device that the tesseract is powering shoots into the sky, opening a portal that aliens all begin pouring out of. Millions of aliens are coming out of this portal, including what I can only refer to as "giant space whales," which act as drop ships for more and more aliens. New York is completely swamped and we see the Avengers all teaming up to save as many people as they can and taking out as many enemies as they can. Here we finally see Hawkeye in his element, firing arrows from the top of buildings and blowing up enemies, and then finally we hear a little motorcycle engine rev as The Incredible Bruce rides into Manhattan. How did he get there? Not sure, there are so many shots talking about how the streets are completely blocked with cars, it seems unlikely that he'd be able to get through, but oh well! Here he turns into Hulk who's ordered to smash, and smash he does. There's a huge fight scene where things seem pretty helpless as more and more aliens arrive out of the portal, and on top of this, the council that is in charge of Shield elects to nuke New York to contain the damage. Tony flies to intercept the missile just in time for Black Widow to be able to close the portal by breaking through a barrier with Loki's staff and removing the Tesseract from the device. Tony flies the missile into the portal and blows up the alien army as he loses consciousness. Black Widow closes the portal, but just before it closes, Iron Man falls out of the hole at an alarming speed, but Hulk catches him. There's a moment where it looks like Tony has died, but Hulk screams and he wakes up and suggests they all go out for shawarma.

    Here we are at the end of the movie, and yes, New York is destroyed, but Loki is captured after Hulk picked him up and swung him around (maybe the best scene of the movie) and the alien invasion is stopped thanks to the Avengers. In the final scene of the movie, we see the aliens talking to a big purple man. I don't know who that is, but he's probably going to be important in the future. In the post credit scene we see the avengers all hanging out and eating shawarma because the day is saved!

Plots? Where we're going we don't need plots.

    As I was writing this post, I realized that this plot, though complicated and complex at times, for the most part doesn't move around much. Most of this movie is either in New York or on the Helicarrier, and they move between these locations a few times during the film. The plot consists of, "They go over here, get the guy, then go back home and hang out until he does an evil trick and escapes, then they go to New York and fight aliens." It shouldn't work as well as it does, but it's really a very interesting and fun movie to watch, and that can really be chocked up to all of the different interactions between the core cast and the supporting characters. Little moments like Tony catching a Shield agent playing Galaga when he thinks no one is looking, Agent Coulson nerding out when he first meets Captain America and wanting him to sign his Captain America trading cards, or even the interactions with Loki are all so memorable and do a great job of showing how these different characters can meld into such an effective team, even with many of them being loose cannons in their own right. I'm not talking about the actors this week, because at this point I've already talked about all of them for this movie, but they're all fantastic as always. I think this is definitely one of Samuel L. Jackson's best performances in the MCU, which just means that he shows up and does a lot in this movie, which is always a good thing in my book! All of the characters and actors have such interesting chemistry, and we'll see a lot of that as the MCU continues on past Phase one and into Phase two, which begins with Iron Man 3.

    The Avengers is a pretty wild ride all around, and even though it is now almost ten years old, I think many people still consider it one of the best movies in the MCU, and I tend to agree. There's something so entertaining about seeing all these characters interacting, and it was even more exciting when the movie had first come out and we were able to recognize all of the characters from the different movies finally coming together. My dad really liked this one as well, if you were wondering! As I said before, he's a big fan of how funny Tony Stark is, and since he had a lot to do in this movie, he really enjoyed it over all. Thanks so much for reading this post, friends! I hope you're all doing well and have a good week! I've been your Self-Proclaimed Avenger, and I'll talk to you next Friday!