Civil War Countdown: The Avengers
Well, they actually did it.
After years of waiting, planning, and films that provided nothing but exposition, Marvel finally went through with their plan of making the Avengers movie. It was a long time coming, and it was so worth the wait, becoming an immediate hit upon release, and something that is considered a movie for history books. However, going into this movie, I kind of wondered if it still held the charm that it did four years ago, so, that's my main goal with this review: Seeing if the Avengers can still pack that punch.
The movie starts out in a S.H.I.E.L.D base somewhere in the southwest. The tessaract, which has been being tested upon by Erik Selvig, has started to overreact, leading Nick Fury, Phil Coulson, and Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) to activate a base-wide evacuation. Meanwhile, our old pal Loki has just received a special scepter with tesseract power from the Other, to use in order to invade Earth and get the tesseract back so that the Other and his boss can rule the universe. Loki arrives on Earth within the room of the tesseract, and starts controlling people's minds, including that of Cliff Barton, or Hawkeye as we know him. Everyone escapes, a car chase ensues, Loki gets away, so Nick Fury leads to no other choice but to call in the Avengers.
So, Captain America, Black Widow, Iron Man, and The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) all assemble upon one of SHIELD's Helicarriers, and start planning their game. They find out through Banner tracing the Tesseract's gamma radiation that Loki has gone to Stuttgart to steal some iridium to stabilize the cube for his use. After a particular scene which made many men question their sexuality, Loki reveals himself to the crowd and begins to control them, when Cap and Black Widow drop from the skies to confront him. They fight for a good few minutes before Stark drops in and interrupts the party. They manage to capture Loki and are taking him back to base, when Thor shows up to grab Loki himself. Thor argues with Loki that what he's doing is wrong, but he is interrupted as Stark isn't exactly happy that he took Loki away from them. Thor and Iron Man fight in the woods for a good bit before Cap drops down and breaks them apart, leading them as they finally get Loki back to the helicarrier.
Back at the helicarrier, Stark and Banner begin to investigate the scepter. It's slowly shown that the scepter ends up trying to tear the team apart, as they all begin to argue within each other and tempers begin to rise in the group. However, it's all suddenly disturbed as a team of soldiers, led by Hawkeye, attack the helicarrier mid-air, taking out one of its engines. Hawkeye boards the carrier to start taking out those inside, while Stark and Cap go out to repair the engines. Meanwhile, Widow and Banner are stuck in a wrecked hanger when he suddenly turns into the Hulk, causing Widow to run away. She soon confronts Hawkeye, and they fight, until Widow knocks Barton in the head, reversing Loki's mind spell. All the while, Cap and Stark manage to repair the engine, and Thor is tricked by Loki, who ends up escaping, dropping Thor out of the carrier, and killing Coulson, who confronts him.
Disheartened by the loss of Coulson and managing to lose Loki, the team nearly gives up. However, Fury manages to give them a boost of encouragement using the Captain America trading cards in Coulson's jacket, proving that he never lost hope no matter what. They decide to finally band together and go after Loki, who's currently enlisting Selvig to open up a Tesseract portal so that his army, the Chitauri, can come down and wreak havoc in New York City, starting his new empire. All eventually suit up and the war starts, waging super destruction to the city. The SHIELD council begins to grow weary of waiting for the battle to end, so they launch a nuke against the city. As a last minute effort, Stark grabs the nuke and flies it through the portal just before Romanoff and Selvig manage to close the portal, destroying the Chitauri and ending the battle.
In the end, the team capture Loki, who is sent off along with the Tesseract and Thor to punishment in Asgard, while the rest go their own separate ways, calling the end of the movie. In the two credits scenes, the first one displays Thanos, the big villain of the entire MCU, discovering the rebellious and fighting tendencies of the humans. The second one calls back to a joke earlier in the movie, as the entire Avengers team enjoys shwarma in a destroyed cafe.
So, four years later, and here we are with the Avengers. How does it hold up? It's honestly still one of the greatest movies in this franchise. The plot flows so smoothly, though it seems almost second nature what's going to happen, it's still very enticing to watch and a whole lot of fun. The acting prowess from the entire cast is top notch, and it's littered with all sorts of fun battle and dialogue scenes. Honestly, I really think that Avengers is one of those movies that people will talk about for decades, when they look back at the superhero movie surge of the mid-late 2000s and 2010s, this will be that centerpiece, the one that actually worked (jury's still out on DC). I'm honestly glad to have been alive when this movie came out, because this is honestly the Star Wars of the 2010s. Well, Star Wars is the Star Wars of the 2010s...but you get what I mean.
After all these years, Avengers still kills it, and that's why I'm giving it a nice 5 out of 5 stars for how great Marvel and Joss Whedon pulled this off. Little did we know that this was only the beginning...and things are about to get mighty interesting as we finally exit Phase 1 and enter Phase 2. If only the next movie o
Back at the helicarrier, Stark and Banner begin to investigate the scepter. It's slowly shown that the scepter ends up trying to tear the team apart, as they all begin to argue within each other and tempers begin to rise in the group. However, it's all suddenly disturbed as a team of soldiers, led by Hawkeye, attack the helicarrier mid-air, taking out one of its engines. Hawkeye boards the carrier to start taking out those inside, while Stark and Cap go out to repair the engines. Meanwhile, Widow and Banner are stuck in a wrecked hanger when he suddenly turns into the Hulk, causing Widow to run away. She soon confronts Hawkeye, and they fight, until Widow knocks Barton in the head, reversing Loki's mind spell. All the while, Cap and Stark manage to repair the engine, and Thor is tricked by Loki, who ends up escaping, dropping Thor out of the carrier, and killing Coulson, who confronts him.
Disheartened by the loss of Coulson and managing to lose Loki, the team nearly gives up. However, Fury manages to give them a boost of encouragement using the Captain America trading cards in Coulson's jacket, proving that he never lost hope no matter what. They decide to finally band together and go after Loki, who's currently enlisting Selvig to open up a Tesseract portal so that his army, the Chitauri, can come down and wreak havoc in New York City, starting his new empire. All eventually suit up and the war starts, waging super destruction to the city. The SHIELD council begins to grow weary of waiting for the battle to end, so they launch a nuke against the city. As a last minute effort, Stark grabs the nuke and flies it through the portal just before Romanoff and Selvig manage to close the portal, destroying the Chitauri and ending the battle.
In the end, the team capture Loki, who is sent off along with the Tesseract and Thor to punishment in Asgard, while the rest go their own separate ways, calling the end of the movie. In the two credits scenes, the first one displays Thanos, the big villain of the entire MCU, discovering the rebellious and fighting tendencies of the humans. The second one calls back to a joke earlier in the movie, as the entire Avengers team enjoys shwarma in a destroyed cafe.
So, four years later, and here we are with the Avengers. How does it hold up? It's honestly still one of the greatest movies in this franchise. The plot flows so smoothly, though it seems almost second nature what's going to happen, it's still very enticing to watch and a whole lot of fun. The acting prowess from the entire cast is top notch, and it's littered with all sorts of fun battle and dialogue scenes. Honestly, I really think that Avengers is one of those movies that people will talk about for decades, when they look back at the superhero movie surge of the mid-late 2000s and 2010s, this will be that centerpiece, the one that actually worked (jury's still out on DC). I'm honestly glad to have been alive when this movie came out, because this is honestly the Star Wars of the 2010s. Well, Star Wars is the Star Wars of the 2010s...but you get what I mean.
After all these years, Avengers still kills it, and that's why I'm giving it a nice 5 out of 5 stars for how great Marvel and Joss Whedon pulled this off. Little did we know that this was only the beginning...and things are about to get mighty interesting as we finally exit Phase 1 and enter Phase 2. If only the next movie o
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