The Avengers

PG-13 running time 2 hrs 23 minutes

Starring: Robert Downey Jr (Iron Man), Chris Evans (Captain America), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Mark Ruffalo (Hulk), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow), Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye) and Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury)

Directed by Joss Whedon, I don’t normally care about the director but in this case he also wrote and directed Firefly, one of my favorite TV shows that was cancelled by idiots.

This was another IMAX 3D adventure and it was worth the extra money because this movie was awesome. The only thing that would have made it better is if it had been longer. I’ve heard some people say the first part of the movie was slow, but I don’t think it was. The 2 ½ hours went by so fast; I couldn’t believe the movie was over. All of the actors are the same from the lead in movies except for Mark Ruffalo as the hulk. I think Ruffalo did a better job than Edward Norton as Bruce Banner and of course the cgi has improved since 2008 so the hulk is better too. As a matter of fact, the hulk has several scene stealing moments and almost all of the laughs in the movie belong to him. Not to say this is a comedy because it most assuredly is not.

Whedon did a great job of allowing each character to showcase his/her talents. There’s some witty banter between the characters, mainly taking jabs at each other. The action scenes are superb, although it does get a little chaotic during the alien invasion. However, overall this is some of the best camera work I’ve seen in awhile, even though I’m sure the majority of it is accomplished via blue screen digital effects.

Based on the number of movies depicting New York City in peril, whether it’s monsters, aliens or some form of super bad guy or another; I would highly recommend against anyone moving to NYC since it is obviously on everyone’s list of favorite places to attack/destroy. One thing I will highly recommend though is seeing this movie. There are two snippets hidden in the credits at the end of the movie. The first is approximately 90 seconds in and it shows the next bad guy setup for a sequel (of which I am pretty sure there will be one). The second snippet comes at the very end of the credits (and there are a lot of them). I’m not going to tell you what it is about, but I will say that if you stick through to the very end you will, in all likelihood, smile, and chuckle to yourself and say something along the lines of “I sat here for that”. I did and I thought it was worth waiting for but some of you may not. Go see the movie and decide when it’s over whether you keep your seat or leave the theater. I’m sure someone will tell you what you skipped, eventually.