1. The pacing in the film is great. One thing Whedon has always been good at was pacing. Not an insane start, but it builds, which of course this movie did.

2. Fair point, we should have more Hawkeye.

3. Okay, not a terrible point, but it worked. Read the original Avengers. Loki's only goal was to use the Hulk to cause some destruction.

4. Can't say I agree, but whatever. We don't know that Fury abandoned using the tesseract to make weapons, he's just waiting to see what the heroes can do first. I highly doubt he has a change of heart. If I know the character the way I think I do, phase 2 was being continued during the whole final battle just in case it didn't work out.

5. You can't say this movie gets the heroes right and then complain that the newscasters don't do justice to the chaos or the implications of aliens….again this was true to the comics. Either they go for hyper realism or they get the comics right. They got them right, which you pointed out. They put the comics back into the whole thing.

Last but not least, this is a side note….but I really hate the insinuation that extra terrestrial life means "all religions just got a MASSIVE page one rewrite." That's just an ignorant assumption from someone who doesn't understand religion. If alien life exists elsewhere, or if there are parallel universes it doesn't disprove anything. It just means there's more than we're aware of. I mean no matter what religion you are, if your god created the world and didn't tell you he created others that doesn't prove anything. I think most faith's agree that their god(s) don't OWE them anything. A simple analogy: Just because you go to a friend's house, look at his refrigerator and see people's pictures you've never met doesn't mean your friend is a lie….

Oh I don't know, maybe because he betrayed and killed Laufey, revealing his true plan to use Laufey's attempt on Odin's life as an excuse to destroy Jotunheim with the Bifröst Bridge, proving himself worthy to his father.

You also doubting they will assemble again, after a 200m dollar opening is pretty damn funny. They are the Avengers and will assemble when called. They heed the call. It's who they are.

"There may not be a minimum safe distance!"

"Then get all the protypes for phase 2 on a truck and out of here then!"

"is that really a priority"

"ON THE TRUCK NOW!"

Yeah, TOTAL technojargon… ??? and not a *plot* point at all

I found the opening ironic, and perhaps deliberately so, because it so out of sync with the rest of the film's mood. Then again. It is also a pretty workable metaphor as a peek into Loki's soul – all dark, obscure and with a hint of despair about it. I don't mind missing Hawkeye because we never had a relationship with him from the previous movies, so this is his jumping off point whereas the others already had theirs in the other movies. Besides, we already had so many character stories to keep track of on screen.

A week ago, I wrote a similar piece– on Whedonverse.net, no less– covering what I saw as weaknesses in the movie. The review above hits most of them. We're told that the first cut of the film ran 3 hours — with 30 minutes to appear as extras on disc. Perhaps some of the excised parts might fill in the cracks. Although, there's not much to be done with how minimally threatening and one-dimensional the Chitauri are as an alien conquering army. The greatest threat in the end is man-made, in the form of the cliched alien ship-killing nuke. You'd think by now they would have a defence against such "primitive" technology.

Well done

It will be really interesting to see what they do with the second movie. It appears the plot will involve aliens attacking, and there's certainly going to be some friction/in-fighting within the group, so it will be fascinating to see what they do to differentiate it and if they can top themselves.

I recently sat through over two hours of cheesy one-liners, and I’m left wondering whether the 92% favorable rating given to The Avengers by critics on Rotten Tomatoes means they’re all on the studio’s payroll or just didn’t think critically enough. I’m also beyond confused as to why Marvel didn’t hire Jon Favreau, Kenneth Branagh, Joe Johnson or Louis Leterrier – or indeed any director with the genuine talent to tell a story. Joss Whedon has no credibility for this project, and was clearly out of his depth. What a waste – of the studio’s money, and of mine as a frequent moviegoer and shareholder. To mention nothing of the minds of Americans, which this movie will help to further dumb down into thinking that hype and CGI make a “good story” despite grossing $200M+ opening weekend. But unlike other consumer products, smarter moviegoers can’t “return” their viewing of this movie for a refund.

Let’s begin with the script, which is appallingly low-minded. Even a fast-paced comic-book-
hero action movie can and should contain thoughtful, character-revealing dialogue (dialogue meaning more than two sentences per utterance, at least now and then!). It becomes quickly impossible to care at all about any of these once-special characters, each of whom is reduced to sheer flatness.

Nor is there any discernable armature (moral) – just a vague sense that the movie is flogging to death the platitude of how awesome America is because it’s full of rag-tag teams of really special, gifted people who are destined to save the world from some nebulous evil. The entire plot is, in fact, disconnected and rambling. On the one hand, the movie makes the sweeping assumption that every moviegoer will already know the backstory of the characters (It opens with Loki arriving and being introduced as Loki. End of introduction.) Why not set up each character (as well as the concept of S.H.I.E.L.D) in a way that ties all the prior movies together into this one? But regardless of the lack of backstory and context-setting, the plot is full of outrageously intelligence-insulting turns that are devoid of both logic and human (or superhero) authenticity. Loki plans to use the Hulk against the group – because in a convenient up-ending of logical continuity, the Hulk’s first rage in this movie will be unleashed on anyone and anything around him and be unable to distinguish his friends and enemies. The Black Widow announces that apparently, a blow to the head is sufficient to clear Loki’s magical mind-controlling energy zaps. Loki opens a hole in the sky and randomly brings in Transformers-esque aliens to help him in his feebly articulated quest to “free Earth from freedom”.

Kudos to critics like A. O. Scott for telling the truth about this movie and Whedon’s failed vision for The Avengers. Just because people spend their money on something hotly anticipated doesn’t mean it’s good. This movie is a crass manipulation of people to cough up money to cover the studio’s ill-spent investment, and you can keep doing this because moviegoers are not entitled to demand a refund for the waste of two hours of their life. Nor, can they take you to court over product misrepresentation through trailers that set a tone of quality that the feature film doesn’t even begin to reach. Clearly, it’s time for that kind of consumer protection in the movie industry, because failing that it seems unlikely that studios will actually take responsibility for the egregious waste of resources that goes into churning out mediocre movies like The Avengers, let alone the outright duplicity of packaging it as something worthwhile and meaningful.