Joss Whedon can deceive you into thinking him as Michael Bay taking cheesy titles, characters and plots but he perfectly knows what he is approaching and attacking in each of his projects. As a mark of a fulfilling director, he is on the side screen smirking at the witty dialogues he made his characters work through. He brings that not alone for laughter in the event of the story but acknowledge some of the ridiculousness each of them holds and act. That worked in his cult TV series "Firefly" and the movie finale of it in "Serenity". Here he has the onus of not alone venturing a blockbuster but has plethora of characters to deal with and weave them equally to provide a sensible story and a thorough entertainment. He does that with a command.
We have had enough of super hero films and it keeps getting worse with one installment after another but it keeps getting better in the hands of skillful directors. Besides the obvious mastery of Christopher Nolan in handling Batman, we have had Jon Favreau with the aid of of cool cat nature of Robert Downey Jr. in his "Iron Man" series has made worth the audience’s time in investing in to these people. Downey Jr. brings that magic out here but he is not the only character to drop splendid lines and steal the show. Every one of them get their day on the screen in most deserving manner and they have fun along the way.
You never hear from this reviewer on saying a film as "wholesome entertainer" but I think here it is because Whedon takes his passion in these people and satiates that side of his palette but then turns around and gives a lengthy and dutifully long action scene in the end to leave audience who came for that. In both these territories he treats with the same passion though the special effects does some complicated scenes and of course destroys Manhattan thoroughly to aid him in succeeding in that.
The story as much as is preposterous carries some value towards it. Loki from the "Thor" is out for the power and the magical mystical and weirdly ridiculous Tesseract is the object he goes for. That currently has been discovered by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) with the SHIELD team along with the sleeping Captain America (Chris Evans). In the process of stealing that material, Loki goes for using magical powers through his scepter to mind wash Jeremy Renner's arrow man and the scientist played by Stellan Starsgard. Hence begins the eventual assembling of the super heroes who have issues of their own.
Edward Norton nor Eric Bana do not show up as Bruce Banner/Hulk rather it is Mark Ruffalo and he is a convincing and mainly depressed man with struggle inside literally for obvious reasons. Then there is Captain America trying to make sense of this new world he awakened and of course our friendly neighborhood narcissistic jerk Tony Stark. We get Chris Helmworth as Thor swinging his hammer and Scarlett Johannson as Black Widow kicking asses. All this assemble chaotically as the story demands but methodically as Whedon lines them up.
The result is a full on funny film in completely serious moment which are ridiculous for its genre. While an artist makes something of his own to quench his inner need to express, there are other artists who can gel their passion along with empathizing with their audience. The latter is Whedon's skill. He precisely knows what the audience are thinking as they watch a particular scene and not alone acknowledge their presence but winks at them. You become a buddy to this presentation and the presenter.
As mentioned earlier, the film has a lengthy and grand action finale that does not overshadow the film's characters. You get a sense of these costumed heroes battling inside and relate to them if you want to. They are flawed, heroic, preposterous but mainly very human. In a movie that is filled with flurry of important characters and fans for each of them, it fulfills with great conviction. "Avengers" is not a profound and deep film as the precedence of recent Nolan's ventures for but it goes beyond the skin just enough to make them stick out and provides a much more tougher entertainment in a blockbuster action film, humor.
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