Joss Whedon’s superhero gathering is funny, clearly staged and carried by actors who make room for one another. It runs longer than it needs to, but the company earns our recommendation.
The Avengers is a funny, assured superhero adventure, with a cast worth spending an evening with. It is also longer than it needs to be. Writer-director Joss Whedon understands that putting a large cast together is only the start. He gives the actors things to enjoy about one another, along with reasons to be irritated. The exchanges are good enough that we seldom find ourselves waiting impatiently for somebody to start hitting something.
Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark supplies much of the comedy, but Whedon does not simply give him every funny exchange. Chris Evans plays Steve Rogers with an earnestness that makes Stark’s flippancy more amusing. Chris Hemsworth’s Thor is entertaining partly because he seems unaware of how funny he can be. These performances remain distinct, and Whedon gets considerable pleasure from having the actors respond to each other instead of just waiting for their next line.
Mark Ruffalo gives the film its most appealing performance as Bruce Banner. We warmed to him more than we expected, because his awkwardness makes simply being in company look difficult. Ruffalo suggests discomfort without insisting that everyone stop and acknowledge it. Tom Hiddleston’s Loki is enjoyable for almost the opposite reason: he seems to require an audience at all times. Hiddleston’s relish gives the opposition enough personality to keep the conflict from becoming entirely a matter of effects.
Seamus McGarvey’s cinematography makes the action easy to follow, although there are few images we remember as fondly as the performances. James Chinlund’s production design is efficient and rather anonymous. The settings accommodate the cast and the effects without developing much character of their own. We notice that more when the conversation stops and the spectacle takes over. The film looks serviceable where it might have looked strange or inviting.
Editors Lisa Lassek and Jeffrey Ford give the ensemble exchanges a pleasing snap, allowing a response to register without stopping everything for applause. Their action cutting is similarly legible, and the scale does not make the individual contributions impossible to follow. The difficulty is how much material the film wants to accommodate. At 143 minutes, it can make a stretch of perfectly competent action feel like an obligation, and a firmer cut would have served the jokes as well as the spectacle.
Alan Silvestri’s score gives the action an agreeable sense of occasion, and its emphatic manner suits the film’s lack of embarrassment about superheroes. The music can be wholehearted because Whedon does not use every joke to tell us how silly all this is. For a team adventure, that is a useful judgement: laughing at somebody need not stop us caring what happens to them. The humour helps us stay interested when the fighting resumes.
Those with little appetite for superhero action should not expect the comedy to remove that requirement. There is a substantial amount of fighting to sit through, however much we enjoy the people doing it. We would choose it for an evening in company, with the volume up and no ambition to get an early night. Bring someone who will enjoy the arguments.
