Rating: 14/20
Plot: A glowing cube--perhaps the same one from a Transformers movie or something--threatens the existence of mankind, and Samuel L. Jackson and his motherfucking eyepatch have to assemble the titular group of superheroes in order to save everybody. The boring emo villain from Thor's movie is also involved. Thor and his hammer, Iron Man and his snarkiness, Scarlett Johansson and her glorious posterior, Captain America and his patriotic shield, some guy with a bow and arrow, and the Incredible Hulk and his magic indestructible pants team up to deliver all sorts of one-liners and do superheroic things.
I really got tired of hearing about this cube. Everytime one of the characters mentioned "the cube," I just thought, "The cube? Really? Is that the best they could do?" This movie depends on character development from the characters' individual movies except for the two who don't have their own movies. There's potential with Johansson's character maybe and I like her costume because I'm a pervert, but the bow-and-arrow guy (Buckeye?) played by Jeremy Renner is just a dull character. The new Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) is fine; this is the new best movie with the Hulk in it. I still think Chris Evans is perfect for Captain America although he's a little overshadowed by all the personality around him, especially with Downey Jr.'s arrogant Iron Man. And Samuel L. is fine although I prefer him in more realistic roles like he got in Pulp Fiction or the Star Wars prequels. He kind of seems like he's going through the motions here although that could be because he can only use one of his eyes. But look at all those characters! It was a lot to keep track of, and since this is a comic book movie, the plot was almost incomprehensible to me, at least for the first half before everything comes together. All I really understood completely was that there was a cube because that was referred to about three hundred and fifty times. If I had played one of those drinking games where I took a shot each time a character said "the cube," I would have died from alcohol poisoning. Once things were cleared up, this story's a pretty thin earth things vs. alien things with the titular superheroes battling some fairly nondescript and unmemorable space beings who were apparently brought here by the cube. The aliens do have a funky gyrating caterpillar thing, and the destruction to the poor city during the very long climactic action sequence is an impressive demonstration of terrific special effects and creative camera movements. There's one sequence in particular that I really enjoyed where the camera was swooping around to the different characters kicking ass--like Thor would hammer somebody 200 feet away while the camera follows to reveal Buckeye shooting an arrow which the camera would follow to the Hulk smashing something. It was very well done, almost poetic comic book character movements and cartoon violence.
For those of you who keep up with this sort of thing--Is Buckeye going to get his own movie eventually? How about the cube?
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