A million different things could have gone wrong with a film adaptation of The Avengers. It could have easily have been a ridiculous, bloated, silly train wreck of a film. Even after the news that Joss Whedon, a man whose works I have loved and admired in the past, is gonna be writing and directing it, I was at best cautiously optimistic. What he managed to do with this film is short of being truly miraculous. He took multiple larger-than-life characters and created a cohesive and compelling, near-perfect narrative while putting on a spectacular, exciting piece of popcorn entertainment where nearly every element works well. It's got great dramatic character moments but a the same time an organic sense of humor about it. It's the first Marvel film that I truly want to see again.

I couldn't agree more. I did however see it in Imax-3D. Other than seeing Scarlett Johansson's butt, there is no need for it

In the interests of full disclosure, I'm a great admirer of Joss Whedon's work (I think I'm too old to be a fanboy. Does that make me a fanman?).

It's not a perfect movie, but I don't know what is. I'm sure there will be people who pick it apart. The first half or so of the film has a lot of necessary tension building and information, but just at the point where I was saying to myself "this is starting to take itself too seriously," the movie kicked into the next gear and didn't slow down. Found its sense of humor then, too.

I was impressed at the way the characters were given equal time, without it feeling like, "Well, we just spent 5 minutes with Iron Man, we better spend five on Cap."

Kudos to Mark Ruffalo for an insightful interpretation of Banner/Hulk. In fact (and I never thought THIS would be true), Banner/Hulk proved both my favorite little exposatory moment and my favorite 3 seconds of action. Won't spoil it, though.

Most everyone on here has probably already seen it...can't wait to hear what people think after multiple viewings...

I am probably the only person who kind of was blinded by the spectacle of this movie. Is it a fun blockbuster popcorn summer movie? Yes! Does it fulfill me as far as story and characters goes? No!

The first half was a bunch of whiny superheroes who don't want to play nice together, even though their friends have been taken hostage by Loki. GET IT TOGETHER!! And later it really takes until someone dies for them to see they need to stop bickering and work cohesively.

I was actually more interested in Loki's team because they were straight to the point getting down to business. (plus I wished there was more Hawkeye)

I also, didn't really like Ruffalo's take on Banner. He was too smirky for my taste. I always felt Banner was kind of tormented and a nervous kind of guy, but I could be wrong cause I never really read those comic books.

It devolves in the second half into a transformers in the big city kind of deal. And there was a good portion of the fighting at this point that could have been trimmed. It just felt like effects porn to me. All you see are building after building falling then cut to some avengers fighting cut back to building and people running... over and over again. Couldn't it have just shown these people once or twice as cutaways. Get to the point J.J.

Although I had problems with it, it was really cool to see them all in a movie together. Especially since its been hyping up for years now. I just hope that the next one will be less bickering and more team oriented character development especially with Thanos in the picture now!