The Avengers is Hollywood at its best

The Avengers is action in action and delivers what it promises. Big time. And in 3-D that will blow your mind. This is what filmmaking and great storytelling are all about: providing first rate entertainment that delivers on all levels, a visceral cinematic experience that is bold, daring, and imaginative beyond belief.

In the film,Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Widow answer the call to action when Nick Fury, director of the international peacekeeping agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D., initiates a daring, globe-spanning recruitment effort to assemble The Avengers team to defeat an unexpected enemy threatening global safety and security.

Despite pulling together the ultimate dream team, Nick Fury and long-time confidante Agent Coulson must find a way to convince the Super Heroes to work with, not against, each other when the powerful and dangerous Loki gains access to the Cosmic Cube and its unlimited power.

Ultimate alternative universe

For those who think that The Avengers is simply the epitome of what Hollywood is all about, with its USD230 million dollar budget and superstar showcase, you are right, and rightfully so. The art of filmmaking and the craftsmanship of making an ultimate masterpiece comes at a price, and when you sit down to watch the end result, the payoff speaks for itself.

This is Hollywood at its best and, for those who are on the anti-Hollywood bandwagon, The Avengers is American filmmaking that shows no equal, despite the mighty dollar. It is the perfect unison of storytellers and story makers who rise to the top of their game to deliver an ultimate experience that allows us to escape into an alternative universe where fantasy rules the imagination and shows that there are no limitations when it comes to creative genius.

The filmmakers succeed admirably in their mission to deliver a payoff to the cinematic universe they have established in their previous films, which started with Iron Man and catapulted into The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger.

Writer-director Joss Whedon and his creative team give fans of the films what they want, while honouring fans of the comic books as well, fully living up to the Marvel Comic Universe, which consisted of 500 Avenger issues over the last 48 years.

A work of wonder

Whedon's script is truly a work of wonder, capturing the impossible in a breath-taking running time of 143 minutes; make sure to stay for the end credits because there's an important epilogue not to be missed. Whedon equally packs a powerful punch as a director (who directed the space-Western Serenity and is the force behind Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay with Toy Story, and who also wrote the screenplays for Titan AE, Speed, and Alien Resurrection.)

Besides his incredible visual sensibility, Whedon perfectly balances the intimate emotional confrontations between the characters with the grandeur of the spectacle, and the action with the drama and humour.

Said Whedon: "My visual style as a director comes from comic books, my understanding of visual storytelling comes from panel art, which I was reading more voraciously than I was watching movies for most of my childhood."

Vivid characters that burst into life

The success of The Avengers is not merely found in its overwhelming spectacle and sensation, but grounded in a story that is well scripted and vivid characters that burst into life.

The force behind it all is Stan Lee, who first became publisher of Marvel Comics in 1972 and is recognised as the creative force that brought Marvel to the forefront of the comic publishing industry.

For Lee, the reason that the Marvel characters have been so successful is that they were created as three-dimensional people with interesting personalities and personal problems who are still interesting even if you take away their superpowers; the ultimate Dream Team are flawed heroes and heroines who we care about.

When we are watching The Avengers, we are not merely seeing blown-up larger-than-life dummies in action, we are experiencing a gathering of favourite friends who have come together not only to save the world from destruction, but also to have fun like you've never seen before. Their humanity softens the blow of violence and turns dramatic action into playful amusement, where no one really gets hurt although it's Hell on Earth and Doomsday looms.

The characters in The Avengers are real. The bleed, they hurt and they worry in their constructed realism, adding an emotional layer to the fantasy and illusion.

Excellent casting

The characters would be dead if it was nor for the excellent casting: Robert Downey Jnr is absolutely superb as Iron Man, adding wit and humour to the wonder; there can only be one Captain America, and Chris Evans proves that he indeed makes a great hero to root for; as Thor, Chris Hemsworth has now descended from his godly universe and is a fantastic down-to-earth force to be reckoned with; Scarlett Johanssen is gorgeous and precariously sexy as the Black Widow; Jeremy Renner is handsomely devilish in his Robin Hood guise; and Mark Ruffalo is sensational as the "new" Hulk, adding a dry sensibility and logic to the monstrous wrestling maniac.

A hero can only be a good as his villain and nothing beats Tom Hiddleston as the malicious Loki, a spoilt god from Asgard who, after his bid to overthrow the throne was thwarted by his brother Thor, now plots his revenge.

The world of The Avengers is spectacular beyond belief and brought to glorious life by production designer Alexandra Byrne (Elizabeth: The Golden Age), Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor Janek Sirrs (Iron Man 2, The Matrix), and four-time Oscar-nominated special effects supervisor Dan Sudick (Iron Man, War of the Worlds) and editors Jeffrey Ford (Crazy Heart) and Lisa Lassek (The Cabin in the Woods).

The action and the emotional journey of the characters are beautifully underscored by composer Alan Silvestri, who also composed the music for Captain America: The First Avenger.

If you want to explore your imagination and experience the unbelievable, make sure to see this not-to-be missed extravaganza that will turn your ordinary world upside down and inside out.

Be warned: The Avengers is addictive and you will return for a second viewing. Nothing beats its supremacy and can sustain its vigour.

Behind the scenes

With the successful launching of the Iron Man franchise in 2008, the first hints for what would be Marvel's most ambitious new franchise to date began to surface, bringing together its beloved characters in one film for The Avengers, the holy grail of the Marvel Universe. The idea for The Avengers first surfaced during the production of Iron Man, when producer Kevin Feige had a notion that S.H.I.E.L.D. could be part of both Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk.

"We started looking at the list of characters in the Marvel Universe that hadn't been taken by other studios: Iron Man, The Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Hawkeye and Black Widow," said Feige. "And I thought: Isn't that interesting; all of these characters happen to form one of the most popular comic book series-The Avengers. "When the idea of a Nick Fury cameo started coming up, we called Sam Jackson and he thought it was a cool idea," continued Feige. "It was his enthusiasm about it that led us to shoot that end credit scene and what he says to Tony Stark in the scene: 'You're part of a bigger universe, you just don't know it yet.' The line was also Marvel telling that to the audience as well."

The producer added: "Audiences loved the cameo and the buzz about Nick Fury began. We did it again two months later on The Incredible Hulk and the reaction once again told us The Avengers is going to work. Our plan then became to build it one Super Hero at a time because it was really important that we introduced all of the characters first in their own franchises before putting them together in The Avengers. We also hired filmmakers on Thor and Captain America who were open to the idea that they were playing in a shared sandbox."

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Rating 5/5